Mixing in the Face of Danger: The Veda Rays Release “Gamma Rays Galaxy Rays Veda Rays”

WILLIAMSBURG, BROOKLYN: You don’t have to know all the heartache that went into the making of the album Gamma Rays Galaxy Rays Veda Rays to appreciate it. But there’s something about understanding the bitter joy that pulses through one of 2011’s most intoxicating rock albums that makes it all the sweeter.

"Gamma Rays Galaxy Rays Veda Rays" is available throughout the digital universe.

The debut full-length from Brooklyn four-piece The Veda Rays, Gamma Rays is the artful application of music as a saving source. For the band — guitarist/vocalist/keys James Stark; bassist Tyson Reed Frawley; guitar/keys/vox Jimmy Jenkins; and drummer Jason Gates (aka Jason Marcucci) – the intense production events of the album were just one more reflection of the urgent songs that it comprises.

You can hear it in the frantic guitars and time-shifting howl of “Our Ford”, the delicious tension and release of “Long May She Roll”, and the haunting psychedelia of “This Time Tomorrow”. Sweeping six strings, emotional vocals, and driving drums are everywhere, courtesy of a band determined to deliver on the promise of its dense melodies.

With everything from immediate family suicide and South Florida black magick practitioners fueling their dark sides, The Veda Rays went to equally painful lengths to complete Gamma Rays. With a highly accomplished producer/mixer in residence via drummer Gates/Marcucci (White Stripes, Dean & Britta), the band raced to complete guerilla tracking and mixing sessions, frantically completed as Marcucci’s studio moved amidst the massive blizzards of late winter, 2010.

Released last week, Gamma Rays Galaxy Rays Veda Rays is arresting from the first millimoment. Here, Stark and Gates went deep – truly deep – in their recounting of the record that brought them all back from the brink.

Q: Your bio says: “The Veda Rays began in late 2008 when Stark and Gates, who had been hatching plans, playing gigs and making 4-track recordings since grade school, resumed their collaboration via long-distance after a several year span of inactivity.” What was the creative spark and mutual inspiration that was rediscovered when you guys got back together?
James: It was not really so much rediscovered as it was re-enlivened — from a cryogenically frozen dormancy. But with us I think it has always been something very natural and complementary, this most likely being the case due to us having grown up playing together, making 4-track demos and collaborating on this whole vision for so long and through such formative phases.

The period of inactivity was simply due to a case of “life happening”, as they say. And the way we came back ‘round to working together was largely due to the same. There is a lot of back-story here… Suffice to say, the gist of it involved heavy drug use, obsession, suicide, accidental death and the westernmost point of the Bermuda Triangle. Seriously.

For me, I feel like I had finally whittled out an authentic voice. My own particular brand of “distilled spirits”. What I mean to say is that the “me” in my personal hodge podge of influences finally asserted itself and I started recognizing something that went beyond mere pastiche.

I guess some people are gifted — or maybe seriously deluded — but for me it took a long time to feel like what I was doing was legitimate. So, just recognizing and being comfortable with a bona fide identity was a great boon. That is the plainest way I can explain how I feel I had evolved as an artist/singer/songwriter during our hiatus.

Jason: I’m not sure either of us were ever inactive. I’m a real busy body, crazy energy kind of person when it comes to working on music — we both are really. We were just separate for a bit, after playing pretty much daily, growing up and into musicians together.  When we were unable to work together, we both kept going. I know Jim was working his craft as a songwriter and he put together some great bands. I kept busy playing and wound up doing a great deal of engineering and mixing here in NYC.

In 2009 there was a period that I was very busy. I had just finished mixing a few tracks for Dean & Britta, which would later appear on their Warhol record. I was also producing two records at the same time, both completely opposite ends of the spectrum in every musical and vibe type sense. One was Bloody Panda’s Summon and the other Scott Hardkiss’s Technicolor Dreamer.  At that time it hit me, “Fuck, I really need to start doing my own thing!”

I reached out to Jim. It didn’t take long for us to discuss how we could work on a project together. That was probably the first seed of The Veda Rays.

Hear the single “Our Ford” from Gamma Rays Galaxy Rays Veda Rays right here:

“Our Ford” by The Veda Rays

Q: Jason, what got you into production and the NYC studio scene?”
We had been living down in South Florida working on music, we had our own little 4-track studio and we were constantly recording. Jim had some troubles and all hell really started breaking loose down there.

I took off to NYC to have a little break. That was supposed to be a three-day trip, but a cousin of mine convinced me to stay a few extra days and see some family. I spent most of my time bumming around the village, and after a week I met up with Judah Bauer (Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Cat Power). We became friendly, started jamming together, and  I wound up making a record with him in his apartment which was absolutely crammed with gear. At first he had an Otari MX 5050, moved on to a Tascam 1” 16-track, and eventually we had a Studer A80 16-track 2-inch, all in this tiny studio apartment.

I played drums on a few tracks and did most of the engineering. He had a bunch of people coming through to play on tracks — the late Robert Quine (legendary guitarist of Richard Hell & The Voidoids), Matt Verta-Ray, and many others.

From there I worked at a bunch of studios working my way up the ranks. I got to briefly work at and witness Greene Street just before they shut down. I worked at Excello in Williamsburg for years, and really made a home at Dubway. I started doing live sound a bit around the city and got very into remote recording. I think I’ve recorded/mixed over 300 bands for MTV and all the while working on sessions in the studio. Anyway I think I just really got lucky and fell into it. I also just went nuts, I mean, there were a few years straight that I was in a control room probably 350-360 days a year!

Q: Are the Veda Rays part of something new, something old, or something in between? Where does the music of this band sit in the time continuum?
James: Something in between would probably be most accurate. We are endeavoring to help evolve a particular current, and to do this well I believe it must be done in an attitude of reasonable reverence for and acknowledgement of what has come before. I would most optimistically state that we, in fact, aspire toward sitting at the “zero point” of the space-time continuum!

In plainer language, we are first and foremost about the songs. And the songs are set in the context of modern rock and roll music which is strongly informed by post-punk, shoegaze, dark psych, electro and many other micro-genres past and present. We try to have it never be boring, trite, redundant or otherwise sucky in any way. We want to be one of the ones trying to push the collective envelope. As in, how experimental can a pop song be and how “pop” can modern experimental rock get? And note: when I say “pop” I most definitely, in no uncertain terms, do NOT mean anything resembling modern mainstream drivel!

Jason:The music is rather cinematic. I would feel good if this was perceived as being here and now, traveling future-forward with some connections to the past.

Sheild thine eyes! But open thine ears. The Veda Rays.

Q: The new album is a real journey. To you, what is the sound and feeling of this trip?
James: For me, the intention of this record was to sort of provide a context and framework for future output. I feel like it is an attempt to claim certain lands, cultivating the fields for what will grow, showing some of the soil, the roots and seeds.

What I mean more specifically is that it unabashedly references many influences, in its own way, sitting them as the bricks that make up the road upon which the rest of the journey will take place. It starts off pretty densely layered but progressively strips things back eventually arriving at the last track which is an acoustic version of the opener.

I’d say lyrically and emotionally it is a bit of a roller coaster ride, in that a lot of it accurately reflects the personal circumstances from which it was borne out of. One of my best friends — and bass player — died of an accidental overdose, another was forced out of the band by his family and sent half-way across the country to a rehab — I am talking about Slo Club, the band I began in South Florida in 2007. Jason’s (Gates) sister committed suicide after many years of battling psychological problems and substance abuse, a five year relationship I had been in fell apart in the worst and most dramatic sort of ways, I had legal issues…things seemed really fucking grim, to say the very least. I literally lost everything during that time. Slo Club House, my former band’s HQ was over after my mate Jason Vargo passed.

Next I shared a place in Palm Beach with a Guyanese pothead who suffered from PTSD and a former skinhead whom I met through my loose association with an errant quasi-masonic black magick sect.  I believe the place was under the influence of a malevolent entity. Lucky for me the bottom fell out when it did.

Wow…
My long-time friend Matthew Ian ( brother of famed hip hop producer Scott Storch) took me in and I stayed with him in Bal Harbor (Miami Beach) for awhile. We were both slumming as he was basically waiting to be evicted. His world was going south at that time, as well. Those were troubled times.

I started writing a lot of what ended up on this album there. We were contemplating the end of the decade, the ends of a lot of people we knew, the ends of many naive and misguided ideas we had about things having grown up in the insulated, drug-drenched suburbs of South Florida, the ends of a many great and varied things…

These songs really came out of a weird sort of twilight world of so many things ending and dying, and such uncertainty as to what the inevitable “new beginnings” would actually turn out to be.  In the end The Veda Rays still turn it into a party though, for sure.

Q: Amazing, but true. What’s unique about the way these songs were recorded?
James: Damn, some of the bits on a few of these tracks started off as entirely different pieces, some from years ago. There’d be musical bits that Jason remembered and wanted to bring out, but I’d say, “No way, that song was shite!” but then I’d think, “Well, actually the guitar figure or drumbeat or whatever is quite good, it just needs to live in a new song…”

Jason: The technical stuff will bore most people, but for the folks that like that kind of thing, lets just say we weren’t afraid to run a signal through any piece of gear we could get our hands on and there was a fair deal of experimenting.

One thing I can say that might be unique, though the bulk of it will have to do with our next release(s), is that as we were mixing, the studio where I worked was moving. It is a huge ordeal to move a four-room recording studio. It’s terrifying really.

Anyway, everyone who works there was getting fried and it was holiday season so people were taking a break. We spent a few days during Thanksgiving, and then again during Christmas when no one was around, basically living in the studio. Occasionally trekking back and forth through the crazy snow storms and blizzards. We tracked drums to something like an additional 23 songs. We even had Julee Cruise stop by and sing on one! I guess that’s all talk for the future, but it comes to mind because during this same time we were finishing mixes on Gamma Rays.

See the video for The Veda Rays’ “All Your Pretty Fates”.

Q: If you slogged through that December 26th blizzard, that was true dedication! Jason, what was your philosophy/approach for mixing this record?”
Jason: The only philosophy for me would be to try to make a great-sounding record. Try to keep it in check and have it sound unique. The approach was to do it in a way that we could recall quickly and easily: We had to be ready in case we got kicked out of the studio and had to return later. We would print back any analog effects and we summed with a Dangerous 2-Bus rather than use a big console.

Q: How would you say all your mix experience informed your work on Gamma Rays Galaxy Rays Veda Rays? What are some good habits you picked up, and conversely what are some of the ‘rules’ you decided to ignore when mixing this album?
Jason: Well I’ve made enough mistakes that I don’t want to repeat so experience probably helped us avoid a few pitfalls.

A lot of the projects I’m on, I have to finish within a certain budget and deadline. I am often kinda keeping everybody feeling good about things and I’m ready to solve problems. There was some of that for sure, but it is hard to do that when it’s your band.

Q: Understandable. In the tracking and mixing, what are a couple of examples of creative engineering that you did?
James: I’ll chime in here being that I did a lot of processing on the fly, which I printed during tracking at mine and Tyson’s home studio in Atlanta. We were using a Digi 003 with a Black Lion Sparrow ADC as a front end.

On the song “Just Dust” I had two vocal passes for the lead verses which were both good takes. I piped one out to my ‘71 Fender Deluxe and re-amped it with a little of the amp’s spring reverb, as well as a bit of nice tube amp scuz for good measure. I used the other, un-re-amped take as the main vocal for the lead verses but took the re-amped track and nudged it slightly behind which created a really nice, resonant, almost tape-like doubler effect but cooler, since the “double” or echo is actually derived from a different take. I think I nudged it to the relative milliseconds of a dotted 64th note value. That is the vocal effect that is heard on the verses of that track.

I did a lot of experimenting throughout the whole tracking process…before, during and after. We tried it: whether it was trying multiple stereo mic configurations to achieve the perfect dimension for that ultimate atmospheric guitar tone, or using MIDI thru to write MIDI on a track, trigger patches from synth modules like a Roland JV-1080 or Novation A-Station AND trigger soft synths like Reaktor or Arturia Moog in order to create the ultimate, layered sounds I was after.

Another part of my treatment process for electro elements included sending stuff through stuff like the Lexicon LXP-15 for a certain ethereal, “cascading octaves” delay effect I’m fond of, or through my old PC rig where I have a few secret weapons like Kantos and tons of other older, now obscure VST effects that I don’t have in Pro Tools.

BTW, the huge, wall of sound guitar tones heard on the second half of the track “Deleted” were played by guest Juan Montoya (formerly of Floor and TORCHE, now of Monstro). We came out of his pedalboard stereo into two old tube amps, ‘71 Deluxe and ‘50-something Gibson Explorer. I mic’d both cabs close to cones but slightly off-axis (with a Shure SM57 and a Sennheiser 421), I set up a pair of Rode NT1-A’s in an ORTF configuration, and I used two other room mics: an AKG 414about six feet back from the amps and another about 12 feet back, both set to omni-directional.

The subtle magic of the Roland Dimension D was in play for "Gamma Rays".

Jason: We also did some nice things running effects returns into effects returns into other effects returns. We have a Roland Dimension D and sending the plate and a couple delays back into that really made things start swaying.

As for tracking, there’s a track named “Ellipsis” that I really love what we got with drums. I have some old cassette decks that have lo-fi omni mics and insane compressors built in them. We had them setup out on the floor in front of the kit — thanks to Michael Judeh from Dubway who helped me record a lot of the drum tracks. The tempo of that track really locked in perfectly with the release time, and the attack clamps down like an alligator! At the mix I panned them opposite to the rest of the kit and rooms, and it has this effect of subtly moving side to side throughout.

Q: That is a PLETHORA of recording and mixing tips – were you listening boys and girls? You seem like thoughtful guys, so switching gears from the technical to the philosophical…Why is music important?
James: For me, it is important because it has the capacity to convey otherwise indefinable subtleties…to affix moments in time…nuances of impression.  It provides a means to render something tangible from ones’ own unique experience, in a way that others can interact with and proliferate creatively…a way for these vagaries to take on a lives of their own.

Q: Heavy! And why is it important to you to be the ones making the music?
James: My life just doesn’t work at all without it. I tried to stop for a while…thought maybe I’d just write. I walked around in a daze for a few years with a leather-bound journal and a pen…thought I was Rimbaud. Ended up insane and thoroughly depressed. For me, there is only the hoosegow, the madhouse or death…unless I am walking this road.

Jason: Not to sound silly, because I’ve heard others say this and I’ve kinda rolled my eyes, but honestly I have to fucking do this. I’ve been obsessed with music-making and production my whole life. It’s probably just completely selfish and a bit of a safety mechanism, because if I’m not working on music, I start to go crazy. I know what kind of trouble I’m capable of getting into and this keeps me preoccupied. I have a very addictive personality and I’m very hyper. Literally I bounce around like a top, so this is good for me: Our hellbent path.

— David Weiss

Gamma Rays Galaxy Rays Veda Rays is available now on iTunes and all digital outlets, or at http://www.thevedarays.com.

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