Yellow Ostrich: Taking Chances

By Mike Levine, for Delicious Audio

Yellow Ostrich

What’s in a name? Don’t ask me. There’s no such thing as a yellow ostrich, but that doesn’t stop Alex Schaaf from insisting it’s alive anyway. And in songs like ‘Whale’ and ‘In The Past I Was an Astronaut’, Yellow Ostrich is making the abstract discernible, and getting a lot of attention for it.

This guy raised enough money through his Kickstarter two years back to self-release the outstanding The Mistress last year, only to get picked up by Barsuk Records and have the album re-released this year. Things are moving fast!

This is a man/ostrich not afraid to take chances, recording many of his records with only voice and beatbox. Other ways he’s not afraid to take chances? Recording an entire record inspired by Morgan Freeman’s Wikipedia page. There’s no getting to the bottom of this, but beneath these novelty urges is a sincere attempt to make something beautiful of the insane. Think Dave Longstreth’s bizarre Don Henley-inspired opera that works as soon as you stop pretending you know anything about the way music’s supposed to sound. Yellow Ostrich is the real deal… even if it’s all made up.

How much of your recording is done at home versus in the studio?

For The Mistress, it was all done at home, in my bedroom or at various rooms around campus.  I recorded it while I was in my last year of college in Wisconsin.

MXL 990

What are the pieces of equipment that you find particularly inspiring when recording?

Doing the last album, a lot of it came from working stuff out live first, and then putting it down. So a lot of it started with my Boss RC-20XL looper. Otherwise I used pretty primitive stuff, a SM57 for the drums and a cheap MXL 990 condenser mic for vocals. I think a few times I borrowed some Rode microphones for full drums and some vocals.  I don’t quite remember because I did this recording well over a year ago.

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