By Lori Kennedy
If you took the blipping and bleeping from a video arcade circa 1983 and added one part sass, two parts modern production values, a dash of the good-time vibes of a roller rink, and wrapped it all in the wooly goodness of leg warmers, you’d get the sound of Boston’s synthpop darlings Freezepop. Add tongue-in-cheek lyrics about romance, math, and robots, and your ears will love you for picking up their latest album, Imaginary Friends. Tracks like “Lose that Boy,” “Strange,” and “Doppleganger” show how they’ve mastered the art of “sounding ’80s” without actually sounding like the music was made during the ’80s. I spoke with main keyboardist “the Other” Sean T. Drinkwater about achieving this sound, the perils of playing vintage gear, and the wisdom of Brian Eno.
*Photo by Carla Richmond.
How was this album mixed to sound so ’80s and yet so fresh at the same time?
Much of it wouldn’t be possible without DAW technology, and certainly there are a lot of time-based effects and destructive effects from companies like Universal Audio and Chris Randall’s Audio Damage that wouldn’t have been achievable in the same way in the ’80s. That said, we did tend to use hardware and older technologies for sound sources. Our preamps and compressors tend to skew very ’70s, which is what bands in the ’80s probably would’ve been using.
Was the sound you were going for consciously retro?
With Freezepop, there’s always been a bit of a late ’70s and early ’80s thing to it, but we’ve resisted going whole-hog. Our former bandmate The Duke’s [The Duke of Pannekoeken, a.k.a. Kasson Crooker] tastes were somewhat different from mine in that he liked a lot of ’90s electronica. When he left, we just did what felt natural, which was to go slightly more retro in places. Another thing is that for two complete full-lengths we used a Yamaha QY70 exclusively for sounds, and he did amazing things with it, especially on the second record. Limitations can be very freeing in some circumstances, but we decided not to give ourselves those limitations this time around. We won’t be making a “this could only have been created in 1984” record anytime soon.
How do you get inspired? What do you recommend to someone just starting out?
List your top ten songs, then do your own version of the tenth or least-obvious one. It’s always good to have other people around, too. In terms of our songwriting process, it always starts with lyrics. Either a title or a chorus or just an idea someone jotted down on their phone. The first song we wrote for the record was “Lady Spider,” which had a lyric that Liz had done really early in the process. It was a little cute and a little sexy, and I thought, “Well, that’s Freezepop-y enough,” so then I tried to find some music for it. That’s a pretty normal process for us.
What are your go-to synths for basses, leads, and pads?
I’m not sure I have a go-to list as such, but a normal route would be the Minimoog Voyager for basses, Dave Smith Instruments Prophet ’08 for pads and sequences, my Roland Jupiter-6 for pads or comp sounds, Roland SH-101 for basses or leads, and Waldorf Blofeld for occasional glassy or “digital” sounds. The Prophet ’08 is semi-modular, which is nice, and it has a terrific but simple sequencer. It’s well-suited to the kind of subtractive synthesis I like to do, and don’t tell anyone, but I like digitally controlled oscillators. [Laughs.]
Where did you use soft synths, if any, on the album?
Early on it was mostly hardware, but as we were tying things together we used some soft synths for “frosting.” Native Instruments Reaktor in particular, from simple polyphonic synths and eight-bit sound generators to bizarre piano modelers. I also love U-he Zebra, which is used heavily on “House of Mirrors.” It was the last song we wrote and we were entrenched in soft synths that last couple of weeks. Zebra is capable of some really beautiful sounds.
What creates that echo-y sound throughout “House of Mirrors”?
That’s a Waldorf Blofeld playing a fairly simple sawtooth sound, but we put lots of destructive effects and loads of the EMT 140 reverb from our UAD card on it.
*Photo by Caitlin Malone.
Did you mix the album entirely in the box?
I guess it was summed in the box, but we have a nice analog mix bus rig which is a Brent Averill stereo API 312 clone into an API 2500 bus compressor into a Great River EQ-2NV, then back into the computer. It can get a little hiss-y for quiet tracks—“House of Mirrors” was mixed and mastered a little differently, for instance—but for dancey stuff we really loved the sound. The API 2500 might be my favorite piece of recording gear ever. Our mastering engineer, Dave Locke, uses one as well, and I couldn’t recommend it more highly if you’re thinking of selling your car or something. As for DAWs, I write in Logic quite often because I like the production templates, but I usually record audio in Digital Performer. We use a Mac Pro computer.
Can you tell me how “Doppelganger” came together?
I demoed “Doppelganger” using a Roland TR-707 and SH-101 and an electric guitar. A lot of stuff ended up getting piled on the demo, and when we cut the actual track, it suffered when we took certain things from the demo out of the mix. There’s a lot of Prophet ’08. I put in a sampled Yamaha CP70 piano bass part, then took it out as it seemed too Billy Joel or Hall and Oates. But then we heard Goldfrapp’s “Alive” and they’d done something pretty similar, so I put it back in. “Doppelganger” also has lots of sneaky, quiet crash cymbals through tons of reverb doubling the snares and things.
What five pieces of gear can’t you live without?
Certainly the Moog Voyager is a pretty strong contender. I’ve been using the Roland SH-101 for 20 years. I use the Prophet ’08 on a lot of stuff these days. I have an API compressor that I really couldn’t do without—it’d be a real step backward for me. Every time I think about using different kinds of plug-ins and things I start to panic a bit. [Laughs]. I couldn’t live without the UAD-2 card. We will record the simplest stuff knowing that we’re gonna mash it up later on with the plug-ins—just the most basic square waves and sine waves, knowing that we’ll eventually put some really interesting effects on it. And usually it’s the Universal Audio stuff that I turn to.
Who are some of your influences?
Alan Wilder [formerly of Depeche Mode], as a live player, was a big influence. Of course without Martin Gore’s songs you don’t have much to work with, but Violator is possibly the best electro-pop album ever made and Alan certainly had a strong hand in that record, as did Flood and later on François Kevorkian. I also love Nick Rhodes [of Duran Duran]. He’s like a conductor/producer/idea generator/living-art manifesto.
Before we started serious production on Imaginary Friends, we listened to all our own albums then finished off with Computer World by Kraftwerk to get us back to the ground floor. Kraftwerk, Giorgio Moroder, and especially the early Human League records remain a big influence. We consulted Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies card deck several times during production. Sometimes you have to go where Eno tells you. Often, actually.
Drinkwater discusses the synths of Freezepop below. Click here if player doesn't load correctly.
Below, Drinkwater breaks down what keyboards were used for each track on Imaginary Friends.
“Natural Causes”
The primary repeating sound is a Prophet '08 lightly mangled with Audio Damage’s Replicant plug-in. Many of the synths in the choruses are SH-101s. We sent her vocal out into a Fender guitar amp for the vocal reverb. The bridge bass is the Voyager. There is also a heavily processed Rhodes sound in the bridge.
“Lose That Boy”
Intro sound is Voyager with the mod rate being turned up manually. I used Voyager basses except the verses, which are Blofeld. There are three bass auxes on this song, all doing unique things like LFO, tape emulation, and bass amp emulation. The dueling leads are a Voyager and Blofeld. This one had a big drum buss going out the Alan Smart C2 compressor (sometimes we do this “in the box,” but this one called for the real deal).
“Doppelganger”
A couple of different drum compression busses on this one—one going to UAD Neve 33609, and one going to UAD Fatso. The flanged, vaguely guitar-like-hook synth is the Prophet '08 through Native Instruments Electric Lady flanger, which is my favorite plug-in flanger. I probably overuse it. The bridge leads and the portamento end synths are all SH-101s.
“Special Effects”
The bass is Roland Alpha Juno 2 (actually still my all-time fave bass synth, even though I don’t use it as regularly as I once did). The lead “riff” is Prophet '08. The lead synth in the breaks is the SH-101 through UAD’s Roland Space Echo, then auto-panned in Digital Performer. The Echo and the reverb are hard panned, so when the auto-panner goes back and forth, you’re hearing it either drenched in reverb or drenched in echo, but never both. The piano sample was thinned out with EQ and given a couple of UAD EMT 250s—one for modulation, one for reverb—to sound a little more like a Yamaha CP70 piano. There’s a Korg R3 sound doing little portamento fifths.
“Strange”
The main sequence or arpeggio is an Arturia ARP 2600. I used Voyager bass. The Prophet '08 is doing the rich lead sound. The Blofeld is doing the outro lead sound. The drum machine was sent through guitar amp emulation for the spring reverb effect. Not as dramatic as when you actually send it to a real amp, but it worked. The ladies of Freezepop harmonize quite nicely on this one. Christmas is on the high verse vocals and low chorus vocals. Liz is on everything else.
“Magnetic”
The Blofeld and SH-101 are on the lead sound. Later lead motif is on the Jupiter-6. The drums in this are mostly a very lightly overdriven Yamaha RX-21 through some gentle delay with some Korg KR-55 hi-hats. The Moog is on the sync sound in the choruses. The Blofeld on the pads? Sure. Syndrum-type sounds are actually the Blofeld as well. I must’ve gotten the Blofeld that week.
“We Don’t Have Normal Lives”
The main sequence and the bridge lead is the Prophet '08. The bridge has a couple of Voyager tracks on it (bass, square wave arpeggio). Almost everything else is the SH-101. This song is a nice one because all four of us sing on it.
“Hypothetically”
This song has a little loop from the Korg R3. We never intended to have it make the final version, but it sounded silly when we took it out. The synths and background vocals in this are all treated through various artificial spring reverbs to add to their “vintageness,” except the Gary Numan-esque Polymoog sample in the chorus, which hit UAD’s EMT 140. Guest whisperer: Gordon Merrick. The end sequence is the Prophet '08.
“Imaginary Friends”
This song starts off with some Moog bass and some percussion samples sequenced, ring-modded, then mangled a little more in some Audio Damage plug-ins (Replicant and Automaton). The vocal pad is our original Roland VP-330, which we’ve used for vocoder on every Freezepop record. The leads are SH-101s and the Prophet '08. This song employs the oft-used Freezepop trick of having several bass sounds in each part, often doing parts very syncopated from one another. The bridge is the vocoder and a very resonant SH-101 battling it out. This song is pretty hiss-y. Yay analog! The outro lead sound is again semi-destroyed using Audio Damage plug-ins. I can’t recommend them enough.
“Lady Spider”
I believe the bass sequence in this song is the Arturia Jupiter 8v. There are lots of Blofeld sound effects in this one. The main “Solina”-like sound is a Korg R3 preset! We road-tested this one a bunch and never found a better replacement. The bridge has a big, gated reverb on the drum bus made using UAD EMT 140 into a UAD Neve 88RS gate.
“Hot Air Balloons”
Again, the VP-330 vocal pad is pretty prominent here. There are also sampled gently overdriven English horns, which made the song seem really loony. The weird vocal sequence in the second “verse” is the Prophet '08. This is the only song on this record that has three-part harmonies. The outro is a combo of Jupiter-6, Absynth, some Asian percussion, and some samples of an old Tronichord. Look that one up, kids.
“House of Mirrors”
The “piano” and the bass sequence is the u-he Zebra 2. The guitar-like tone is the Blofeld run though many guitar effects to give it that odd harmonic quality. We based this production originally on more digital and soft synths, as we knew it would end up being fairly sparse. The Prophet '08 is used for just about everything else, including all the break sequences. That’s the VP-330 vocal pad again in the final choruses. The nice thing about this outro is that it’s kind of in two different time signatures. The harp-like synths are in their own signature.
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