No Age Made 10,000 Records By Hand

LA noise punks No Age have a new record out that sounds like the band at their peak; the perfect balance of noise and melody. On a whim, they decided to manufacture all 10,000 CDs and LPs themselves, not because they’d lost a bet but to get closer to “understanding the process”. You Need To Hear This sat down with Dean from No Age to talk about people, ummm, sitting down at shows, people puking on their drums and why 10,000 sleeves is a lot of papercuts.

You’re still closely associated with the Smell, what’s your favourite memory from playing the venue?
It was fun when we were playing to five people. We still play there actually, unannounced, usually people are either like “who the fuck are these guys?” or “holy shit, I didn’t know they were playing”.

Is it still as chaotic as the early days?
Yeah, shit gets unplugged a lot. We tried to build our equipment around the fact that everybody was going to jump around.

What’s the best reaction you’ve had to your music?
Someone puking on my drums in Leeds was a really good reaction. They looked like a fan.

Do different people from around the world react differently?
I think smaller cities interpret underground music differently. We played Antwerp last night, it’s a great city and we have a lot of fans there but they can be a chin-scratching crowd. When we play New York, everyone just wants to bounce around. The first time we played a show in Belfast, everyone sat down. I think they liked it.

The new record feels like a demo tape, it’s pretty abrasive in places what with the all the raw takes. How many takes did you do for each song on the album?
A lot of the vocals were first takes; there’s something about the quality of them even if there’s notes that were wrong or the chords were different. A lot of the drums were first take. For the most part we weren’t concerned with nailing a part, just in whether it felt right. We’ve never been a band to make demos before a record because whenever we’ve tried to recreate a song we’ve recorded before it’s never as good. You don’t want to over-think anything. You over-think something and it becomes stale and dead. Would you say this is the least polished record you’ve put out?
We spent three months recording the record when people usually say they’ve recorded it in three months it sounds like it has been recorded in three months. This sounds like it was recorded in days. We did take something and make it better. We sculpted it. We added dirt.

How do you keep the spontaneity of recording, does it ever feel stale?
I was trying to find new ways of it being a rhythmic element. So I started playing bass on this record. On a whim it’s something I wanted to learn how to do.

Have you got any stories from playing the DIY circuit?
The first tour that we did, we played with Chris Tipton from Upset The Rhythm. We had a show in Birmingham and we were supposed to stay with the girl who booked the show’s boyfriend, so it was me, Randy, Chris and these two girls from this band called Look Look Dancing Boys, who went on to be in the band Pens. They were driving us to the house and the boyfriend was super wasted, the cops stopped us and he was all drunk “yeah, I’m fine”, we get to the house and he passes out. So we get out stuff and go to bed, the roommate comes home and the boyfriend hadn’t told him that we were staying over, so he’s all angry and accuses us of stealing like forty quid. So we’re all like “who are you? We didn’t take your money! Why don’t you ask Dave the drunk guy?” So he goes and wakes Dave up, Dave is still super wasted and doesn’t remember who the hell we are, so we get kicked out and have to sleep in this cargo van on top of our gear, together. It was a character builder.

Thanks guys!

For more on No Age

No Age Has A Problem With Wal Mart
No Age Have Funny Names
No Age Practice Space