Behind the Music: Local Teen's "Dark Shart"

I made a new record and released it on cassette!

Gratuitous SEO-friendly link, here: Local Teen Band

Look, I was only trying my best, and then things got crazy and personal REALLY quickly. And boy, was it noisy. So naturally I recorded it. I calmed down, took a step back, and organized all that mess into a new record. I'm calling it Dark Shart because the music sounded dark to me. And shitty.

It's ten songs of noisy community college rock that's also kind of pop. My friend Jaime says, "you sound like The Unicorns but more punk." (Nice, right?)

All songs were recorded in my home studios--first in Brooklyn and then Portland, Oregon. Since a lot of us record at home, I thought ya'll would be interested in hearing how it was recorded.

Up until three years ago, I was releasing records every eight months or so--until Rebecca gave birth to our child. I was still recording and writing music all the time, but fatherhood and moving across the country slowed me down in terms of finishing and releasing albums. Dark Shart is the first of three or four albums to come from that batch of songs.

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The gear

I am a total gear hound who buys, sells, and trades so much gear that's it's hard to remember what I had at the time these songs were recorded. . . plus, I sold off almost all of my gear before we left Brooklyn in 2016. But I think most of the guitars used were: a red mahogany Bazz Fuss-loving Teisco Tulip (that I miss); a rare color Japanese Mustang (sold to the guy in Parquet Courts, who then played it the next day on The Colbert Report); and a 1978 Musicmaster (I don't miss the tiny neck on that one). 

My amps were a '68 Fender Princeton (my favorite recording amp of all time that I will never get rid of), a Silverface '70s Fender Musicmaster, and something else I can't remember.

The bass used is my 1994 Squier Korea P-Bass, which never needs EQ when recording through the Princeton. 

I also had a Universal Audio LA-610, GAP Pre-73, and Warm Audio WA12 Mic Preamp that I used for most of the distortion and compression. 

I used a ton of different pedals, but most frequently I used my bad Op-Amp Memory Man, which gives everything a dirty crackle in a way I am sure the creators never intended; a Boss PS-6 Harmonist (sometimes with a slide and EBow for pads and synth like sounds); Ohnoho's Blowing Up; a Bazz Fuss and a ton of other fuzzes (because like every pedal builder, I have way more fuzzes than I need).

I recorded to Ableton Live. Almost all the delay sounds that were not my from buggered Memory Man were created using the NastyDLA plug-in. It sounds so good when you crank that feedback knob.

I love the lo-fi super-compressed drum sounds I got on this album. Some of them were made using a hardware LA-2A compressor (as part of the LA-610 unit) and others using the Thrillseeker VBL plug-in. Both of these plug-ins are FREE and made by Variety Of Sound. Most of the drums, however, are recorded live using one mic and a $100 drum set I got off Craigslist. These drums sounded great due to old drum heads and most important: the low, vaulted ceilings in the attic of my old Brooklyn apartment. Sometimes New York really is magic.

The goods

I used to create music under the moniker Shopping, but now I am Local Teen. You can find all of my past albums under the name Local Teen on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and pretty much every other streaming music service. 

If you're into having physical copies of music, you can also buy my new record--not on vinyl--but cassette!

Hope the gear breakdown is interesting to you, and thanks for listening.