TTSSFU

Manchester-based TTSSFU are great. Big melodies with enough dreamy weirdness to keep things interesting. Anyway, I sent some questions to the TTSSFU Bandcamp page, and here are the answers I got back:

Is TTSSFU just you or is there someone else?

TTSSFU is all me , I record everything alone , write everything alone, mix and master everything alone  because I’m a complete control freak ,plus when you're alone you can make all sorts of strange noises and no one bats an eye , I get embarrassed super easily so a studio is kinda my nightmare .

Do you ever play live? If so, what's the line up?

I just officially got a band together , I’ve stolen basically the whole of Diekiedie , paddy Murphy guitar , reuben haycocks bass , matt deacon synth , Dylan jumpy drums , I’ve known these guys for a while now and trust them a-lot its been a bi push for me to get in a practise room and start this for live , paddy was the one who’s really pushed me to do it and I’m glad because its made me very happy , happier than I thought so i'll be doing shows soon.

You’ve released a lot of new music in the past couple of years. How often do you record stuff?

I record stuff every other day , I write pretty much everyday. I hear ideas in my head all day. I just love music so much to be honest it's probably one of the only 5 things I do like , it's annoying not being able to be a slob and just sit recording ideas all day .

Do you record at home or in a studio?

Home , studio NEVER 

Boring gear question: What guitars, amps, pedals do you use?

I use my dads old fender squire that he gifted me for most the recorded work , and pedal wise I actually just use presets on garage band and fuck around with them until its right to me , live I use holy grail pedal and this £20 behringer awesome “ultra metal “ pedal its fantastic everyone should buy one.

Any plans to release a full length album?

Ep coming out soon , that's 7 tracks ? I've also recorded more stuff to come out after that , there's so many songs but I just grew out of them. I literally have 3 albums, maybe 4 of unreleased shit .

How do you decide which songs to put on Bandcamp vs the usual streaming platforms?

Well if projects don’t stick together and something goes wrong (to me ) they just end up nothing , there was a album “Jesus dream “ that rememebr, California basically all the singles on Spotify was leading up to but I got bored and started releasing for the upcoming EP and now I’ve fucked up the schedule so they just end up on band camp or YouTube , I really care about all the songs so it sucks ass but oh well .

Any reason why there aren’t any physical releases of your music?

Laziness? I guess , I’ve been making to make some cds , I did in fact make a physical cd for Alex g when I met him , he’s the only person currently to have a physical TTSSFU EP and the one he has is Jesus dream which I was on about above ahahahah .

I love the slide guitars on Jed and Yeah Yeah I Do. Any special tricks to getting them to sound so good?

The cheap studio amp preset , with a delay and silver reverb does the trick.

Is that some kind of flanger are you using on the main guitar in Growing Older?

Again it's just one of the presets on garage band for growing older.

At All is one of my favourite songs from the past year. How did you write and record it?  

At all is a pretty ridiculous song , it was about this person I had a crush on for a while and one night we finally got together and i was obsessed with the idea of this thing maybe becoming something then I found out he had another girlfriend lined up so he never cared “at all “ and then I realised I actually didn’t care that much , also I didn’t actually have photos of him on my wall I’m not that weird but it sounded better then saying “I scrolled through your instagram wall” .

Songs like At All and Yeah Yeah I Do have a kind of 60’s melody. Any favourite music from that period? 

I love the beach boys a-lot they are in my top 5 favourite bands , I like the velvet underground a-lot too , and i listen to a lot of French music too , I love the film the dreamers and it has this incredible song on the sound track called “love me , please love me “ by Micheal Polnareff , I’m heavily inspired by stuff like that I love the desperation of it .

Do you use the same keyboard for everything from the organ sound of At All to piano of Remember?

Nope , the organ sound in at all is played on this Casio keyboard my sister to for Christmas when she was like 12 , it was useless for years till I figured out it had the classic Casio sounds and a output ( incredible ) , and the piano on remember is a garage band preset mixed with reverb to make it sound more full and it's a behringer midi keyboard I think it's like £60 or something I bought it thinking it was a synth but I wasn’t disappointed . 

How did you get the nightmare strings sound on Palms?

Again messing with loads of presets they have so many on garageband it's incredible what you can do for free .

Do you ever play some of the most ‘ghostly’ songs like Slips live? If so, how do you do it?

I've been planning on doing slips live when I finally do a show but I doubt it will sound anything like the original track , it is what it is .

How do you ’slow’ your tracks down like with In My Pocket?

I put them in iMovie hahaha just to mess around , sometimes I prefer them slow to the original.

Did you record songs like Little Flea to a click track or did you just go for it?

Just go for it , lack of knowledge on how to record a track without drum structure 

Was it harder to cover Nirvana or Alex Cameron?

Alex Cameron I suppose , I don’t have enough attitude or sex appeal to create what he does on his tracks .

What’s the best place to play in Manchester?

I've played around a lot with my other band Duvet , I think my favourite venue has to be the pink room in yes bar , either that or band on the wall.

Reverb or delay?

Reverb ! But recently I’ve loved a slap delay.

If you had to donate all future millions of your Bandcamp revenues to charity, which charity would you pick? 

Super hard to pick , but I really care about the homeless , because its fucking horrendous thats still going on.

What is the most tedious thing about being a musician - other than doing really long interviews?

Waiting to go on stage if you're the headline act, it's so annoying having to sit and not be able to let loose , you can't really do much , can't drink too much , cant eat too much or you'll feel sick , it's boring but exciting I suppose the adrenaline is there.

Hula Hoops or Quavers?

Quavers : )

NECROMOON

I got hooked on Necromoon the first time that I heard their song ‘Sleepwalk’. However, there's not a lot of information about the band online. So I sought to remedy that by emailing Necromoon and asking them a bunch of questions that range between the obvious and the inane:

Can you let me know the names of the people in the band?

Tessa Brumbeloe, James Wadsworth, Connor Corwin.

What other bands are you in?

James- Swell Time, Thinning, Meat Flowers, Loomspore, and Sundog. Tessa- Soul Crushr. And Connor is- Thinning, Quiet/Creator, and Thumbrider.

The internet tells me that you based in Fort Wayne. What’s Fort Wayne like? Best things/worst things?

Best thing is a supportive art community. Worse thing is Sweetwater. 

Where do you practice, how often and what’s your practice space like?

We practice in Connor’s room, usually twice a week, it’s a band house so there’s constant music going on. It took us a while to figure out the setup of the space but once we found it, we were locked in. 

How do you write your songs? Alone, jamming etc?

I think it varies from time to time, song to song, album to album. One of us will bring something or we’ll all do something together. This album in particular is a lot of collaborative efforts. We were all feeling pretty confident in ourselves in terms of playing. So there’s a lot more that sticks out then stuff in the past. You get better moving forward, but have to kind of have a lid on it that way it isn’t just incoherent nonsense. -Connor

Do you demo your songs before you go in and record them?

Not really, we just rehearse them. We get phone recordings, if that means anything.

Do you mostly play around Indiana? Where’s the furthest away you’ve played?

Furthest is NYC. We actually play Ohio and Michigan more than Indiana actually.

Can you tell me what guitars, amps, and drums you usually use for recording and live?

For live stuff Tessa and Connor use a bunch of pedals, Tessa uses a Vox AC15C2, and Connor uses an older Hot Rod III. Guitars vary from time to time, same with drums. For recording, with this record in particular, Tessa used a JC120 a majority of the time. Connor used a lot of different heads, leaning towards a MIG 50 and an Ampeg Gemini 2. James used the house drums at Earth Analog, it was an older Ludwig set. 

Each of your albums feels fairly different. Do you have a plan of what kind of album you want to make before you record it?

We let the songs come to us. We’ll go in with 12 songs, and maybe come out with 10.  It just depends.

It feels like delay and reverb are a big part of your sound. What are your favourite devices for this?

Behringer Digital Reverb. We swear by those things. Lots of Walrus pedals, lots of EarthQuaker. We’re not incredibly picky. We’re just picky enough. 

When you record, do you play live as a band or overdub each part?

We usually do drums first, bass second, guitars after, etc. Rarely will we do something live.

How many vocal takes do you usually do?

On average like 4 or 5? Depending on the song. 

What are your preferred stimulants/snacks for recording sessions?

Fresh pots, caffeinated sparkling water, jugs of wine, the ganj.

Where did you record I'm So Lucky To Die Here and who recorded it?

We recorded it with our old guitar player, Will Heingartner. We did it in his basement.

What is that keyboard sound on Yuki Onna?

It’s an old Casio preset.

I love the acoustic feel of tracks like Cast and Flowers and Sleepwalk. Any plans for more rootsy songs or are you just going to keep blasting off into oblivion?

There’s acoustic hidden everywhere in Nature Makes Our Graves For Us. Most songs start out on acoustic guitars. But it just depends on what we’re feeling.

Your track ‘Onism’ sounds like a backwards something. What is it?

It’s the chorus of “Sleepwalk” reversed.

‘Warren’ and ‘Mermaid’ were released as stand-alone singles? Any other rare tracks that I’m missing?

There might be a few.

The album Spirit Fair rocks hard. How did you record it?

Also a basement. With Matt Riefler. Lots of heartache, weed, Ace Ventura, Parasyte. It was serious.

I detect some Black Sabbath love on some songs from Spirit Fair like the title track and Exister. Did/do you worship at the shrine of metal?

That’s a big 10-4. We’re all fingers on the hand of doom.

Speaking of metal, what are your preferred distortion pedals/fuzzboxes?

Russian muffs and oddball fuzz pedals. We like the fuller fuzz as the to the shrill.

Boring question but do you use standard tunings? Exister sounds different somehow…

We’ve used a couple different tunings, but Exister is in standard.

Nice clunky bass tone on Night Dreams. Can you remember how you did that?

It’s an analog delay through a pushed Neve preamp.

I think that your latest album - Nature Makes Our Graves For Us - is the most ‘far-out’ in terms of song structure. Do you use wall charts, visual cues, memory or just jam it out?

We do all of that. Whatever feels good, whatever needs to happen. James is especially good at remembering structures and queues.

Where did you record Nature Makes Our Graves For Us?

Earth Analog Studios.

Do you ever succumb to using a click-track for things like the start of Glowing One and Ritual?

We always use a click. Actually the end of Glowing One is a live take. 

Songs like Shoshana almost have a mystical feel. Would you describe yourselves as spiritual beings?

Tessa believes in ghosts. James is a spider. You do the math. 

 How do you get that cool mushy vocal sound on songs like It Was So Good To See You?

Vocal saturation.

The weird echo effect on the big drum in Glowing One messes with my mind. How did you do this?

There’s multiple drummers on the track. Sprinkled with secret sauce.

Nice flanger on Waylaid. What kind of flanger was it?

That’s actually just a fuzz through a JC120.

As far as I can tell, you don’t have any physical music to buy. Any reason?

We just have CDs for now. We’re working on getting more physical media.

Any dream recording studios you like to record at, or producers/engineers?

Honestly we hit our dream stuff at Earth Analog with Zac Montez. But like in a crazy world, probably Brian Eno or Nigel Godrich. 

Would you ever do a live album?

Yeah if the opportunity presented itself. 

Burritos or tacos?

Depends on the day. James is a strong advocate for tacos.

Cats or dogs?

James is cats. Tessa and Connor are team both.

Art or science?

Both.

Pink Floyd or The Doors?

Pink Floyd. Tessa has a Doors tattoo though.