Singled Out: Protovulcan (Steve Albini Produced)

05-05-2019

Protovulcan will be releasing their Steve Albini produced album Life Is Twigs" on May 31st. To celebrate we asked William MacLean to tell us about the song "Pine For You". Here is the story:

It's a kind of love song - but, the kind that feels lost, because you're into it and they're not, and it makes you feel alien and robotic and outside. The completely indecipherable vocoded words are "I pine, pine, pine when you're near. I pine, pine, pine when you're gone." So, I pine when you are away, which is normal. But I pine when you're right here in front of me too - because you don't feel the same, so you're not here the way I am. That's what most relationships are, as you stumble around figuring them out, right? And all the guitar and Wurlitzer noise is the WTF feeling about it. It's really raw and burnt at the same time.

We wanted it to sound immediate and raw, so we recorded it with Steve Albini. We love Shellac, Big Black, Jesus Lizard, so much other stuff he's been involved with. Steve is very approachable, funny, and knows a ton about tons of things, especially sound - but he also talked about Baseball and Cricket, and cool stories. We could only afford a day, but we had a whole album - so we recorded straight to a two-track mix, and Steve mixed it on-the-fly - which we were happy to go with, because his brilliant ear. It was fun to watch him cutting and taping together spaghetti strands of tape with our music on it.

And Albini has a couple cool Pachinko machines in his studio.

About half of the album was together when we were still a two piece, and this is one of those. So me and Deric had it down solid before Nick joined, but it was the first one that came together as a 3-piece. I just pulled out a bunch of feedback I was doing on the Wurlitzer, and Nick came up with his crazy sounds - which I really quite love.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen for yourself here and learn more about the album right here!