MSTRKRFT Discuss the Process of Creating New Album ‘Operator’ and the Benefits of Analog Recording

Matt Matasci

Jesse F. Keeler and Al-P have not released an album as their collaborative effort MSTRKRFT since ’09, but individually they have both been very busy men. From running a record label, reigniting Death from Above 1979 and becoming fathers, both musicians have stayed extremely active inside and outside the music industry. With the release of their third album “Operator” on the way, the two Canadian electronic musicians have provided their fans with plenty to get excited about after a seven-plus-year hiatus between LPs.

Unlike most modern electronic records, “Operator” was recorded with only analog gear. This approach gives the album a raw almost “live band” sound quality, particularly on the songs that feature guest vocalists like Ian Svenonius on the album’s noise-driven single “Partyline.” The song thumps around with a maniacal edge, grinding through several distinct passages before concluding the song with its most danceable portion.

The album closes with the extremely dissonant “Goon Without Me.” What is already a challenging mix of instrumental electronic music is made all the more tough to swallow with vocal additions from Converge screamer Jacob Bannon. Despite the more “band” oriented sound and the presence of several vocalists from the world of hardcore, not all of “Operator” is inaccessible. The song opens with a blistering dance number with some of the most energetic tempos heard on the album. “Little Red Hen” is attractive for its simplicity, weaving just a few elements into a powerful electronic cut.

While it is unlikely MSTRKRFT will ever experience the same level of electronic success as pop-oriented festival DJs, that’s not what they are reaching for. Instead, “Operator” showcases a duo that has grown incredibly comfortable with each other and their music and is unafraid to push the boundaries of their genre. Taking a break from traveling between tour stops, Al-P and Keeler took the time to speak with Entertainment Voice about their latest release.  

A lot has changed for both of you in the time between “Operator” and your last LP with families and a new Death from Above 1979 record. Despite all these changes, was it always a given that you would team up for another MSTRKRFT album?

Jesse: Yeah we never really stopped working, it was just the frequency and the amount of work that we were doing decreased for a variety of reasons most of which you just listed off. But then once we had the time again to devote to it, then we absolutely did. We started working on this record at the end of ‘13.

You guys have been working together for a long time, even dating back to the first Death from Above 1979 record. Have you guys been doing much remix work in the time since?

Al-P: Not really, we kind of just wanted to get off the radar altogether. So we didn’t do anything that we would tell anyone about. We actually did some stuff on the business side; we switched managers a couple times. Sort of took our time dealing with a whole bunch of legal shit we had to slog through. And you [Jesse] have your record label stuff.

Jesse: Yeah I have Teenage Riot, my record label. I guess we are up to 60-something releases . . . . So yeah, just doing other things . . . it’s only MSTRKRFT if we’re both doing it. Finding the time is hard.

You accumulated a ton of gear to record this album, so at what point did you decide you were ready to undertake a full album with the analog gear you had in tow?

Jesse: A lot of the stuff on the record we had already . . . it was a sort of a matter of curating what all would be used because we didn’t want to use anything on the record that we couldn’t also take with us live; because we always intended on playing live. I mean, DJing you can always do that, but we had intended on this becoming a live thing and the only way that was going to happen without extreme compromise for us would be to make sure that everything you hear on the record is something that we could have on the stage. And that comes down to even processing and whatnot.

Al-P: And a lot of it was what Jesse and I like to call “proof of concept” where we’ll have an idea of how to run something or a patch or a way to set something and just go through the process of experimenting to get it just right. The set-up we are using on stage is kind of the culmination of a lot of little experiments like that. “Proof of concept” [is] to make sure that we were able to run the machines and able to run the processing and everything the way that we wanted to. It’s really close to how we would set up a console and mix in the studio . . . just in a smaller package. But really all the major components that we use in the studio are with us on stage. So the level of live production that we are able to achieve is very close to what we would end up doing in the studio. And that was an important theme for us. We didn’t want to go on stage with a compromised set-up so a lot of the time was spent just making sure everything was working the way we imagined and sounded the way that we wanted it to sound.

How refreshing was it to take an analog approach to recording the songs on “Operator”?

Jesse: It was just really fun. It was also . . . something that helps a lot or seemed to help us a lot was that as soon as you decide on a certain set of limitations shit quickly becomes very enjoyable to have those limitations. It makes a lot of things a lot simpler. How do I put it? It’s like if you’re just working with a computer you’ve got a million options for everything – limitless options as far as sounds and how you’re going to put stuff together. But when we looked at our palette of potential snare drums there’s like . . . I don’t know, six? (laughs).

You sort of just happen upon things in a way that you can’t . . . I don’t know if you can stumble on things on the computer in the same way you can with four hands. So that just makes it a lot easier – not to say the gear we are using is terribly limited in any way because really it’s not. We didn’t have to try hard to find at least what we believe are pretty interesting sounds for the record. I know sometimes when people think of analog [they] are thinking of the most basic sort of sounds but that is obviously not the case. But having this defined palette in front of us . . . it means being creative more with the music than with the sound palette.

As Jesse has put it, “Little Red Hen” is the simplest song on the album. Was there any particular reason for choosing this track to accompany the announcement of your first new album in several years?

Jesse: We didn’t actually choose that . . . we said that we were happy with everything on the record so you can choose whatever you want. And when they came back with that we were actually really excited because to us that was a sort of indication that the people we worked with ‘got it.’ They understood it.

Al-P: As to the simplicity, it’s just the pure fact that [that] song is one track of modular synth, one track of 909 and one track of 808. It couldn’t be much simpler. Well, it could be one track simpler; that’s it! (laughs)

You brought in an impressive lineup of guest vocalists from the hardcore world with Jacob Bannon (Converge), Sonny Kay (VSS, Angel Hair) and Ian Svenonius (Nation of Ulysses) adding screams and spoken word to three songs. Did you specifically seek out each of them for their respective songs?

Al-P: Well we started with Ian Svenonius who was someone we’d always wanted to work with. I think even years ago we had made contact with him to collaborate on something with us. He was definitely at the top of the list and one of the first people we made contact with. And after that, it all sort of fell into place. For some reason, Jesse’s friendship with Sonny Kay from The VSS was something we had never really considered tapping into. But once we had the idea of having Ian on board, I think working with Sonny Kay became obvious to us. The last person to come on board was Jacob Bannon of Converge and we wanted him because we had an instrumental that was probably the hardest thing we’d ever produced and definitely needed a voice that could fit on something that hard.

Jesse: I never thought he’d say yes. I really didn’t think he would! In terms of collaborations, that was probably the fastest and smoothest thing we had ever done. It happened within the span of two weeks and he sent back something that was pretty much a masterpiece. (Al-P laughing in the background) And we put it together and mixed it and it was done. And he was really cool about everything and a real pleasure to work with.  

The sessions for “Operator” resulted in hours of music. What was the process for whittling that down to an album’s length?

Al-P: After I’d say once a month or so, we’d just decide not to record anymore and just start going through what we had and listened back over all this stuff. And you know, often . . . even when we whittled it down, the first stage of whittling down all this stuff we still had like 50 different things that we were going through. And then we whittled it down further and further and the decisions started to be more about what things would go together to make it an album that would be interesting to listen to. So anything that perhaps had a feel that might have been too similar to something already on the record, we tried to avoid.

Jesse: And I think in the end we did end up having a target for a feel that we thought wasn’t there in the source material. So we did another batch of writing to kind of fill a gap that we thought the album needed to round it out. But other than those moments it’s all pretty much raw material that’s been edited down . . . (laughing), carefully, painstakingly. ‘Distilled’ is a good word. A lot of these songs started off as 20-minute chunks of the same thing with variations happening. The decision-making process, as to what to keep or what the focus of the song is, is something that we had to develop to survive the production of this album.   

“Operator” is available on Apple Music July 22.