In an interview with Pitchfork this weekend, bassist/vocalist Jared Swilley of the Black Lips announced that the band is finishing up work on their as yet untitled sixth album with none other than superstar producer Mark Ronson (Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen, Duran Duran, et al)
Photo by Patrick McMullan
It’s an unusual choice for the Atlanta, GA based garage punk band best known for their out of control live shows and raucous, home-cooked sound. But Swilley insists that Ronson hasn’t messed with their trademark style:
“We've always self-produced all of our own stuff, just done it with just us and an engineer. Over the years, Vice had suggested working with a producer. We would always throw out names. Mark [Ronson] worked with them on that Creators Project. During that, they mentioned it. He seemed into it, and we were into it, so it fell in place… He's not changing a lot of the stuff we're already doing. It was fun like that, because he was a fan of our music, and I like stuff that he's done. It seems like we wouldn't have a lot in common, but there's no radical departure from anything. He just interjected other ideas that we hadn't really tried. He's working out different drum sounds or using microphones that we haven't used before. So it's been an interesting process… It was cool to be able to experiment with different instruments and sounds, just to have the resources to do that. He knows a lot of people that are really good musicians, so it was pretty fun to just have those options. Another cool thing about Mark: he was very clear at the beginning that he didn't want to come in and do something crazy. We definitely weren't going to have big synthesizers or anything like that. He was really into the fuzz tone. We like to have really good-sounding fuzz, and he was big on helping us work on getting that.”
The new album--their fourth release on Vice Records--is due in stores early next year.
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