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John Vanderslice

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John Vanderslice
John Vanderslice wearing a grey sweater, standing in front of a banana palm in Los Angeles
Vanderslice in 2024
Background information
Born (1967-05-22) May 22, 1967 (age 57)
OriginGainesville, Florida, US
Genres
Occupations
  • Musician
  • record producer
Instruments
  • Vocals
  • guitar
  • keyboards
Years active1999–present
Labels
Formerly ofMk Ultra
SpouseMaria Vanderslice (m.2024)
Websitejohnvanderslice.com

John Warren Vanderslice (born May 22, 1967) is an American musician, songwriter, record producer, and recording engineer. He is the owner and founder of Tiny Telephone, an analog recording studio in North Oakland. He has released sixteen full-length studio albums and five remix records and EPs on Dead Oceans and Barsuk Records and has collaborated with musicians such as the Mountain Goats, St. Vincent, and Spoon.[1][2][3][4][5]

Early years

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Vanderslice grew up in rural North Florida before his family moved to Maryland when he was 11. In 1989, he graduated with a degree in economics from the University of Maryland, where he also studied art history. Vanderslice moved to San Francisco in 1990. While supporting himself as a waiter, Vanderslice took classes at University of California, Berkeley, with the intention of becoming an English teacher. Vanderslice then spent five years as a member of the experimental band Mk Ultra, with whom he released three albums in the 1990s. The last of these, The Dream Is Over, received a 9.2 from Pitchfork.[6]

In 1997, he founded Tiny Telephone, a 3,000 sq. ft., two-room recording studio in the Mission District of San Francisco.[7] The studio was initially used as a rehearsal space before being developed as a full-time, all-analog recording studio. Bands who recorded in the studio included Death Cab for Cutie, Sleater-Kinney, Okkervil River, Deerhoof, The Mountain Goats, The Magnetic Fields, Tune-yards, and Spoon.[8] The original studio closed in 2020, with Vanderslice saying that despite being booked year-round it was no longer financially solvent.[9] However, an Oakland location of Tiny Telephone, opened in 2015,[10] continues to operate.[9]

Solo career

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In 2000, Vanderslice released his first solo album, Mass Suicide Occult Figurines, and briefly gained some national media attention for the single "Bill Gates Must Die" after concocting a hoax in which Microsoft supposedly threatened legal action over the song; Vanderslice had trouble manufacturing the CD because the artwork resembled that of a Windows installation disc, and at least one manufacturer was wary of legal action.[11] During the controversy, he was interviewed by Spin, Wired, and the San Francisco Chronicle.[12]

John Vanderslice performing a house show in Dallas, TX (2024).

Time Travel Is Lonely and Life and Death of an American Fourtracker followed in 2001 and 2002 respectively, followed by 2004’s Cellar Door.

Many songs on the 2005 album Pixel Revolt referenced the September 11, 2001 attacks and the Iraq War and were more overtly political in their lyrical content. The album earned an 8.3 rating on Pitchfork and was cited for its "meticulous arrangements" with "everything in its right place", and declared an "excellent album".[13] The album's ending resolves the narrator's struggles with acute depression ("Dead Slate Pacific") and suicidal thoughts ("The Golden Gate") with a love song to psychotropic drugs ("CRC 7173, Affectionately").

The title of Vanderslice's 2007 album, Emerald City, references both the nickname of the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad and the name of the city in The Wizard of Oz. He has said about the album: "I was so beaten down after the 2000 election and after 9/11 and then the invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan; I was so depleted as a person after all that stuff happened, that I had to write my way out of it. I really had to write political songs because for me it is a way of making sense and processing what is going on."[14] Emerald City achieved a score of 82/100 on Metacritic.[15] Entertainment Weekly called the album "a gleaming gem" that doesn't disappoint.[16] Billboard's review of the record called Vanderslice an "always perceptive lyricist".[17] Calling Vanderslice a "master story-teller", Matt Fink of Paste said that Emerald City was "vividly imagined yet subtle in tone, with conflicted character sketches unfolding around somber synth melodies, creaky electronic effects, and fuzzy acoustic guitar strums."[18]

In 2009, with Romanian Names, Vanderslice broke away from overtly political lyrical content characteristic of previous albums and turned his focus to personal reflections on romance and a modern person’s relationship to the natural landscape.[19][20] Maintaining his commitment to fully analog production, Vanderslice recorded guitar and piano tracks for this album in his analog basement studio of his San Francisco home. He completed further instrumentation and production at his own Tiny Telephone recording studio with producer Scott Solter.[21]

In 2010, Vanderslice released a free EP called Green Grow The Rushes.[22]

A full album, White Wilderness, was released on January 25, 2011, on Dead Oceans. Here, Vanderslice forwent his usual meticulous process of manipulating and heavily over-dubbing tracks in the recording studio, in favor a pared-down production style.[23] He recorded the album live with Minna Choi and the 19-member Magik*Magik Orchestra, the house orchestra of Tiny Telephone, in three days at Berkeley’s historically-renowned Fantasy Studios. Vanderslice wrote acoustic versions of each song, while Choi wrote all orchestral arrangements. The collaboration resulted in a looser sound that maintained the structural complexity and pop sensibility of Vanderslice’s previous songwriting.[24] Lyrically, Vanderslice reflects on his trajectory as a musician and performer and draws inspiration from the California landscape. "The Piano Lesson" recounts early memories of learning to play the piano as a child, while "After It Ends" imagines a performer destroying and escaping his venue at the end of a show. The romping "Convict Lake" is an autobiographical account of an overdose on LSD during a camping trip at this Sierra Nevada, California, lake.[25] It was produced and recorded by John Congleton.[26]

In January 2012, Vanderslice left his record contract with Dead Oceans. He created a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to start his own label and reached his $18,500 goal within hours of starting the campaign,[27] which ultimately resulted in his ninth album, Dagger Beach.[28]

With Dagger Beach, Vanderslice pushed experimentation with analog production techniques to the forefront of his songwriting. For some songs, including "Harlequin Press" and "Damage Control", he tried to avoid familiar song structures by writing over improvised drum parts played by longtime collaborator Jason Slota. On the album, Vanderslice revisits the theme of navigating the California landscape as a metaphor for personal relationships: “Raw Wood” reflects on solo camping in Wildcat camp of Point Reyes National Park, while “North Coast Rep” describes a disintegrating friendship by way of a found photograph of the Sonoma, California, landscape.

In conjunction with Dagger Beach, Vanderslice released his own full cover version of David Bowie's Diamond Dogs. The idea for the cover album came in August 2012, when Vanderslice performed Diamond Dogs in full at the Vogue Theater in San Francisco, followed by a screening of Michel Gondry's cult classic, The Science of Sleep. After intensive rehearsing for a single show with a limited audience, Vanderslice decided to channel his creative efforts with Bowie's original material into an entire cover version of the album. It was released on limited edition vinyl in June 2013.[29] Using the original album as a backbone to experiment and improvise in the recording studio with collaborators, Vanderslice altered lyrics, song structures, chord progressions, and titles of many of the songs.[30]

With full control of the production and distribution of his self-released albums and a commitment to quality control, Vanderslice had both Dagger Beach and Diamond Dogs pressed on 200-gram vinyl by audiophile Quality Record Pressings plant. In response to widespread music file sharing and in an effort to control sound quality of distributed files, he has made high-quality music files of many self-released songs freely available online.[31]

In an interview with The New Yorker, Vanderslice stated that a near-death experience in 2014, in which the van he was touring in almost flipped on Interstate 80 in Ohio, prompted him to quit touring and making records. Surviving the incident was a life-altering experience: “After that happened, maybe a second later, I was like, I’m done. I don’t want to die in a van. It wasn’t sad, it wasn’t celebratory. It was just like, eh, I had a good run.”[32]

John Vanderslice playing an Elektron Machinedrum and Monomachine.

Vanderslice began touring again in 2018 with Undertow Music, performing a series of house shows. His album The Cedars also released that year would be his last album fully recorded and mixed by analog means of production. His following albums are almost all recorded digitally in his small backyard studio in Los Angeles including Dollar Hits (2020) and d E A T h ~ b U g (2021).

In 2021, Vanderslice self-released his first fully electronic record. CRYSTALS 3.0 is the culmination of a span of experimentation with harsh noise and drugs, curious samples and cascading sequencers. A seamless 19-minute sequence of melodies, meticulous static bursts, and spring-loaded beats, CRYSTALS 3.0 applies the unencumbered enthusiasm of vintage Vanderslice records to his ideas about breaking old molds, about avoiding easy interpretation.

Those samples populate CRYSTALS 3.0 like reawakened ghosts, maybe guests of honor at one of the drug parties Vanderslice throws in the backyard with his wife, Maria Vanderslice. The whole dense little record "feels like a distilled fête", its 13 overlapping tracks functioning as fragments from conversations and encounters.

Recording technique and collaborations

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Vanderslice is a proponent of using analog instruments and recording equipment to produce a richer, more raw sound, which he has sometimes called "sloppy hi-fi".[33] He has collaborated closely with engineer/producers in the production of his albums, including John Congleton, Scott Solter, and John Croslin.[34]

Since 2014, Vanderslice has been a full-time record producer at Tiny Telephone and has worked with Frog Eyes, Samantha Crain, the Mountain Goats, and Grandaddy. He has previously worked with Sophie Hunger, Bombadil, Strand of Oaks, and Spoon.[35] Currently, he rarely takes on production work to focus on his own music.

In 2020, Vanderslice almost entirely pivoted away from analog recording and has become an advocate for the freedom of experimentation afforded by digital recording.

Vanderslice was a contributing producer on the Spoon album, Gimme Fiction, and also produced The Mountain Goats albums We Shall All Be Healed, The Sunset Tree, and Heretic Pride. In March and April 2009, he toured alongside The Mountain Goats' John Darnielle in the "Gone Primitive Tour". These shows featured Vanderslice and Darnielle each playing acoustic sets and then performing material together.[36]

On several occasions, Vanderslice has chosen bands to tour with him who have gone on to widespread recognition and critical respect, including Sufjan Stevens, Okkervil River, The Tallest Man On Earth, and St. Vincent.

Influences and interests

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Vanderslice is heavily influenced by film and is a fan of David Lynch and Ingmar Bergman.

Maria Vanderslice shot by John Vanderslice in Los Angeles on a Pentax K-1000 (2024).

His song "Promising Actress" references the film Mulholland Drive (film). His 2004 release, Cellar Door is inspired by and largely written about the 2001 film Donnie Darko. He is a prolific amateur photographer, and has taken publicity photos for Thao Nguyen, The Mountain Goats, Will Sheff of Okkervil River, and Mirah. He has also had his work used as album artwork by Matt Nathanson, Carey Mercer of Frog Eyes, and Mobius Band, as well as for his own 2009 release, Romanian Names.

John Vanderslice has radically changed the style of music he creates since shifting away from analog recording in 2020, citing his modern musical influences as Arca (musician), JPEGMafia, Autechre, and Modeselektor.

Discography

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Albums

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Remix albums

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  • MGM Endings: Cellar Door Remixes (2004)
  • Suddenly It All Went Dark: Pixel Revolt Live to 2-Track (2006)
  • Scott Solter Remixes Pixel Revolt in Analog (2007)

Singles and EPs

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  • "Bedside recordings vol. 1.2" – 7" (with the Mountain Goats) (2003)
  • Moon Colony Bloodbath – EP (with the Mountain Goats) (2009)
  • "Too Much Time" – 7" (2009)
  • "D.I.A.L.O." – 7" (2010)
  • Green Grow the Rushes – (2010)
  • "Song For Clay Miller" – Flexi (2013)
  • "Midnight Blue" – Flexi (2015)
  • Amethyst (2022)

References

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  1. ^ Greenblatt, Leah (August 26, 2005). "Spotlight on John Vanderslice". Ew.com. Retrieved February 16, 2009.
  2. ^ Derk Richardson, special to SF Gate (October 27, 2005). "Pop & Politics / SF's John Vanderslice gets political on his radiant new CD, Pixel Revolt". Sfgate.com. Retrieved February 16, 2009.
  3. ^ "John Vanderslice: 'Cellar Door'". NPR. March 11, 2004. Retrieved February 16, 2009.
  4. ^ Little, Michael. "John Vanderslice – City Lights". Washington City Paper. Archived from the original on September 18, 2012. Retrieved February 16, 2009.
  5. ^ "John Vanderslice: Plugged In". Glide Magazine. June 5, 2006. Retrieved February 16, 2009.
  6. ^ Fink, Matt. "John Vanderslice Biography". Allmusic.com. Retrieved November 26, 2009.
  7. ^ Examiner |, Will Reisman | Special to The (June 20, 2023). "John Vanderslice tours SF with new music, sans words". San Francisco Examiner. Archived from the original on June 29, 2023. Retrieved June 3, 2024.
  8. ^ Gale, Ezra (January 23, 2009). "Tiny Telephone, Big Decade". Retrieved November 26, 2009.
  9. ^ a b Voynovskaya, Nastia (January 27, 2020). "Tiny Telephone SF to Close, Foreshadowing an Arts Hub's Uncertain Future". KQED. Retrieved March 10, 2024.
  10. ^ "S.F.'s Tiny Telephone opening new studio in Oakland". The Mercury News. December 30, 2015. Retrieved October 30, 2018.
  11. ^ Athitakis, Mark (February 9, 2000). "Riff Raff". San Francisco Weekly. Retrieved February 16, 2009.
  12. ^ Heller, Greg (December 12, 1999). "Prankster Takes on Microsoft". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved February 16, 2009.
  13. ^ David Raposa (August 25, 2005). "Pixel Revolt Music Review". Pitchfork. Retrieved March 12, 2009.
  14. ^ Interview with John Vanderslice, David Shankbone, Wikinews, September 27, 2007.
  15. ^ "Emerald City – John Vanderslice". Metacritic. Retrieved March 12, 2009.
  16. ^ Simon Vozick-Levinson (July 27, 2007). "Emerald City Music Review". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved March 12, 2009.
  17. ^ Menze, Jill (August 4, 2007). Reviews: Emerald City. Billboard Magazine. p. 42.
  18. ^ Matt Fink (July 24, 2007). "Emerald City Music Review". Paste Magazine. Retrieved March 12, 2009.
  19. ^ Hilton, Robin. "Exclusive First Listen: John Vanderslice". Retrieved June 11, 2013.
  20. ^ Schonfeld, Zach. "John Vanderslice: Romanian Names". Retrieved June 11, 2013.
  21. ^ Tangari, Joe (May 5, 2009). "John Vanderslice: Romanian Names". Retrieved June 11, 2013.
  22. ^ "Green Grow The Rushes Download". September 14, 2010. Retrieved November 23, 2010.
  23. ^ Brooklyn Vegan (January 24, 2011). "John Vanderslice & the Magik*Magik Orchestra release 'White Wilderness' – MP3 + an Amazon exclusive Atlas Sound cover". Retrieved June 11, 2013.
  24. ^ Hilton, Robin (April 18, 2011). "First Watch: John Vanderslice, Overcoat". Retrieved June 11, 2013.
  25. ^ Garmon, Ron (June 14, 2011). "John Vanderslice on Seeking Discomfort, Tripping on Acid, and Making Pure Art". kexp.org. Retrieved June 11, 2013.
  26. ^ Tom Breihan (November 23, 2010). "John Vanderslice Plans Orchestral New Album". Pitchfork. Retrieved November 23, 2010.
  27. ^ Hawking, Tom (February 27, 2013). "John Vanderslice on Covering David Bowie and Why Kickstarter is "Just as Involved as Some Labels"". Retrieved June 11, 2013.
  28. ^ "Heartbreak Takes John Vanderslice To 'Dagger Beach'". NPR. June 14, 2013. Retrieved May 3, 2021.
  29. ^ Connor, Matt (April 3, 2013). "John Vanderslice Finds His Place as the Anti-Rockstar". Retrieved June 11, 2013.
  30. ^ Hawking, Tom. "John Vanderslice on Covering Bowie and Why Kickstarter is "Just as Involved as Some Labels"". Retrieved June 11, 2013.
  31. ^ "John Vanderslice". johnvanderslice.com. Retrieved December 18, 2016.
  32. ^ "The Sloppy Hi-Fi of John Vanderslice". The New Yorker. September 28, 2014. Retrieved December 18, 2016.
  33. ^ Justin Cober-Lake (October 14, 2005). "Make It Beautiful and Trash It: An Interview with John Vanderslice". PopMatters. Retrieved January 8, 2008.
  34. ^ Phillips, Jessi. "The Great Analog Gamble". SF Weekly. Retrieved December 18, 2016.
  35. ^ "John Vanderslice: Doctor of Music – Noisey". Noisey. Retrieved December 18, 2016.
  36. ^ Anderman, Joan (March 28, 2009). "John Darniell's Music Hurts So Good". The Boston Globe. Retrieved April 1, 2009.
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Media related to John Vanderslice at Wikimedia Commons

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