The melody and chords are interpolated from the Shigeo Sekito song The Word II, reworked with vintage synths. Then there was a little.Chamber of Reflection stands out on Salad Days as the only song that replaces Mac’s signature chorused guitar with swirling layers of synthesizers. The Makeout Videotape music was with the Fostex. So were you releasing music as Makeout Videotape, at that point? All that I ended up getting out of the machine was a bunch of marks from leaving a soldering iron on my linoleum. This guy Garfield works out of that studio Hotel2Tango, in Montreal he'd come over, but it was beyond repair. It was working a little bit, but I ended up destroying the bias oscillator. But even when it came out, people were like, "This sucks." I had no idea.
It was a 16-track, 1-inch machine made for home use. It was a drive, and we had to take it down these stairs. The only time I had anyone else come in was when I bought this big, nasty TEAC. With larger tapes, like 1/4-inch, 8-track, I started to get track dropouts and weird shit happening. Now it's in really bad shape, but I can still turn it on and mess around every once in a while. It's funny to me because some of the older recordings I did on it were so blown-out and hissy, but I've had other recordings without changing the machine at all that sound clear and crisp. Or I would have to call Tascam and say, "Yo, do you guys have one of these somewhere?" The funny thing is I've had that since like 2008, and I've never cleaned the heads on it once. The belt would get fucked up, so I'd need to take one out of another tape deck. Were these tape machines staying in good repair? I thought, "Nah, I don't know about this one." I had a RØDE NT2A that my other friend gave me, but I ended up trading that for a little open-faced 8-track reel-to-reel machine. Acoustic guitar, vocals, drums – even on a lot of the Mac DeMarco records. I was like, "Mics cool!" My friend gave me what I think was a Roland DR-80C, some really entry-level condenser mic that I don't think they even make anymore. For some reason I had a couple of the BETA 58As and BETA 57s. Then I threw mics wherever I could, and saw what I could get. I had mics, and my little brother took drum lessons so I had a set, a couple amps, and my guitar equipment. It came to me from being in high school and playing with other bands. It sounded sketchy, but I was like, "Ah, I want that sound." You buy a little 4-track off Craigslist for $200 – well, the songs are different, but the sound is definitely there. Even when I was 17, and cheap, I was into John Maus, Ariel Pink, Tomita, and R. Tape, tape." So I got a 4-track a Tascam 244. Eventually, the guy who used to play bass guitar in my band, Pierce, was like, "Nah, dude. A lot of the Makeout Videotape music was done on that.
It was plugging into the weird little preamps and seeing what I could do, but it worked. Eventually my friend, Jeremy, got me this little Fostex VF-80 sketchy 8-track recorder with built-in effects and a funny mastering section. I played around with that, but I never really did anything on it. Was that the case with you?Īs soon as I turned 16, I was playing instruments, and then my mom brought home one of those white MacBooks with GarageBand. These days, with computers and all, a lot of people have recording equipment sitting around before they start making music. With his newest full-length release, This Old Dog, Mac outgrows a tape fetish and lunges into the adult world of boutique digital recording rigs. How does he do it? How many full-length albums did he cut before he turned 25 years old? Enough to call him one of the hardest working guys in indie rock. Collaborators? Once a guy named Garfield helped him break a TEAC machine. Stevie Moore and Ariel Pink, and he's managed to cut some of the most fan-beloved records of the 2010s. He's a bedroom auteur in the great tradition of R.
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