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.