New York, NY. (Top40 Charts/ Shore Fire Media) - In a recent interview with the UK's Mojo Magazine,
Mercury Rev drummer/ multi-instrumentalist Jeff Mercel, says the band's new album "Snowflake Midnight" (Sept. 30, Yep Roc) is "in its very essence, the sound of letting go."
We asked him to elaborate. "We thought this record should sound like it was made by a different Mercury Rev." says Mercel, "We began to look at the process. And then we dismantled it."
Their first step was to move their upstate New York studio - twice - to shake up the band's usual workflow. Mercel continues, "We came in with a blank slate every single day. Six or eight months later we had all these motifs, tone-poems, ideas, whatever you want to call them. We never went back to 'write' a song. The ideas began to organize themselves from the hundreds of hours of music we recorded, and the best parts rose to the top."
Mercel says the songs "Snowflake In a Hot World" and "People Are So Unpredictable" were the first two to take shape, with others following suit.
Post-production presented yet another opportunity to work outside Mercury Rev's usual M.O. Mercel continues, "We embraced technology to a greater extent on this album than ever before. We completely opened ourselves to the possibilities out there." Discovering the open source audio software Reaktor, the band experimented with audio effects designed by people from all over the world. Jeff again, "It was as if we had a thousand producers working with us. Somebody from Germany that we've never met contributed to our record in meaningful way."
