Mutations, the latest album from Beck, is yet another musical journey brought to you by one of the most compelling songwriters of today. Decidedly more stripped down in sound and approach than 1996's Odelay, Mutations features Beck playing with his core touring band on all of the songs - which range from folk to country to bossanova.
Beck is currently working on his next album in Los Angeles, where he took some time out for a brief question-and-answer session about Mutations (Geffen Records), released Nov. 3, 1998.
Q: First off, the question most people will ask: How was making Mutations different for you?
A: Most of the records I've done, the songs have just accumulated - I'll hook up with somebody and we'll record a few songs and when the album, over a long period of time, glues together, all these songs come together. This was the first time I've gone into the studio, booked two weeks and just done it. It was done really quickly.
Q: Did you have a preconceived idea, stylistically, of what you were going to do?
A: The only thing I had was that the songs were written. With Mellow Gold and Odelay, most of the songs hadn't been written. I went into the studio and built those songs piece by piece. I did everything backwards this time. I had the songs, but nobody knew them. Basically, several musicians and I set up in a room with mics. There are a couple of songs where we even did the vocal live. I was trying to get that sound where all the musicians are in each other's microphones. Music's recorded very separately, very antiseptically nowadays and there's not that quality of the song being this one piece. You hear strings come in and it'll sound very separate from the rest of the track, and that's something that's really prized as good quality and good sound, good engineering and recording. But we were trying to get something where you couldn't really tell what instrument was what.
Q: Are those string sections or samples?
A: Those are actual string sections. I'd never done that - it was fun. Except the way we mixed that, we turned the orchestra into more of an atmosphere, instead of an actual orchestra. I wanted it to sound like a sea cave or something. I like it when everything washes together and you can't really tell what's what. That goes back to the days when there was just one mic, so everything was being picked up by the same filter.
I always try to leave in the mistakes - that's the interesting stuff. If somebody walked into the room while you were doing a little falsetto lead and said, 'The burritos are here,' that's the best part. That's the part people will remember.
Q: There seems to be a very California quality about the album at some points. There's almost a Mamas and The Papas vibe on some of it.
A: That's the thing about making a record - certain things about yourself that you didn't know come out, certain tendencies. lt's almost this unconscious thing. I guess it makes sense, since it's coming from California. You can't help it coming out, whether you like it or not. I wanted to make a conscious effort to put some really dainty-ass music on the record. I think it's time, you know? It's something we tried to convey live. The more delicate side of music is highly ignored and underrated.
Q: Your singing's completely changed on this record. Was this a conscious decision?
A: I think on the other records, the singing's the last thing I did. You've been recording for 18 hours - okay, throw up a mic, put down a vocal. Not much is put into it; you don't even bother to use a nice mic. I think on Odelay I was singing through a guitar amp mic. This time, because I had a lot of musicians from my touring band, we tried to make it more dynamic, more like a show. There was more of an effort to make it like a performance.
Q: The "channel-surfing" description of you doesn't really apply this time.
A: I usually enjoy listening to mix tapes more than albums, but then sometimes there's that one album that has one mood through it, and when you're in that mood you just wanna hear that. Sometimes it just goes for weeks and weeks - you just wanna hear it over and over. This record does swerve around in different areas, but it has that kind of continuity. There was a good energy in the record because we did it so fast. We'd usually come in in the morning, I'd show everybody how the song went, we'd practice it for twenty minutes, and then I'd throw up a mic and we'd just put it down. By the end of the day the song would usually be done and Nigel [Godrich, co-producer with Beck] would spend about half an hour, maybe, mixing it. And the next day we'd start on a whole new song.
So it was really energizing because a lot of times making albums can get demoralizing. People can spend two months on one song. And every day you're just picking it apart. People spend days working on a high-hat sound. You can spend weeks just mixing a song. It can drag on and on, and I think creatively it's really frustrating. We were confined to just two weeks because Nigel had other commitments. We knew the record was done when the car service came to take him to the airport. I was putting the vocals on the last song and the car pulled up and somebody yelled or beeped in on me, "The car's here; the plane's leaving in an hour and twenty minutes." Nigel's just hurrying up and then we all went and put him in the car and waved and it was like, okay, I guess that's it. There was such a good atmosphere that I think we could've kept going and going, but then we would've had to come out with the triple CD. That would've been a little more hip-hop of us, I guess.
Q: You seem to have a pattern of alternating hip-hop/funk and folky records. Would you consider this a set trend?
A: I think maybe it's too early to tell if there's'a pattern emerging. But because our shows are so energy-driven and there's a sort of broadness to the music, after the tour I wanna drop some delicate beats. This is the headphone record, the Walkman record - more for those mid-afternoon reveries we all enjoy, when we're tumbling through the high green grasses or meadows.
Doing this record was really good for me and the band. We desperately needed it. After working on the road for that long, you just get bottled up and need to go and do something really quick. Now I'm working on a new record for next year, and I'm kind of at ease. Because I know I did this record and got that out of my system. Now I can take my time with the next one. I'm not in a rush to just do something, anything.
Q: Is that a danger, that people expect some hip-hop party thing because it's the new Beck record?
A: This record is more of a parenthetical addition to the equation. It's not the big bottom line, like we're adding it up and this is the sum total. The record I'm working on now is probably about as opposite from Mutations as you can get. It's gonna be a bit more bombastic. There's gonna be more hip-hop, but the hip-hop world is so rigid - I could never measure up to the stringent secret code, whatever it is. I don't know what you have to do to be hip-hop; all I know is, whenever I try to do something, someone says, 'That ain't hip-hop!' So I figure if I try to go as un-hip-hop as possible, some inverse hip-hopness will come in.
Q: Mellow Gold is considered your first record and Odelay your second, even though you've done the indie albums. Is this your third?
A: Mellow Gold is actually the last - I'm working backwards. We're in random-order times anyway. People are just gonna put my CDs in a changer in random order and it'll be songs from different times. Chronology is obsolete.
Q: Are you going to tour?
A: No. I'm not touring. There'll probably be some random appearances. We don't play live, we just do appearances.
Editor's Note: Beck is actually touring although it says here that he is not touring.
Biography Provided By the Offical Beck Website
