Home/Hospice: The Antlers Take Bedroom Recording to a New Level in Brooklyn
BROOKLYN, NY: The Antlers’ 2009 release Hospice has been arresting the hearts of not only Brooklynites, but also the rest of the world. Generating positive press reviews in response to their lush tracks, Hospice is a captivating album that follows a tragic arc — the heartbreaking narrative of a man losing a loved one to cancer.
Arms around the Antlers
It’s a sad story, but there is beauty in the sorrow, with the minimalist instrumentation of each of these strategically written melodies serving as a transporting experience. Recorded in singer/songwriter/guitarist Peter Silberman’s makeshift Brooklyn home studio, the album was assembled after Silberman ducked into a full two years of isolation to write the tracks.
“That’s what I feel like recording is in general,” Silberman explains of his no-frills philosophy on capturing sonic concepts. “This song or sound you’re hearing in your head and trying to recreate and make sense out of, then seeing if it’s actually possible. Sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it turns into something you didn’t expect and you actually like that better. The recordings sort of take on a life of their own and you just embrace it.”
The Antlers paid very close attention to their production, working out ideas through trial and error. Tapping a low budget setup that for a while included only two microphones, a computer and very little space, Peter Silberman based Hospice on a framework that “became a matter of where the songs took the sound.”
When he began the blueprints for the album, Silberman recorded myriad experimental textures while operating out of his bedroom studio. “To have the freedom for our recordings to fail or keep on working was amazing” he says. “Not being on anyone’s clock but our own is something very important to us.”
Taking this emotional journey of an album on piece-by-piece, the Antlers had come from a similar musical background. Now a band rather than a solo project for Silberman, Hospice involved a different approach to writing songs. Labeling the record as “enjoyable,” Silberman felt more collaborative with this project because as a trio, the band was functioning together to actively exchange musical thoughts.
“We worked to see what gaps needed to be filled regarding frequency and texture,” noted multi-instrumentalist Darby Cicci. Cutting and pasting layers as they saw fit, drummer Michael Lerner added that the production of these tracks was not really a “hang up process.” Working with his bandmates “made sense”, he relates, because they had the same goal.
Satisfied — and then some — with the end result of Hospice, which was picked up by French Kiss Records and makes them labelmates with the likes of Passion Pit and The Hold Steady, the Antlers plan to record their next project at home as well. The band feels that home is the best creative environment for recording music. “Working at home you can make mistakes and fix them,” Cicci says. “It kind of feels liberating versus a studio, where you feel like you’ve wasted time and money.”
With the combination of a recession and the ready availability of affordable high-quality audio technology, the Antlers prove once again that you can go home again, and record a mind-blowing long-player while you’re there. In the end, all you really need is an instrument or two, some gear, a computer, and a creative mind. — Ken Bachor