{"id":576,"date":"2014-02-10T20:43:17","date_gmt":"2014-02-11T04:43:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/metalassault.com\/articles\/?p=576"},"modified":"2014-02-10T23:55:28","modified_gmt":"2014-02-11T07:55:28","slug":"slough-feg-and-the-digital-resistor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/metalassault.com\/articles\/2014\/02\/10\/slough-feg-and-the-digital-resistor\/","title":{"rendered":"Slough Feg and the Digital Resistor"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Avinash Mittur<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"slough-feg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A resistor is a component found in analog electronic circuits. It impedes the flow of current, and experiences a change in electric potential energy (or voltage, as most call it) across its two ends. All of the current going into a resistor will make it through, but not without that voltage drop. That being said, here\u2019s a bit of an oxymoron: a \u201cdigital resistor.\u201d This particular resistor doesn\u2019t impede the flow of electrical current, but rather the onslaught of digital technology in the field of audio engineering. The digital resistor I am referring to is a man named Justin Weis, proprietor of Trakworx Studio in South San Francisco, CA. Weis has served as an engineer on dozens of utterly brilliant metal albums by many of the genre\u2019s most special acts, and his work consistently equals, if not betters, the frequently high quality of the music itself.<\/p>\n

One of Weis\u2019 oldest clients is a band called Slough Feg. For a little over twenty years, they\u2019ve been one of the Bay Area\u2019s finest champions for classic heavy metal, proudly standing alongside the likes of Brocas Helm, Midnight Chaser and Hammers of Misfortune. They\u2019ve released albums with a shockingly high level of regularity, and the band consistently delivers one of the most fun live shows you\u2019ll ever see in a grimy dive bar. Singer and guitarist Mike Scalzi is often cited as the sole constant throughout Slough Feg’s history. Well, maybe not the only constant; Justin Weis has served as an engineer on every Slough Feg album in one way or another. Slough Feg and Weis\u2019 latest joint effort, Digital Resistance<\/b>, is set to release on February 18th<\/sup> on Metal Blade Records.<\/p>\n

When I call Scalzi on a Saturday afternoon, the very first topic of conversation is on how he met our digital resistor nearly twenty years ago. He insists that the tale is a boring one, though I fail to agree. \u201cIt\u2019s not really that exciting,” Scalzi says. “He was working at the California Recording Institute and the other Justin\u2014a lot of people get confused a lot\u2014our old bass player Justin Phelps who has now engineered several of our records as well, they both went there as students. We were putting out our first album ourselves and we wanted to get it mastered, so we brought it to Justin Weis. That album was really fucked up; there was this weird thing where the guy who paid for it to be recorded wanted to put it out, but he went insane and held onto the masters for it. Then we had to master the album off of a cassette. He was like, \u2018I\u2019m not releasing the digital audio tape until I get all this money,\u2019 and blah blah blah. We were like, \u2018We don\u2019t owe you any money. You were going to put this out. You paid for it, but then you never did anything.\u2019 So we took a cassette home and took it to Justin Weis. He cleaned it up and made it sound better.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"justin_reels\"<\/a>
Justin Weis in the control room of Trakworx Studio in South San Francisco, CA. Photo courtesy of www.trakworx.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I speak with Justin Weis at a more random hour, around 7 PM on a Thursday. He has just finished a mastering job, one among several hundred that he’s performed, and yet he still easily recalls the peculiarity of Slough Feg\u2019s self-titled first album. \u201cAll they had was a crappy reference low-bias cassette that they had been given,” Weis recalls. “They were like, \u2018Can we make this into an album?\u2019 So I played it and it was unlistenable, it was horrible. Not only was it poorly recorded and mixed, it was on a low-bias cassette. It was a major rescue job. If you listen to that album today, it was pretty unusual sounding. It was kind of brash and harsh, and unclear at the same time because the source was so poor to begin with. I used an Aural Exciter and a BBE and a ton of EQ just to make it so that you could understand what the music was. It was crazy, I\u2019ve never done anything like that since. This was in the early days when I wasn\u2019t very experienced yet. It was just like, \u2018Well, I\u2019ll try this and I\u2019ll try that,\u2019 until we got it to where it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Happy with the results, Slough Feg continued to work with Weis. Whether he\u2019s taken on all of the engineering, only partially recorded an album or performed mastering duties, every Slough Feg album has passed through Justin Weis\u2019 ears before being pressed. For the most part, one can hear a logical progression and an increase in quality throughout Slough Feg\u2019s recorded career, and Weis has consistently been happy with his work with the band. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t let [an album] go out if I wasn\u2019t. Just take the Slough Feg albums that I recorded, you hear them get clearer as time goes on, more three-dimensional and bigger sounding,\u201d Weis claims. \u201cI think that we were all pretty happy with [the albums] at the time. I think sonically speaking, from a production standpoint, everybody\u2019s standards have gone up in the last ten to fifteen years. I\u2019d say we expect more out of ourselves now and the newer albums kind of reflect that I think.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"19538\"<\/a>There was an album or two that didn\u2019t follow that natural progression though, the first of which was Traveller<\/b>, a sci-fi epic that stands as one of Slough Feg\u2019s finest creations. According to Mike Scalzi, it\u2019s also the album where Weis truly cemented his reputation as a world-class engineer. \u201cHe was always ahead of the curve for his level of experience. Even when he did the first album, he did a lot of stuff that someone else might not have done. By the time he did Down Among the Deadmen<\/b>, he was doing really well for the level of equipment he had. But then when he did Traveller <\/b>was when it got really\u2026 by the time he did Traveller <\/b>he was the best engineer around here for metal I think. I can\u2019t think of anybody better.\u201d Traveller<\/b> boasted a bright and punchy, yet very<\/i> thick production that Scalzi still holds in high regard to this day. \u201cWe just wanted to make it sound appropriate for the story being told and appropriate for the songs we were writing. I think Justin nailed that album perfectly, the direction came out exactly how I wanted it to.\u201d Weis gave it his all for Traveller<\/b>, and today the digital resistor looks back on the album <\/b>fondly. \u201cI really like the sound of Traveller<\/b>, and it sounds the way it does because Mike came in and told me, \u2018This is a sci-fi concept album. I want it to be slick and really bright and I want the drums up front. This isn\u2019t going to be like our other albums.\u2019 So we set out from the beginning to make that one what it is, but it wasn\u2019t easy. Mike wanted it to sound really \u2018zingy\u2019- futuristic and leaping out at you, which I think it does.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2009 Slough Feg released Ape Uprising!<\/b> It would be the first album made with the band\u2019s present iteration: Mike Scalzi on vocals and guitar, Angelo Tringali on guitar, Adrian Maestas on bass and Harry Cantwell on drums. Today, these four make up Slough Feg\u2019s most consistent lineup yet. \u201cIt\u2019s probably about time for someone to bail!\u201d Scalzi jokes. \u201cEach member of Slough Feg right now, besides me, is in Slough Feg because they directly replaced somebody who couldn\u2019t handle touring or had to quit and couldn\u2019t go on tour. Adrian joined the band because Jon Torres was unable to tour. Harry joined because Reuben, the guy on Hardworlder<\/b>, wasn\u2019t able to tour. They all came in with an understanding that the guy that they were replacing wasn\u2019t able to do that task. That was the big problem in the early touring days of Slough Feg. You can be in a studio, practice space or do local shows with somebody, or even do shows on the West Coast, and then you do a trip across the country or three weeks in Europe and shit starts to happen. It becomes like this person turns out to not be someone you want to travel with. A lot of people get that way; most<\/em> people get that way. Right now, we\u2019ve found the right combination because everyone is tried and true with touring.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"CRUZ36\"<\/a>Though Ape Uprising! <\/b>marked the debut of Slough Feg\u2019s most stable lineup yet, it would be engineered in a fashion that was anything but<\/i> stable. As a result, the album would prove to be a bit of a sonic anomaly in the Slough Feg catalog. Justin Weis explains the convoluted production as such: \u201cThey had recorded half that album with Justin [Phelps] in San Francisco, and then he moved to Portland and did the mixing there. I guess he was sending mixes down for Mike to listen to, and he was taking some time. While that was underway, we started tracking the second half of the album at Trakworx. We had one mix of that one doomy song<\/a> that Justin had mostly mixed. We listened to that just to get started. Since I was going to be doing the mastering in the end, we just kind of relied on that to hopefully resolve the differences, which I don\u2019t think it did. I think the two halves of the album sound pretty different, the biggest difference being the drums. It\u2019s just two different engineers in two different studios, and also I think Harry used my snare drum when he was here, and he used his own snare drum when he recorded with [Phelps].\u201d In spite of the sonic mayhem (or perhaps because of it), Ape Uprising!<\/b> would turn out to be one of Slough Feg\u2019s most energetic and fun releases. Its warm and earthy sound sharply contrasts the high-tech sheen of Traveller<\/b>, yet both are high points in the band\u2019s great catalog.<\/p>\n

The well-received The Animal Spirits<\/b>\u00a0followed in 2010 and was produced entirely at Trakworx. Scalzi, ever his own harshest critic, made it a point to step up his game for the band\u2019s next album however. “In Animal Spirits<\/b>, when it gets to a certain point in the album there\u2019s kind of a slump. Maybe in general it\u2019s a fine album, but there\u2019s also things like, \u2018Oh, it\u2019s kind of just another Slough Feg album,\u2019 at certain points you know? I tried to not do that this time with Digital Resistance<\/b> and to some extent, I succeeded,\u201d Scalzi says. As he mentions those words, I can\u2019t help but remember the opening track on the album, the organ-doused \u2018Analogue Avengers\/Bertrand Russell\u2019s Sex Den.\u2019\u201d Scalzi appears to read my mind. \u201cThe first song, \u2018Analogue Avengers,\u2019 was a total effort to do something new. Some of the other songs were as well. Like that acoustic song ‘Habeas Corpsus’ by making it really western sounding. I made a real effort to make these songs unique, probably more than ever. There are three or four songs that sound really different. I wanted to get that feeling of an old rock album. People used to make records like that, where they\u2019d have songs that sounded like they were from a different band entirely.\u201d<\/p>\n

On January 18th<\/sup> 2013, Slough Feg returned to Trakworx to begin work on the new record with Justin Weis. Scalzi walked in with a sound and vision in mind for this one, an album that he already knew would be called Digital Resistance<\/b>. \u201cWe wanted to make it sound less clear than Animal Spirits<\/b>. Sometimes that doesn\u2019t sound very good, \u2018less clear,\u2019 but we wanted to sound really natural. Really, really go for an almost low-fi guitar sound, but you can\u2019t convince Justin to go low-fi. It\u2019s not going to happen! We wanted it to sound like an Alice Cooper album, that weird tone that\u2019s different from a standard Marshall sound. I didn\u2019t want it sound all \u2018heavy.\u2019 I see these bands in the last ten to fifteen years with this \u2018heavy\u2019 sound and it\u2019s getting really boring. It\u2019s like really loud and bassy, and it was great when St. Vitus did it and when there were two bands in the world doing it, but now fuckin\u2019 everybody\u2019s doing it and I\u2019m just sick of it. I said, \u2018I want it to sound twiggy.\u2019 That was the word I came up with- \u2018twiggy.\u2019 I wanted it to sound very wooden, like a rickety old house. I wanted it to sound like some dusty old attic. Really raw and kind of immediate, not overproduced. Animal Spirits<\/b> kind of sounded like that, but it came out a little too clear and a little too controlled. Everything was a little too concise. I wanted more rough edges on this record.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, Scalzi is able to provide us with such a detailed description of the album only after it is finished and ready for release.\u00a0 One year ago, his sonic vision was a bit more ambiguous. \u201cMike came in and he said that he wanted it to sound like a rickety, creaky old house,\u201d Weis explains. \u201cIt was up to me to interpret that. There was a bit of back and forth around that, and we tried listening to some examples of various things. It was a little bit of a guessing game for me, because he had a sound in his head and there weren\u2019t really words for it. We just worked it out, you know? Mostly it was like trying different things when miking things up, especially with the guitar. We did a lot of experimenting with the guitar tones- different cabs, different amps, different microphones, different mic placements. I ended up with two microphones six feet away in the live room. That\u2019s only album I\u2019ve ever recorded that way, and I was really happy with it and that tone. Mike wanted kind of a mid-rangey guitar tone with kind of a vintage sound and that\u2019s how we found it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"photo\"<\/a>
The microphone setup for Mike Scalzi’s rhythm guitars on Digital Resistance.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By album number nine, the members of Slough Feg and Justin Weis have grown incredibly comfortable with each other, which Weis notes only helped make the production a smoother process. \u201cWhen you work with an artist repeatedly, the initial hurdles aren\u2019t there as far as communication and getting down to business. Every time you start off with someone, it takes some getting to know each other- learning what they mean when they say things and what to expect from them. With Mike, I\u2019ve recorded him so much that I know when he can do a better take. Whether it\u2019s a guitar or vocal, I can be like, \u2018Mike, you can do that better.\u2019 During Twilight of the Idols <\/b>or even Down Among the Deadmen<\/b>, I was less confident in my opinions about the takes he was getting because I didn\u2019t know him as well. On this last album, we didn\u2019t really have any communication problems mixing this record. It went really smoothly. That was really cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

Justin Weis once again nailed a vintage engineering job for Slough Feg, but this time Mike Scalzi provided a set of lyrics that fit the sound like a glove. Few of Scalzi\u2019s peers seemed to support the album title of Digital Resistance <\/b>however. \u201cSeveral people I\u2019ve talked to said, \u2018It\u2019s stupid, you sure you want to call the album that?\u2019 I\u2019d say, \u2018Yeah it\u2019s dumb, but I like dumb stuff.\u2019 It\u2019s dumb and in a way, a really cheesy thing to call a record at this point, but it reminds me of those old metal records that had these kind of blunt titles like Stay Hungry<\/b> and all that. I like that, I think it\u2019s cool! At the same time, you could think that Digital Resistance<\/b> means resisting something with<\/i> digital technology, like we\u2019re using digital technology to protest. You could think that as well, it\u2019s however you interpret it. I don\u2019t care. I just like it, I don\u2019t give a fuck. It sounds silly and kind of comic book-ish. It sounds like Slough Feg. I mean, the name Slough Feg itself is silly and kind of comic book-ish.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scalzi\u2019s words and themes on this album\u2014though still a bit goofy and fun\u2014are arguably his most serious yet. He makes his living as a philosophy professor, so one can imagine that he\u2019s given the increasing prevalence of technology in daily life plenty of thought. Expecting perhaps a biased viewpoint from Scalzi and Weis, I turn to drummer Harry Cantwell, the youngest member of Slough Feg, for an opinion on the issue. A classic record nerd (catch him working the counter at one of the coolest record stores in San Francisco, Aquarius Records), he does acknowledge that technology has irreparably changed the way people absorb music. Whether that\u2019s good or bad is up for debate according to Cantwell. \u201cI’m not sure the overall effect has been necessarily positive or negative. It’s just the way things are now. The obvious positive is that I discover way more underground bands now, that would have been much more difficult fifteen years ago or whatever. But on the other hand, it’s created, at least for me personally, a much shorter attention span to music than I used to have. When I was in high school, I couldn’t get a new album that often, so you would really sink your teeth into it and milk it for all it was worth. Now I can decide in the first five minutes if I like it or not, because there’s a thousand other things I can move on to instantaneously. But lots of the best albums are the ones that take some time to really grow on you, and I think that’s getting lost a bit. Recently my computer crashed and I lost all of my music in my iTunes, and it was weirdly liberating starting from scratch, because it gave me a chance to really look at what albums I love and which ones were just taking up space, or which ones I genuinely want to revisit or whatever. It made me evaluate a lot of music much more closely, which is more rewarding I think.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The present lineup of Slough Feg (L-R): Adrian Maestas, Angelo Tringali, Harry Cantwell and Mike Scalzi.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As a teacher, Scalzi has been a witness to technology\u2019s growing influence just from observing his students in recent years. He insists however, that the issue has been a topic of interest since the beginning. \u201cIt\u2019s something that I\u2019ve noticed a lot more recently, but when you listen to all the Slough Feg albums, there\u2019s a general theme running through all of the records about primitivism or feeling that modernization and technology are ruining the human spirit or something like that. Relying on technology, relying on conscious reason, relying on repression in civilization, which of course we\u2019re totally fucking dependent on but at the same time, there\u2019s a theme running through the records of wanting to rely more on instinct. It\u2019s not a political or a social message, but it\u2019s more of a poetic message of feeling stifled and bottled up living in society. That\u2019s a theme that runs through almost every metal or punk album. There is a general theme of not just that kind of anxiety, but also like going back to primitive existence\u2026 Ape Uprising<\/b>, Atavism<\/b>, Deadmen<\/b>, even back to the first album there\u2019s stuff about that. The idea itself is not new to our records, but it is the technology thing that I\u2019m feeling a lot of now. Not even in the sense of us needing to rely more on instinct, but technology is stifling our sort of animal spirits or whatever. It\u2019s also stifling our intellectual side as well. It\u2019s like I said in that Metal Blade thing<\/a>, it\u2019s making us physically and <\/i>mentally flabby.\u201d<\/p>\n

Surprisingly enough, the young Cantwell stands with his elder bandmate. \u201cI’d say it’s all things in moderation, but overall I tend to agree [with Scalzi]. Like I mentioned earlier about having a shorter attention span than I used to. That applies to my whole life now, and that’s almost certainly due to a sensory overload with constant internet, TV, music, etc. It’s ridiculous, but sometimes I’ll even make a concerted effort to not look at my phone for an hour or two or whatever, and just that alone is liberating. I have sort of an obsessive personality in general, so it’s hard for me to step back from something when I’ve had too much of it or whatever, and I’m sure\u00a0a lot of other people are that way. And then there’s other obvious things like people are clearly going outside less, being less physically active, not actually using their memories when any factoid can just be looked up instantly, things like that.\u201d It\u2019s refreshing to hear those words coming from someone old enough to have memorized phone numbers in his childhood, yet young enough appreciate the virtues of Twitter. Perhaps there\u2019s a broader audience for Mike Scalzi\u2019s wordplay than what one may assume.<\/p>\n

With song titles like \u2018Analogue Avengers,\u2019 \u2018Digital Resistance\u2019 and \u2018The Luddite\u2019 featured on the album, the obvious hypothesis would be that Scalzi\u2019s message is that of an old man on a rant. However, anyone who has ever seen the man take over a stage knows that he possesses the energy, enthusiasm and fun-loving spirit of a musician half his age. Scalzi opens up that side of himself in \u2018Warrior\u2019s Dusk.\u2019 Don\u2019t jump to conclusions though- the song is not in any way a sequel to the classic \u2018Warrior\u2019s Dawn\u2019<\/a> as Scalzi is quick to mention. \u201c\u2019Warrior\u2019s Dusk\u2019 is about being forced to grow up and not wanting to. In a way, it is related to \u2018Warrior\u2019s Dawn\u2019 because that song is about Indians from a child\u2019s perspective. That\u2019s about it though. \u2018Warrior\u2019s Dusk\u2019 is probably the most serious song on the record. It\u2019s about being a little kid, growing up and having to get a real job, pay medical insurance, think about buying a house and totally not wanting to but you\u2019re doing it because you\u2019re embarrassed not to. I don\u2019t feel any different than I did back then, but everyone else has these kids, and these houses and these mortgages, and all they do is work and they act like that person that was playing in that backyard is dead or something. All the lyrics are about the adventures that you go on and make up in your head while you\u2019re throwing sticks and stones around. There\u2019s a break in it and it suddenly says, \u2018But then warriors don\u2019t age well as it seems, when they dazzle you with mortgages and dreams.\u2019 Mentally, I\u2019m still playing in my backyard, making heavy metal records and living the lifestyle that I do. I\u2019m still playing, I\u2019m still fantasizing and playing games and everyone else is all about like mortgage and kids. That\u2019s pretty much the theme of the song, and sort of one thing that runs through the album.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"SloughFeg-DigitalResistance\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Suddenly, the message that Scalzi is attempting to get across throughout Digital Resistance<\/b> becomes astoundingly clear. Scalzi\u2019s lyrics aren\u2019t a mere rant against technology- his words are the lament of someone more human than most being forced to watch the world become a cold and sad place, an increasingly dystopian setting partially caused by the wave of high-tech. There is hope however. Scalzi brings up one person that refused to let the world make him bitter or jaded: our mutual pal, Bob Wright of Brocas Helm. \u201cYou\u2019ve met Bob Wright. That guy is still a little kid on the inside the same way that I am. He\u2019s still mature, responsible and developed as a human being and all that stuff, but he hasn\u2019t turned off that side of himself. A lot of people do that, and I think it\u2019s because he\u2019s played this music that he kept that part of him alive. A lot of people turn off that creative and playful side of themselves, because they sort have to in order to survive in the world we live in. I find that really sort of tragic. That\u2019s what \u2018Warrior\u2019s Dusk\u2019 is about, and what a lot of Slough Feg songs are about,\u201d Scalzi reveals.<\/p>\n

As for the digital resistor, has he let our increasingly mechanized world kill that youthful side of him? I turn the clock back by about one and a half years. Justin Weis and I are sitting in the control room at Trakworx, and he has finished mastering a record by a black metal band called Amenra. Somehow a conversation on Mob Rules <\/b>by Black Sabbath is struck and one of the nerdiest discussions about the engineering on the Dio-era Black Sabbath albums ensues. Weis isn\u2019t nostalgically reminiscing about the music though (other than mentioning a quick anecdote about buying the album in his sophomore year of high school)- no, we talk about how kickass this music is in the present<\/i> tense. He even lets out an amazing and hilarious impersonation of Dio singing \u2018The Sign of the Southern Cross\u2019 at one point. Weis hasn\u2019t become \u201ctoo mature\u201d to goof around a little bit when his work is done for the day. In January 2013, the band enters a lunch break during the first round of sessions for Digital Resistance<\/b>; we find ourselves all chatting about the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, and Scalzi goes to the computer where Weis is stationed and excitedly shows him YouTube videos of Paul DiAnno-era Iron Maiden songs. I look at the two, and I can\u2019t help but remember doing the same with my friends just the other day back at my college dormitory. At these moments, Justin Weis and Mike Scalzi are no different from the legions of young kids geeking out over their favorite bands. Sure, they’re using the modern medium of YouTube to fuel their fun but that’s the point; the two are taking advantage of technology in the right way, making a human connection easier to realize instead of staring at a screen in solitude.<\/p>\n

When the burritos are finished and lunch is over, Justin Weis is back on the clock. It\u2019s time for the digital resistor to get to work and as we defined him, he impedes the flow of digital technology into the job. As one may expect, that process involves a few reels of analog tape. \u201cMy favorite thing about tape is recording the rhythm section to it,\u201d Weis explains. \u201cI have in the past done experiments where I recorded the same source to tape and Pro Tools simultaneously and played them both back and the tape just sounds so much fatter, it\u2019s ridiculous. Having said that, I can<\/i> work without tape.\u201d Weis makes the case that perhaps we should have called him the digital potentiometer instead, given his apparent variable resistance. \u201cFor example, the half of Ape Uprising!<\/b> I did was done all digital because they had recorded the other half of the album digitally, and I felt like me going to tape would have made too big of a difference. We didn\u2019t use any tape on that album except during the mastering stage. You could listen to that album and then The Animal Spirits<\/b> where they did hit tape, and you tell me if you hear a tapey sound on the drums.\u201d<\/p>\n

Remember though- Justin Weis is a resistor, not an open circuit. Current will make it through. For Weis, that means that some modern technology has found its way into his work. Though he learned his craft in the purely analog realm, Weis doesn\u2019t wish to return to those days. \u201cI\u2019m nostalgic for it, but I don\u2019t ever really wish for it because I have a hybrid system now with analog and digital. It gives me a lot of abilities that people didn\u2019t have back then. Like for example, hitting save on a mix and opening it a day, a week or a month later and having it exactly how you left it. That was totally impossible in the console days. That\u2019s the indispensable thing about mixing in Pro Tools. Now I can get that, and I can still get analog tone by using a summing mixer and analog outboard gear in the mastering chain. Using all Burl Audio converters doesn’t hurt either!\u00a0All of that tends to give me a lot of the vibe of the console sound, while I still have the total recall on the mixing. That\u2019s very, very important. I used to do all analog production because I\u2019m old enough to have started recording before Pro Tools was viable, and my first three years of engineering\u2014when I went to recording school and a couple years after that\u2014we were doing two-inch tape on an analog console, mixing down onto DAT tape, sometimes onto two-track analog tape. That was very fun and I do kind of miss those days, but I wouldn\u2019t go back either.”<\/p>\n

\"1527115_10202869338117003_1433018887_n\"<\/a>
The oldest piece of equipment at Trakworx, the RCA OP-6. This mic-pre dates back to the 1940s, and was used on the bass and vocals on Digital Resistance.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In October 2013, Slough Feg and Justin Weis finish production on Digital Resistance<\/b>. Will the band return to Weis and Trakworx for the next one though? If Harry Cantwell has anything to say about it, one can count on it. \u201cFirstly, he just really understands how the band should sound. He has a big appreciation for more classic production techniques I think, which obviously makes sense for us. If we were to record with someone who had that more modern approach, I think it would really suck a lot of the life out of our sound. As a producer, one thing I really like is that Justin has a really good ear for that kind of indefinable variable that makes a take good. As a drummer especially, it’s easy to get too caught up in a take not being completely precise or tight, or a fill not being exactly how you intended it, and the more you start smoothing that stuff away the more you start losing the character of the playing. Justin’s really good at noticing when a take has a certain swing or looseness or groove to it that the other ones don’t have. Like just because one take was technically played the best doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best take.”<\/p>\n

Scalzi, having known Weis for even longer, knows that he wouldn\u2019t work with anyone else at this stage in his career. \u201cThe thing is with Justin, it\u2019s partially because of his skills and his knowledge, but it\u2019s also his intelligence in general. He\u2019s got all the training and the knowledge and the experience, but he\u2019s got a really good ear and he can think critically. A lot of engineers can\u2019t really think on that level, they just kind of gloss over things. Justin can listen, think critically and keep track of it all in his mind and read people really well. Some of the non-technical skills he has are really helpful as well. He has a very enlightened mind; he knows how to react to people and how to get the best performance out of somebody\u2026 that whole side of engineering.\u201d<\/p>\n

That more holistic side of engineering is something that Weis himself acknowledges learning very early in his career. \u201cYou gotta be like a chameleon, each different artist requires different treatment in order to get the session going in a positive way. Some people like to joke around and kind of go slow and be relaxed and drink beer all day, other people are wound up really tight and they don\u2019t want to waste a second of studio time. They\u2019re watching the clock and the budget all the time. They require a completely different handling. It\u2019s pretty easy to figure that out early on.\u201d Though he is a master sound technician, Weis also knows that a happy client will record a more worthwhile release. \u201cI hear about other engineers because I do mastering so much, and there are a lot of guys that are really opinionated and they become inflexible and unhelpful when the artist disagrees with them. It makes for a bad experience, and no repeat business. It makes for a final product that\u2019s not as good as it could have been. Having a more easygoing nature is good, because in the end it\u2019s whoever is paying for the session that gets to make the final call. When engineers get really bossy, it can be a big turnoff to the clients- not that you shouldn\u2019t be confident and express your opinion with some force behind it, but you can\u2019t be a dick about it. When that happens, it\u2019s no fun for anybody, you\u2019re just arguing all the time. Try to keep the mood up, that\u2019s why I\u2019m always making jokes and stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scalzi seems to always be unhappy with Slough Feg albums after they come out (fans consistently disagree), but he refuses to fault Weis\u2019 engineering. \u201cI\u2019m used to Justin doing such a fantastic job with the records that I kind of take it for granted. I\u2019m spoiled by having Justin around for so long,\u201d Scalzi admits. Audio engineering tends to be a pretty subjective thing- how can any individual truly define what sounds good or bad after all? The task is objectively impossible really, and that is the honest truth. It\u2019s the basic and perhaps the only true law of sound engineering: use your ears<\/em>.<\/i> To these ears, Digital Resistance<\/b> is a typical job well done from Justin Weis, and a musical triumph for Slough Feg. Business as usual for the digital resistor and the band that can seemingly do no wrong.<\/p>\n