by Christopher J. Lee
Released this past March, Early New York Silver is a collaboration between Lee Ranaldo and Michael Vallera. Consisting of two tracks and lasting approximately 45 minutes, it is based on a set of performances recorded in July 2022 as part of a series curated by musician David Watson and held in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
A slow-building work of experimental guitar ambience, Early New York Silver is an evocative work that has the uncanny effect of changing with each listen. With its haunting tones and abstract, layered soundscapes, it recalls the formative work of Ranaldo during his three-decade tenure with Sonic Youth, but equally the previous recordings of Vallera, a visual artist and musician based in Chicago who has released three preceding LPs.
Yet, Early New York Silver isn’t a work of nostalgia. As a document of improvised live performances that were later edited and mixed over two years, it imparts the effect of time being hollowed out by two musicians responding to one another to create an alternative temporality that moves between past, present, and future, resembling filmmaker Chris Marker's notion of a "future past.” Favoring atmosphere and free association over thematic directness, their beguiling album challenges the logocentrism of mainstream music, empowering the listener to draw their own meanings and conclusions.
Ranaldo and Vallera spoke to Post-Trash about how their collaboration and album came together.
Lee Ranaldo and Michael Vallera, courtesy of the artist
Christopher J. Lee: I understand your album draws from a series curated by David Watson. But before we dive into that, can you talk about how you both first met? What led you both to thinking about doing a collaboration?
Lee Ranaldo: My memory is that Michael played in the opening slot at Union Pool in Brooklyn in November 2021, the night I was celebrating a low-key release for my album In Virus Times. Gunn-Truscinski Duo also played. I recall watching Michael’s set and being absorbed, taken away from the jitters of debuting my new instrumental suite. We talked some afterwards (gear talk, ha) and tentatively made plans to try and do something together.
Michael Vallera: Yes, it was a solo set from myself, Gunn-Truscinski and Lee headlining. It was the first time I had seen Lee solo, and the set was very minimal and nuanced and I loved that it had (for me) almost a kind of early Syd Barrett energy with the repeating acoustic themes. We kept in touch afterwards and were lucky enough to have an opportunity to play and record at the 411 Kent Space, which was curated by David Watson at the time. It was a sweltering few summer days, and I recall that heat and humidity, feeling like it somehow seeped into the material.
CJL: Tell me more about the series at 411 Kent curated by Watson. Is Watson someone you've known from your Sonic Youth days, Lee? What other musicians participated? Was it open to the public? From what I have read, it also sounds as if the space itself fundamentally informed the recording process.
LR: David is an old friend, and we’ve done a fair bit of playing together over the years, mostly in the trio Glacial, with Tony Buck on drums. The nice thing about our time at 411 is that we came in a day or two early and set up mics and just played a few sets together, feeling out the space and each other and just trying some stuff out. From those recordings and then the live set - packed with people, a hotbox sweltering summer night - we created the album.
MV: For the show we played, we shared a bill with Andrew Berstein and his ensemble of players. It was open to the public, but people ended up being turned away as the space was at full capacity. It was such a beautiful evening, and one I'll remember for some time.
CJL: It’s fascinating to learn more about this recording setting since the album gives little sense of these conditions, seemingly by design. Can you say a bit more about the specific gear you both used for the performance and the recording set up? Also, you both were improvising, but did you discuss in advance what your intentions were? Did you have concept notes of any kind?
LR: I was using a small, low-watt amp (my preference these days), but I can’t remember what it was - maybe Michael does. An old Gibson amp? Fender Jazzblaster and assorted pedals, plus my “pipes” setup - metal pipes maybe by Dutch instrument builder Yuri Landman, sort of a home-made electrified xylophone/metalophone - but you can’t hear this too much on the final record. I’m not sure if I also had Yuri’s “Railtrack Kalimba” with the long metal wires, or not, but I probably did. I don’t hear it on the final product, though.
I think we had 5 or 6 mics set up, some close to our performing area and some way up in the front of the space, where the record store was, so we had a nice set of samples from both close and far. A simple multi-channel Zoom recorder.
The main difference to me across all the recordings we made was that for the actual concert the PA was turned on, which it wasn’t during our other recordings. This made a big difference to the sound, both in the room and on the recordings. We had established a very nice sound in the room without the PA, and I found that during the actual concert I was slightly distracted by how different the room sounded with the PA speakers engaged. Of course, necessary for the audience (I suppose…), but I liked the “natural” character of the sound we were getting in the empty rooms more.
No concept notes, no serious pre-concert discussion, just exploring what we could do together is my memory.
MV: As I am remembering, Lee is correct that we had about half a dozen mics in the space, some of which were in close proximity to the amps, and a few which were very distant to get a sense of the natural room sound, which was quite dramatic. It was a long and cavernous first floor space that I think at one point was maybe an old firehouse. Lots of hard surfaces and interesting reverberations, which made for a lot of possibility when we got the tracks back in terms of mixing and arranging. That process took quite a long time as we traded files back and forth, and I think it was partly because the material could be shaped into so many different things. But I am so pleased with how it ultimately landed as two longer tracks which contain slightly different paths of the same sound origin.
I think we had briefly emailed about certain technical aspects, such as the tunings we were each using, but beyond that it was jumping right in and seeing where the improvisation would take us. I think that being familiar with the style we were working on as individuals helped us both to approach the collaboration in a more intuitive way. Gear wise, I was using a small effects chain with nothing too complicated going on. I have an older pedal which is supposed to be a sort of advanced tremolo, but I typically set it up at a very high rate of speed, which can get interesting FM bell type sounds and very dense low register tones. I was using a house amp that I think was an old Mesa combo. Ultimately, the space itself was the biggest factor in how everything sounded, and I am really pleased to have that imprinted on the release, as that series had a brief life span.
CJL: Going further with the issues of arrangement and mixing, how did you approach the recorded material and decide what to use? Did you already have a sense of what the LP might be like immediately after the sessions? Or did its shape only become apparent after listening to the raw files? Also, it sounds like you worked on this together remotely. Is this true? What mixing software did you use? How many hours of material did you have, and how much did you ultimately use?
MV: We both left with files from the sessions the day before the show, a short session the day of, and the actual live show recording. I would say in total it was probably around two hours of material, and really there was no plan as to what it would be or how it would come together. I started by simply listening through everything and finding pieces or moments across all the tracks that struck me as interesting or in the same spirit as other parts. In going through this process, things slowly formed into what felt like two side-length pieces, which began to remind me of separate sides of a coin. I was mixing and doing slight EQ work and things like that in Logic. I would then send stems of those mixes to Lee, and he would make changes and send them back. This process went on for months.
Lee was playing a solo show here in Chicago, and while in town, we were able to sit down in my apartment studio and go through some things together, which was a big step in getting the tracks to the next level of completion. After that, it was a few more months of mixing remotely until we both felt they had landed in a place we could proceed to mastering.
CJL: I was curious about the arrival at two tracks for the final product. Both “Early New York Silver I” and “Early New York Silver II” resemble one another, though “I” has a slow building, cumulative effect—I like how the guitarwork intensifies after the 11-minute mark—while “II” has a slightly more menacing quality from the start.
Do these tracks bear such specific intentions of tone and feeling, or were there other effects that you were aiming for? Also, the word “silver” and the accumulation of density on the first track made me think of silver nitrate and how a photograph develops. Is the title of this LP referring to this kind of process?
MV: I really like those connotations you bring up, and I think the open nature of this kind of material is very visual. Part of the experience for a listener is being able to interpret them and have the feeling change depending on mood and environment. Lee and I didn't really speak about the final intention or any sort of goal in that sense. Rather, it felt we were trying to follow where the material led us as we began to trade arrangements and mixes back and forth.
The title was actually taken from an old catalog I found, which was for an exhibition of silver objects at The Met in the early 1930's. I collect books and paper ephemera, and when I found that, there was something about the title that kept kicking around in my head as we were working on the tracks. It felt connected to the energy of what was being created.
LR: Of course, there is also the fact that silver nitrate is an essential component in classic black-and-white photography. Michael (whose work is on the jacket) and I share a love of photography. The connections between the title of that old catalog and what we were doing just seem to make sense.
No overall concept other than trying to make two sides of vinyl that somehow represented the time we spent together, the place we recorded in, and the idea of capturing a first meeting between two guitar players, who are also composers and arrangers of material. That's what we were doing mainly: selecting and (wow, what a day) arranging aspects of our recordings to make some sort of composite piece.
In the early stages, I felt we were losing some of the organic, natural quality of our spontaneous interactions as we played together, but in the end, I think we realized something across two 20-minute sides that somehow represent the entire experience we had at 411 Kent.
CJL: Building off these points, there is a haunting quality to this work as well. Even if drawn from another source, the word "early" also evokes your mutual past work. The thickness and density of the hovering guitar distortion recall Sonic Youth and your solo LPs, Lee, like From Here to Infinity (1987), but equally your work, Michael, on albums like Window In (2020). There is an elusive sense of time between past and present. This aligns with your point, Lee, about the tension between retaining the spirit of live performance—documenting it like a photograph—while also creatively reworking it through mixing, et cetera. David Grubbs has written about this difficulty in Records Ruin the Landscape: improvisation is about being alive to the moment, but recording instantly makes music an artifact. How did you both think about time and tone in the making of this recording?
LR: Music is a time-based art, so time is always a factor. Beginnings and endings define whole worlds in some cases. For me as a musician, awareness of tone is a constant, whether the tone of the guitar/amp combo or the tone(s) being created in the room. I feel I am hyper-aware of this aspect of generating sound. I can get lost in tone and feel no need for filagree or even much in the way of variations or left-hand work on the fretboard. I think that has fed my love of the violin bow on electric guitar strings. It brings out a certain vibrational quality. Over time, my playing has become more reductive, more open to mingle with the air in the room. Between Michael and me - as I think we are both highly focused on both tone and time - it’s only natural to stay in “listening” mode during a session.
MV: I agree completely with Lee. The aspects of both tone and time are easier to assess and understand after the fact, but in the moment, I feel both of those factors form into a very active and "present" state. Regarding moments of improvisation, it's a place not always easy to tap into and to simultaneously become aware of while you are in it. I think because we share a lot of sensibilities of both tone and time, the way those elements interweave and react to each other built a great cornerstone from which to sculpt the tracks for this release.
CJL: Final question: what are your future plans? Will you promote this album with any performances? Or do you have plans for other projects together?
LR: We still haven’t had the chance to play live together since the album came out, and this remains a frustration. In part, this has been my fault as I’ve been focused on other things this past year, but hopefully we can work to change this soon. Michael and I will play together again, both live and in the studio, as time allows. I have a few select upcoming shows but am mostly working (slowly) on my next solo album. For most of the last year, I have been working on film scores - I completed 2 features (one doc, one narrative) plus a short in the past year. The documentary feature The System by Dutch director Joris Postema had its premiere on Sept 8 in Amsterdam, and the OST soundtrack is now out on the various streaming services. I worked pretty hard on the music for this film, and I am very pleased with the results.
MV: In these cases, it's common to have shows happen on a longer timeline, as we both live in different cities and have different schedules. I was also out in Paris earlier in the summer performing and recording with the INA GRM organization and have been working on a lot of photography that I have taken over the last few years, hoping to shape it into a new book project. I don't doubt we will figure out some time for things next year. I feel like these collaborations happen as they are supposed to, and I look forward to the future of our music, both individually and together, however that will happen.