We’ve gone on a couple times already about how stoked we are to have Chris Scott back in our eardrums as Layers in Lairs, and if you’ve checked out the band’s debut, it’s easy to see why. If you haven’t, well… you’re late!
We had a chat with Chris Scott recently which we’ve put down below, where talked about the band’s name, which songs were the hardest to record, how they stayed faithful to the Bearcubbin’-era drafts, recording software and more. We totally forgot to ask about the move from Portland to Chicago, that’s a big change.
But still, probably one of our favorite parts is where we go over how in our eyes, the title of the record, “Mantles,” which we thought was some kind of inside joke because Bandcamp just said Layers in Lairs for both the album and the band. It was revealed after this interview that in fact it was a direct nod to the iconic quotations of Young Machetes from The Blood Brothers.
Who woulda thunk it. Enjoy!
FB: It’s been a long time! What have you been up to the last few years other than writing Layers in Lairs?
Since the release of “Girls With Fun Haircuts” and the ending of Bearcubbin’! I have been bouncing around and doing a bunch of different stuff. I started recording bands a lot. Got to make records with Somber, Other Lights, Mandark, and a few that never came out with my friends Mat and Cory. I know Cory re-worked the songs we did for his band stammering (https://stammering.bandcamp.com/album/aftersome). Loved hearing those riffs out in the world!
Then I got really into fixing audio equipment and building pedals. I ended up building a couple custom switching pedals for people at the practice space and then decided to build my version of a 1985 white face RAT distortion pedal. I called it the “Hawkes Claw”, (after Stephan Hawkes the record engineer who this pedal was designed for) and ended up getting super deep into producing those, designing printed circuit boards, and the whole thing. Ended up making over 50 and then sorta lost interest after it came time to promote them and do customer service. Fully creative endeavor with zero interest in business babysitting. And that was about the time, during the pandemic, I met Jacob and we started unearthing all the riffs and songs that became the Layers in Lairs record. Stephan actually introduced us and kept on me to jam with this drummer that was renting a practice space from him. The writing process took about a year and then the recording and mixing process took another year or two. Over that time I moved from my longtime NE Portland spot to SE Portland and then moved to Chicago and had a bunch of changes in my life.
Basically, since the last time we spoke I picked up and dropped a bunch of creative hobbies and moved across the country, totally changing my life. So……. not much!
FB: Layers make sense to us, puns make sense to us. But is the title of the record secretly Mantles?
Haha. It totally could be! On the band name topic (that you didn’t ask about), I didn’t want to use the Bearcubbin’! name for this project because that was always a band with Mike and Pat. Didn’t feel right to use it, plus I think we’d outgrown the name. We went with Layers in Lairs because it seemed to fit the style of the music. You say it fast and it becomes Layers n’ Layers, which fully describes the construction of the music. A lot of the music is made by taking a riff and chopping it up and making something new with the same sounds, so we decided homophones was the way to go. Hearing it now, Homophones would’ve been a good title too. Haha. The title was an intentional homophone of Mantels or Mantles. More word fun! To be honest, my vote was to name it “Laird”, but I got overruled. I guess “Laird” by Layers in Lairs might be confusing. But so much fun!
FB: Is there a concept or overall theme to the record, and is there any relationship to the cover art of the record if so?
We did not have a definite overall concept. This was really a documentation project to finally have these songs finished and out in the world. Plus, I always wanted to have a record on vinyl and I finally had the time, knowledge, and finances to make it happen. I guess the concept could be complete and total vanity (haha). I wanted these songs to have a proper representation so bad and was hoping those that heard Bearcubbin’!s music before could appreciate the next step and also hear some of the songs we were playing live before we split.
There isn’t a strong connection between the music and the cover art. We had one day to do band photos/cover art and Jacob’s kitchen was the photo shoot spot. I can’t remember how, but we decided it was going to be a still life with all houseplants. We took all their houseplants, a few of the photographer (Simon Boas) and some of my partner’s and arranged them in a kitchen breakfast nook and took so many photos. Then we took one plant away at a time and made a stop motion visualizer video for “What Makes You Cool”. The band photos inside were taken on the same day. The back cover was a photo that one of the dogs of the house “ruined” haha. Old Luna being a ham!
FB: That’s dogs for ya, shout out to Old Luna! Do you initially conceive the music as a whole or by individual parts like drum patterns, melodies, effects, etc.?
It really depends. Usually I am inspired by a particular sound or pattern (sometimes a physical pattern on the guitar or something) and that lends itself to a riff. Then I try to create a chordal bed to let the riff affect and change to get the right feeling going. Then it is up to Jacob to give me a different look. On a lot of these songs, they were just collections of riffs and movements that would start and then build to a cacophony of stuff that is really only balanceable in pro tools. Jacob helped carve out movements and create a different look that would glue and transition parts from each other. There were countless times I ran into a writing wall and he would play something or say “what about this?” and it would unlock something totally different. I never really conceived of any song in its final form, in the beginning. The closest I’ve come is wanting to write in a particular style or feeling. “Pretty Good” was my attempt to write something in the style of Midwest Emo. I wanted to make something twinkly, melodically complex, notey, pretty, and emo as fuck. Kinda bashed that feel at the end though.
FB: Do you record the ideas as they’re written and pieces together, or do you wait until you’ve thought about a structure to record what you’ll eventually release?
I record the parts first, then piece together the structure with Jacob. We were lucky that I had 6 of the 7 songs really fleshed out with riffs so we had plenty of pieces to play with. Actually, “Alex Mack” and “What Makes You Cool” were fully written and being performed by Bearcubbin’!, so Mike and Pat had built those with me. “Jellyfish Problems” was the only song we wrote from scratch together. It was based off a jam from that beginning modulated sequenced guitar thing. The final structure only gets recorded at the end. We actually demoed this entire record before recording it. This was my first time doing pre-production on a record and it was really helpful. We listened back with Stephan and we made a few major changes and decisions that made the songs hit all the way through and keep listener interest the entire time.
It was also super helpful to hear the bass guitar elements with everything else to hear when Jacob and I needed to make little “moments” of the drums and bass synching up. All the stuff went through a pretty rigorous editing process. I know its hard to believe, given how verbous it is, but that stuff was pretty thoroughly gone through.
FB: What kinds of software and midi instruments are your favorite to work with?
I am a pretty picky when it comes to all that stuff. For recording and demoing I usually just work in Pro Tools. I have developed a pretty easy workflow for creating loops, double speeds, and clips in Pro Tools. I didn’t use any MIDI instruments on this record and haven’t in the past. All the weird sounds come from the keyboard and the effects themselves. As I have been trying to get back to writing again, I have been looking at getting into Abelton or something that more people use so I can trade sessions back and forth. We will see though, I am a pretty big grump when it comes to change.
FB: Pitched / speed-speed adjusted loops and samples are a big part of your sound – can you describe your relationship with looping and how it’s evolved over time, and/or what’s stayed consistent over time?
That’s a great question! Sometimes I think back to when I started looping and I honestly cannot remember a time without it as a guitar player. I remember getting a weird ZOOM multieffects box that had a looper in it and I used it to make 12 bar blues songs so I could solo over them for my guitar lessons. The next big looping deal for me was the Line 6 DL4. I saw Kaddisfly (a local portland band) who would record little loop interludes and even use the second input on the stereo inputs to record drums with a handhelp mic (something I later learned they learned from the band Dredg). The DL4 combined with the RC-20 was how Bearcubbin’! started and I didn’t get into the Echoplex until the band Battles introduced me to them. This guy Dave from the band Boomsnake (now Crasher, check it here) had one and let me play around with it a whole bunch. Then that became the basis of pretty much all I do. The multiply function makes everything I do possible. Same with the substitute and insert functions.
My understanding of looping over time has been to see it as a tool rather than a trick. For a long time it was a short cut for making things sound lush and also creating compositions that were big, take up time, and allow the audience to hear them being constructed. Now, I think of it more as a tool to create the melodically desnse music I enjoy. Sometimes another layer isn’t the answer, sometimes a double speed or half speed loop isn’t the answer. I have many DJ tricks in my bag, but I see them less as a short cut to interesting sounds and more as a way to craft overall compositions that are interesting and don’t require the listener to wait for the build to happen. Sometimes I find myself copying myself with looping tendencies and I really have to explore if that move is best for the song. Basically, I am doing my best to not be a pedal magician or a hack, not sure I am suceeding in this endeavor.
FB: The record’s aptly named with all of its various stacks and tracks – what was the most difficult song to record?
Another great question!!!! For songs, “What Makes You Cool” was the hardest. I have recorded 2-3 demos of that song, we pre-pro’d it and discovered at each new looping section the BPM jumps up to build the intensity and mapping that out was so key to getting that song to sound right. Deciding on the initial tempo and final tempo were super key to getting that song to sound right. Also, I had heard it so much that it became a “familiarity breeds contempt” type thing. That was a tough mental hurdle.
For guitar, “Pretty Good” was hard. It’s very fast and Intricate and the midwest emo sound is super sparkly and clear so I couldn’t hide in delay and overdrive. Plus, the doubling of guitars lent itself to some unintended phaser stuff I had to contend with. That one took a few days. Also, mixing the bass on that one was brutal. The bass came in super hot and loud and was crushing the delicate nature of the song. Hardest for bass was “You Cat Clockin’ Me Bro?” – 3:30 minutes was brutal. That groove was really hard for me to bounce to and dance between the guitars. Figured it out after a few tries. Thanks pre-pro!!
FB: Was it cathartic to finally release the material that was originally written with Bearcubbin’?
Unbelievably so! I honestly lost hope in this ever seeing the light of day like 10-12 times. I jammed these songs with a bunch of talented drummers and didn’t get the spark. I lost interest in playing music for awhile and was pretty isolated from how I felt being in Bearcubbin’! Working this stuff through with Jacob was really amazing. I felt so excited when I would hum songs we wrote on the way home from the space. I got stoked on music again (I had been listening to exclusively podcasts for like 2 years straight). It was super healing to include Mike and Pat’s contributions as well and have them represented in the work as well as have them hear those songs we wrote finally put down. Whatever had felt unfinished felt concluded in a really beautiful way. It was also very funny parallel with the rest of my life. Before the pandemic, I felt like I never had enough time to myself and then I finally got more than I could’ve ever wished for. Took me about a year and half to get sick of myself and be really craving social interaction again. Same thing with music, when I finally got to have most everything my way and have complete creative control, it took me about 1 record to get sick of my own creative voice and really crave collaboration again. Kinda like eating your favorite cake until you get sick of it. Moderation is for suckers!
FB: Did you try to stay faithful to what was written back then or try to make it more your own?
Maximum faitfulness. haha. Here’s the proof:
“What Makes you Cool”
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“Alex Mack”
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I had the drum parts to both of these programmed on my computer and learned the bass parts by ear and 0.5X youtube videos to watch Pat’s fingers. Those dude’s parts are very carefully archived and lovingly reproduced. As far as the songs that weren’t fully written yet, I stayed pretty true to the riffs I had demoed, but a lot of stuff changed according to what was accomplishable live and what sounded good in a practice space rather than stacked audio files. If there was ever interest, I’d love to share the demos and people can hear what stayed the same, what we changed, and what we totally left out!
FB: Sometimes it’s hard to tell from your own bubble but in case you didn’t know, people are pretty stoked to be hearing from you again – are you going to continue writing and releasing music as Layers in Lairs or was this a ‘getting it off your chest’ kind of thing?
It is really hard to tell from my bubble for sure. The response has been really heartwarming. I definitely don’t take this level of support and interest for granted. I would like to continue to use that moniker to release more music. Right now, getting a music lab put together to reliably write music and collaborate has been hard. I need to make an effort to have this happen. Right now there is no rush though. I do know I need to keep making things creatively cause it makes me happy. Same thing with collaborating.
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