White Hills’ Dave W. on the ‘medium of sound’; at the Riot Room Wednesday

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New York City psych-rock band White Hills has been changing things up a little as of late. While the band has frequently featured members on keys, drums, and otherwise, the group’s currently pared down to core duo Dave W. and Ego Sensation. It’s a reflection of the music on this year’s Thrill Jockey release, Walks For Motorists, which is also a bit of a change-up for the band. We spoke by phone with Dave W. about the changes, and what they mean.

The Pitch: Walks For Motorists is the first album White Hills hasn’t recorded in New York. Do you have a specific spot in New York you like to use, or is it various places?

Dave W.: It’s always been various places. The last two albums we did, we did with Martin Bisi at Bisi Studios in Brooklyn. Martin goes back to the late ’70s, early ’80s in New York City, along with Bill Laswell. They started their studio together, and Martin produced Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit,” and did a lot of early hip-hop with Afrika Bambaata. He moved into working with Swans and Sonic Youth and Cop Shoot Cop — all of that kind of stuff.

That’s kind of a nice pedigree going into White Hills.

Yeah! Martin’s a great guy and he’s got a really cool studio that used to be an armory in the Civil War, and he knows his stuff.

%{[ data-embed-type=”image” data-embed-id=”” data-embed-element=”aside” ]}%What led you all the way to Wales for the new album?

One thing was, we were working with a Welsh producer, so that was one reason. We had scheduled to do the recording at the end of a tour of Europe, so it all just made sense. We were over there, so why not just go to where he is, versus having him come out to New York City? And, you know, we just wanted a bit of a change of pace.

I’m guessing that being in a pastoral setting, next to that forest, as opposed to being in an urban area, would be a change of pace no matter what – to say nothing of being across the ocean?

Yeah, yeah. Of course.

As far White Hills’ recording process goes, do you write in the studio or beforehand?

It just depends, you know, to be honest. We have written things in the studio. For this record, we demo’d a lot of stuff. We actually had a quite large amount of material that were were demo’ing. We kind of came in with a whole series of songs that we wanted – you know, that we had been working on? Then, it was just a matter of kind of fine-tuning them, once we were in there. Kind of sitting down with David [Wrench, producer], and being like, ‘This is what we have.’

Before we went in, we put together kind of what was like our ‘A’ list and ‘B’ list of songs that we wanted to do, and then we sat around with him and kind of discussed what he thought of what we had and then just kind of moved forward from there with putting the album together.

I guess I can’t be that surprised that you had so much material going in, given that White Hills is such a crazily-prolific project.

People say that all the time. It’s just normal to us. I mean, you know – it’s just what we do.

Do you think it’s not so much a case of being more prolific, but that you just release more?

No, I think it’s just a case that musicians are lazy people, generally. I think a lot of people don’t look at being a musician or creating music as an art form. I think they think of it in some other way. It’s like, the way we approach it is that it’s like our art.

Whenever I’m asked this question, I say, ‘If you were a painter, would you wait two years before you painted another painting?’ No. You’d fucking wake up and you’d fucking be painting every day. That’s what you do, you know? So, that’s what we do. Our medium is sound, so we work with sound. I really don’t know how else to explain it.

White Hills plays the Riot Room on Wednesday, November 4, with Redder Moon and High Flier. You can find details on that show here.