Big Sir

Big Sir “Regions” Live from the Bootleg...

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 15:35:20 -0800

Big Sir “Regions” Live from the Bootleg Theater…sort of a bootleg from the Bootleg.

Big Sir and their Fuck Your Laptop, Fuck Your Playback, Fuck...

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 17:23:04 -0800

Big Sir and their Fuck Your Laptop, Fuck Your Playback, Fuck Your Drum Machine Tour. Starts at home - Los Angeles - Bootleg Theater, Sunday, Feb 24th with Biceratops.

INDIE MAG'S ICON Feature: Lisa Papineau

Tue, 14 Aug 2012 09:42:00 -0700

Lisa Papineau solo artist and the singer in both Big Sir and Me & LP Is the Indie Icon feature in the July / August issue of Indie Mag. You can download the full magazine for FREE or buy in Print HERE

Sessions 65: Video Interview with Big Sir in Manchester UK

Thu, 17 May 2012 10:17:00 -0700

Lisa Papineau and Juan Alderete take time out to talk with Sessions 65 about the joy and love of making music and about the Big Sir European Tour.

Check out all 3 of the Videos of Big Sir performing Live In Studio for Sessions 65.
The Ladder
Born With A Tear
Old Blood

NO TREBLE: Big Sir In Studio Video "Old Blood", "The Ladder" & "Born With A Tear"

Thu, 10 May 2012 17:12:00 -0700

Big Sir, the project led by bassist Juan Alderete and vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Lisa Papineau, just wrapped up a nice European tour. Lucky for the rest of us who couldn’t make it out, the duo stopped off for a performance at SSR Studios in Manchester for the online show Sessions 65, who made a few nice videos of their performance.

Above is “Old Blood” the 8th track from their latest release, Before Gardens After Gardens. The energetic song is propelled by Alderete’s awesome fretless playing while Papineau’s ethereal vocals float over top.

Now, here’s to hoping the duo make a North American tour!

Big Sir Headline European Spring Tour - Starts April 7th

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 10:00:00 -0700

Big Sir will be touring in Europe starting in Namur, Belgium on April 7th, please always make sure to check directly with venues for start times and exact details.

BIG SIR EU/UK Tour 2012
Apr 7, 2012 - Namur, (BE) @ Sergent Pepper’s
Apr 8, 2012 - Berlin, (DE) @ Spirale Kulturzentrum
Apr 9, 2012 - Hamburg, (DE) @ HafenKlang
Apr 10, 2012 - Solingen, (DE) @ Waldmeister e.V. Raum für Kultur
Apr 11, 2012 - Leipzig, (DE) @ Ilses Erika
Apr 12, 2012 - Munich, (DE) @ Ampere
Apr 13, 2012 - Innsbruck, (AT) @ Los Gurkos
Apr 14, 2012 - Bolzano, (IT) @ Vintola 18
Apr 15, 2012 - Molfetta, (IT) @ Le Macerie
Apr 16, 2012 - Copertino, LE (IT) @ I Sotterranei Arci
Apr 17, 2012 - Rome, (IT) @ Locanda Atlantide
Apr 19, 2012 - Trieste, (IT) @ Etnoblog
Apr 20, 2012 - Rimini, (IT) @ Velvet Club
Apr 21, 2012 - Livorno, (IT) @ The Cage Theatre
Apr 22, 2012 - Milano, (IT) @ La Sacrestia
Apr 24, 2012 - Birmingham, (UK) @ The Birmingham Ballroom / The End
Apr 25, 2012 - Manchester, (UK) @ Sound Control
Apr 26, 2012 - Swansea, WA (UK) @ The Garage
Apr 27, 2012 - Bristol, (UK) @ The Croft
Apr 28, 2012 - London, (UK) @ The Old Blue Last - Binnacle Festival
May 01, 2012- Grenoble, (FR) @ Le Ciel
May 02, 2012- Paris, (FR) @ Le Trianon - Night 1 of 2
May 03, 2012- Paris, (FR) @ Le Trianon - Night 2 of 2

CLICK FOR FULL SHOW INFO & UPDATES

NO TREBLE: Bassist Redefined an Interview with Juan Alderete

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 13:55:04 -0700

Juan Alderete is a man who stays busy. After getting his break with thrash metal outfit Racer X, Alderete now contributes the low-end to progressive rock giants The Mars Volta, whose new album Noctourniquet hit stores this week. The record marks the band’s sixth effort anchored by Aldererte, who joined their ranks in 2003.
The Mars Volta ‘Noctourniquet’

Additionally, Big Sir released its third album, Before Gardens After Gardens, in early February. The album was created after Alderete and collaborator Lisa Papineau were both diagnosed with serious illnesses: Alderete with polychythemia vera, and Papineau with Multiple Sclerosis. Three weeks before the album was released, Papineau was also diagnosed with cancer.

“I wake up and I thank God every day – and God meaning everybody’s God who looks down on me,” Alderete said. “I can’t believe how fortunate I am to wake up every day and feel good enough to go play music and do what I do.”

A veritable gear guru, Alderete is also launching a new website called PedalsAndEffects.com, in which he will give advice on building pedal boards, how different pedals sound, and how to get the best sounds possible out of your effects.

We phoned Alderete at his house the morning after Big Sir played a special in-store concert at Hollywood’s legendary Amoeba Records to get the latest from this exciting bass player.

Congratulations on the new Big Sir album, Before Gardens After Gardens. It’s a really incredible record.

JA: Thanks! It’s something that means so much to me. A lot of people know my band through Mars Volta, but when Lisa [Papineau] and I put this record out, we never thought that Mars Volta fans would get it. We thought we would put it out on Omar [Rodriguez-Lopez]’s label, and it would just sit there, but our other record is jumping in sales because people are finding the new one and liking it, so they check out the old one as well.

I’m not going to say we’re a band that’s in the black yet, but I anticipate we will be if we continue to promote it and do videos for it. Hopefully if we go on tour, we can continue to get that support to spread our word, and basically our word is that no matter what you’re going through, you’ve gotta keep that dream alive. If you’re at a day job and you really want to create something really beautiful in a graphic artist program or something, or you’re a photographer and you want to take the most beautiful picture you’ve ever seen… as long as you have that inspiration, it drives you.

I’ve seen what happens with Lisa, and how debilitated she gets. But when you see her and she has shows, or remix records to take care of, or our vinyl coming out on a really great label called Neurotic Yell. She’s got all this work on her plate, and it really, really keeps your mind off your illness and keeps your mind on what you’re to do on this Earth, which is create and be an artist.

What’s your writing process for Big Sir like?

The process really hasn’t changed from our first album. For the first song I wrote for the group, I was working with this guy Bruce Bouillet, who was the second guitarist in Racer X. He had this drum loop he showed me that [became] the “Nonstop Drummer” drum loop. As soon as I heard it, I said, “Can I record on that?” And he said, “Yea, go for it.” I grabbed my fretless and I wrote the entire song. He asked me how I did that, and I said, “I don’t know man, drum loops just give me entire songs sometimes.” I’ll hear a drum loop or a beat and just know what to do with it.

When it comes to “Regions”, nothing has changed. I created that drum loop that was part a [The Mars Volta Drummer] Deantoni Parks part, and part other drum loops I put with it. I went to work, and sure enough, “Regions” came out like within a second. I used to always have this mindset that I was writing for Lisa, so I would get it to a certain point and mail it to her to she what she’d think. If she liked it, I would continue to work on it. Well, I can’t always do that because sometimes she takes it into the computer, cuts it up, and makes an arrangement out of it, then I can’t mess with it anymore because she’s made it something else [laughs].

There’s basically three parts to that song: the main riff, the harmonic bass part where I’m doing the chord changes with harmonics, and there’s the single chord that I hit where she sings over it. I did all that right to the loop, then she cut it up and made the arrangement.

Between your earlier days in Racer X and now with Big Sir and Mars Volta, it seems like your style is constantly evolving.

Well, when I met Paul Gilbert, I wasn’t into heavy metal. I had a couple bands I liked, like Van Halen and AC/DC. I’ve never owned a Black Sabbath album. I’ve heard them all, but I’ve never owned one. I wasn’t into that stuff. When I met Paul, I was into really New Wave and then I was into some prog, but really I was into hip hop. I actually had a 1973 LTD, and it had this big, big trunk with big speakers. I would just bump low-end bass, and it was all early ’80s hip hop that I would play. I was always into hip hop.

So when I met Paul, it just happened that I had the facility to play really fast, and he was looking for a bassist that could play fast. He said, “You wanna make a record?”, so I said, “Sure, why not?”

I came to L.A. to make a career for myself, and here was a record, so I figured I should do it. So I did it and the next thing I knew, I spent the next four years playing heavy metal, even though I wasn’t really big into metal. At a certain point, it becomes all about necessity. So I spent from 1985 when I met Paul ’til probably 1992 playing heavy metal, and I wasn’t into it. My heart wasn’t into it.

The Scream was a band that Bruce Bouillet from Racer X put together. [It was] “Zeppelin-y”, but the image was really of that era, so it looked really cheesy. But we recorded with Eddie Kramer, and we were trying to make more of a retro-rock record in 1990 and 1991. So I was a little bit more familiar with that because it’s what I grew up on as a kid, but it still wasn’t what I wanted to do.

After all that fell apart, I said, “I hate all this. I’m going to redefine myself.” I wasn’t even then sure what I wanted to do, but then we did the second Scream album, which featured more drum loop stuff. There’s a lot of hip hop in there, there was a lot of rock in there. It was a lot of all over the place, and it was just this mish-mash of everything that me and Bruce were into. It didn’t quite work, so I had to refine myself even more. I had lost what I was into, and I wanted to find it again.

Then I joined Distortion Felix, which was a small indie band. Long story short, I realized this was the music I would have been playing had I never joined Racer X. It just developed from there. Then Big Sir started, and I got to do a band that went back to my love of ’80s New Wave. There’s a bass player named Mick Karn who was in a band called Dali’s Car. [That band] was our whole inspiration. It was a beautiful collaboration of a singer and a bass player.

So somewhere in the mid-90s, I met Lisa in another band called Pet. I was just finally doing music I thought I should have always been doing. I was never a metal guy, it was never my heart.

I have a dad who was very heavy-handed on me as far as making something of yourself. So it was a big, big thing for me to quit college to go to music school at the Musician’s Institute. So I was scared. I was like, “I can’t bum my dad out.” When Paul Gilbert said let’s do this record, I didn’t think it would affect me the rest of my career. I don’t look back at it negatively, I look at it all as a growing thing. I mean come on, I still get kids talking to me about Racer X. One thing I’m extremely proud about Racer X is that it was cutting edge. When Paul gave me the very first demo to learn, I thought “I can’t do this, I don’t even know what to think.” It didn’t even sound like metal to me. He was using all these weird voicings on the guitar, but I was up for the challenge. That’s what kept me in Racer X and kept me happy, is that we were always trying to outdo the previous record.

I was still in Distortion Felix and Big Sir when Manny, the guitar player from Distortion Felix met [Mars Volta singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala] at a bar and said, “You should take my bass player, if you guys are looking.” Omar went over there and said, “Why would you give up your bass player?”, and Manny said, “I think he would be perfect in your band. I think he’s exactly what you’re looking for.” So they called me up.

It was this situation where I thought it was a big audition, which is something I really hate to do, but it wasn’t really an audition for anybody else. I think Omar had already settled that I was gonna be it. I showed up and after my first day of auditions, I couldn’t tell what was going on and I said “Do you want me to take my gear?” Omar said, “No, we’re not seeing anyone else today.” So I started to think this wasn’t a big cattle call. I played okay on the second day, but not as good as the first day. I went up to Omar and asked “What do you think?” – not like I was apologizing for not playing as good, but like “do I have a shot at this?”

He said, “Yeah, you better get those bass lines down, because you’re playing with us on the show in two days.”

I said, “So I got the gig?”, and he said “Oh, I didn’t tell you? Yeah, you got the gig.” So I practiced really hard the third day. He called me up and told me how the band works, and I was down.

So it’s all about re-creation. Even in Mars Volta, I started out playing vintage-style bass, then on Bedlam in Goliath it got way out there, doing tons of crazy shit on the bass. Most of the new record now is flatwounds, and has little effects on it. I use flatwounds on a J-bass, and my main fretless has roundwounds.

What’s the whole vibe of the new album? What can fans expect?

Well, it’s hard for me to speak on it because it was so long ago. We recorded a lot of it three or four years ago, so it’s hard for me to remember everything. It’s not like I have a lot of time in the studio. Omar just sits me down and wants to get it over with. This one more than ever.

With Frances The Mute, we spent a ton of time doing bass. Same thing with Amputechture. Then Octahedron was kind of weird. It started getting to the point where he didn’t want to spend a lot of time on it, he just wanted to blast through it. The last record was just like, “Let’s get this thing done.” It wasn’t a lot of fun, but my stuff on there was fun because I got to do more of what I do on the bass instead of taking complete directive. He would show me the basic skeleton, and then I would make it my own. But, a lot of the songs that I had to overdub at the end, he was just like “play it note for note.”

He told me he said in a recent Guitar World interview that he remembers when we did bass how bummed out I was just because he was already in a different head space. He wasn’t happy about the album taking that long. He was just kind of burned out on it. It’s hard to work on something you created three years ago and then go back to it again. So he just wasn’t in a good head space to do it. At one point I even asked him, “Can you just leave me in the studio with the engineer and I’ll cut it all, then you just okay it? Because the energy is just so dark.”

It was hard for me to feel good while cutting it because of him sitting there not wanting to be there. Omar is a guy who is working on things that are way beyond anything that we’re doing now. He’s just an artist like that. He gets bored easily and has to constantly be on the verge of creating something new for himself.

I know you’ve got tons, but can you give us a rundown of your gear?

Juan Alderete with his Fender JazzWell, I’ll go over what I had for the most recent tour with Soundgarden. I’ll start with this: I have the greatest company on the entire Earth called Ampeg USA behind me, and I don’t say that like I’m trying to pimp them. I say that because they’re unbelievable in the kind of support that they offer me. I can’t thank them enough.

So when we travel, we used to fly with our gear everywhere in the early days of Mars Volta, and we spent a ton of money doing it. We were always on the verge… if we had to cancel a show, we would not make money on that tour because you’re always riding that line of red and black. Now we don’t [have to] do that. We have the gear available to us in Europe or Australia or Japan, and Ampeg makes that happen. A lot of times, it’s whatever the rental company has. That was last year’s touring, so when I’m playing Sonisphere, if you see it on YouTube or whatever, that’s gear that Ampeg got there for me and that’s the first time I saw it. It’s always an SVT, hopefully it’s an SVT VR.

On the Soundgarden tour when I actually got to choose my gear, Ampeg sent me these PF-500 heads that are like small little flip-top looking heads. They’re all solid-state, then they sent me these cabinets. I had two 1×15” cabinets and two 2×10” cabinets, so it was a 15” and a 2×10” on top of that, then another 15” and a 2×10” on top of that and then two of the PF-500 heads. That’s what I used for the Soundgarden tour. It’s new stuff and it looks cool.

We’re not as loud anymore. Omar plays out of a combo amp, but when I first joined the band he played out of two giant Orange guitar rigs, and his decibel level would always be around 130 or 140. Back then, I had to have two SVTs running with two SVT cabinets, and I lost a lot of my hearing. I don’t recommend it at all; I have really bad ringing in my ears from it. You know, if you do two or three hour sets blasting that loud, you’re going to do damage to your hearing. No one can come out of that without hearing damage. Now we’re not as loud so I can do something like I’m doing.

Pedal boards had to get shrunken down, too. Omar uses the [Line 6 M9 multi-effects pedal] so he has a lot of pedals with him in that. When I was on tour I used it as well, but I had a little bit more trouble getting the sounds that I wanted. It has a lot of really great stock sounds, but I use a lot of weird stuff that that thing just doesn’t have. Like I use the [DOD] Meat Box – there’s no way anyone is going to recreate it. If they did, they’d make tons of money.

I had an A/DA Flanger on my pedal board. No flanger sounds like that, and no mod is ever going to sound like that. And so I had stuff that I knew essentially would sound good in a mod, but then I had the M9 for covering my vibrato pedal, the phaser pedal, and delay… it’s great for all the stuff like that.

But like the Sovtek Fuzz will always be on my pedal board until I find a fuzz pedal that I prefer more. My compressor pedal is the same thing, nobody makes a compressor pedal that sounds as good as that. Dunlop Bass Wah, always gonna have that. Maybe an Electro-Harmonix Bass Microsynth. That’s pretty much it, but we played mostly the new record so it’s mostly flatwounds and direct bass [laughs].

As far as basses, for that whole tour I used my 1964 Fender Jazz and my fretless PJ which is either a ’70 or a ’71. I’ve said in the past it’s a ’71, but I got weird about it, so I looked up the serial numbers again and it could be either a ’70 or a ’71. Every time I look at ’71s or more, they tend to always be alder and I’m pretty damn sure that this is an ash body, because it weighs a ton. I don’t remember alder ever getting this heavy, and it’s just got that ash low end. I used that on the tour and on the record.

The only thing I’m using now that I’ll probably tour with… Japan still makes 32˝ ’62 reissue Jazz basses. So they’re 32˝ instead of 34˝ scale. It really helps me.

As I’m getting older, I’m not able to do the stuff that I used to do say, 15 or 20 years ago. I switch to a 32˝ and there it is again. A lot of it is that my left hand just isn’t as fast. I’m 48, and so I’m not going to shred [Racer X’s] “Scarified” on a 34˝ as cleanly as I used to as when I was 21 [laughs].

Someone sent me a YouTube clip of Racer X from the Oakland Omni show we did, and you can really hear my bass on it. I’ll watch it, and I say, “I literally can’t play that fast anymore.” It just happens over time. I mean, I’ve done a lot of damage, too. I’ve broken my wrist riding my fixed gear bike, I busted my left shoulder up… A bass on your shoulder that’s been busted up slows your hands down because the nerves from your hand go through your shoulder.

My left hand isn’t as fast and my right wrist isn’t as fast, so I have to make compromises. The 32˝ sounds as good as any 34˝ Fender Jazz I’ve ever owned. The quality of a Fender from Japan is awesome, so I don’t really see it as a compromise at all.

Now the other thing I was going to say, and this is for nerds for sure, is that the 32˝ has a different fundamental sound. The bass player that used to be in The Roots, Owen Biddle, talked about this in his interview. When I read it, I said “Yes! Exactly.” I’ve believed that for the last four or five years when I started really getting back into short-scales. The fundamental low end is completely different than a longer scale bass, because what happens on a 34˝ or a 35˝ is that the string is super taut. You can almost think of it like a piano’s low note. It’s got that John Entwistle, real metallic almost sound.

But when you go to a 32˝, the string starts wavering more, and so when you hit it it’s almost like an upright. It covers so much more low-end frequency. When you throw flatwounds on it, it’s upright-sounding. So that’s why I think when you hear the new Mars Volta record, that low end is just in its own world. You know, Steve Harris played flatwounds. Geezer Butler played flatwounds. And there’s a reason why they do it: it doesn’t go into the guitar realm. It sits in its own world, and I swear every sound man in the world will go, “Oh, flatwounds? Awesome!” And you’ll make that PA system every time.

When I’d have a more metallic sound during the [Bedlam in Goliath] days, the only reason I went to that was because the drummer was so fast and overplaying all the time that the only way I could cut is if I was real sharp. You wouldn’t have ever heard any of the fast stuff I did on Bedlam had I not made it more metallic and sharp. With this record, Deantoni plays with a lot more space so I can use flats. I always wanted to, but flats on a 34˝ make the strings even more taut, so say goodbye to more of your speed, you know what I mean? Or more to your stamina. Really it’s more stamina because I don’t play a lot of fast stuff in Mars Volta, but the stamina, man. That Steve Harris gauge… man, that dude must have the strongest hands in the world. I played his gauge, and on a P-bass, it was brutal! I don’t have the strength for that. I think for this tour I’ll take out the ’62 reissue Jazz Bass from Japan, and I’ll take out my fretless.

You mentioned you have some pain in playing. Do you have a good warmup routine?

Yeah, I sure do. After the Frances tour in 2005, I remember I got home and had to get back to domestic life, so I was folding clothes. I was like, “Man, why does this hurt my hands so much? I think I’d better go see somebody.” So I went and I saw a hand specialist. She had me do all these different tests, and every test showed that I had tendonitis in my left hand. Back then, I had an unhealthy lifestyle. And [it was] also because I played a 14 pound P-bass. I don’t own it anymore, but that bass just crushed me. I just wasn’t healthy.

Long story short, they showed me all these great exercises. First of all, you’ve gotta be hydrated. Number two, you’ve gotta warm up before you play. You have to get your cardio up, you’ve got to get your heart rate up, so run upstairs, do push ups, sit ups, whatever. Do stuff that gets your heart rate up, and then when you walk onstage, your blood is already flowing. It’ll keep your body in tune. Your nervous system will be fired up.

Then for stretching, you can do yoga stretching. It’s hard to say over the phone what I do, but a lot of it is just being very conscious of not overextending. You can find a lot of it online, but just make sure you’re not overextending. I’m very hyper-mobile, which is why I can play fast, but I can easily injure myself. I think it’s just always good to stay healthy and stay aware of your body and listen to it. Otherwise, it’s just going to lead to injury.

What’s your approach to fretless melody?

Well, I think the worst thing is to hear fretless players with bad intonation. Don’t get me wrong, I believe there’s really great bass players out there who are playing fretless, but I hear them and I think, “Man, I don’t understand why their intonation is so squirrelly.” I think that number one you’ve gotta work on your intonation. I think there’s a lot of guys that think that it’s just close enough. Upright is a lot harder to have perfected intonation, but I just think that everyone should have the ability to stay in tune when you need to. A lot of that comes just from checking [the note] with open strings, or maybe practicing it with a tuner. You could play a melody, then end on a note and look at the tuner to see if your intonation is there. But really, I think the easiest way is to always check it with other instruments that don’t waver in pitch.

As far as melody, I don’t know. The fretless with me… well I just always got down with it. If I sat down with it right now, I’d probably hit one note and the next thing you know I’d have something. It’s just a more expressive instrument. I think a lot of it comes from listening to classical music when I was in college. Not that I don’t listen to it anymore, I just don’t listen to it as much. But you know, you listen to it and hear what cellos and big basses do, and you want to say “I want to sound like that.”

I think that having a good understanding of harmony and theory always helps, too. I’m not going to lie, I’m not a good one for playing jazz or playing all the chord changes. I’m not good at that, and it’s not my thing. It’s not because of lack of discipline, it’s lack of desire when I was starting out. I could go back and learn it, but I’ve just gotten busy. When I was at Musician’s Institute, I just wanted to shred to keep up with Paul so I would just practice most of my time playing fast. I think if people can really devote their time to playing the changes, that will help them become more melodic.

You’ve got so many pedals and effects. Do you get inspiration from the pedals, or do you just use the pedals to realize your inspiration?

Juan Alderete Pedals and Effects

I think it goes both ways. When I hear something I’m working on and I go, “Oh, that would be tight if it sounded like this.” Or right now, there’s this song that Cedric has on his playlist called “System” by Terri Lynn. I heard that song and I said, “Man, I’m gonna use that bass sound!” [laughs] It’s a synth, but I’m gonna get that sound on my bass, and even a little bit more gnarly sounding. I got inspired by that.

Or if I get a new pedal and I start playing it I’ll get inspired. The latest pedal that I got was this DeArmond phaser. They only made it for a year. It’s the most pointed, sweep-y phaser and it’s just insane. I’m gonna use it a ton on whatever I record next. Sometimes, like the vibrato pedal Omar used a lot on guitar, so we decided we’ll try it on bass. We tried it, and I went, “I gotta go get one.” I use that vibrato pedal so much. “Regions” on the new Big Sir record – that’s fretless with vibrato pedal. It’s better than chorusing to me. Jaco used to use chorusing, but chorusing sounds so dated to me when I put it up to a vibrato pedal.

So it goes both ways. Sometimes the song tells me “Yo, throw this on me” and then I’ll figure out how to configure something. Then sometimes I’ll hear a pedal and say, “I know what I’m using this on.” Because they’re so expensive you have to go to good stores that have boutique pedals. Any of the Boss stuff you can look up on YouTube and you’ll hear what it sounds like. Any of the boutique ones, you gotta go in there and check them out. I think a lot of boutique pedal stores will be popping up in the future. It’s like fixed gear bicycle culture. They have these stores that are coffee houses/bike stores and nerds go in there and drink coffee and talk about bike parts. Well, imagine that same concept with pedals. Drinking espresso and talking about pedals… you could nerd out for hours! [laughs]

Who is your favorite bass player out there right now?

Jonathan Hischke, without a doubt. He was in Broken Bells, and he was in Hella when we toured with System of a Down. He’s in Dot Hacker right now, which has Josh Klinghoffer from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. When their new record comes out, he’s just going to be gigantic in the bass world because the sounds he does on that record [are amazing]. It’s one of those things where he brought the record over and played it, then I said, “Oh shit, how did you get to make a record like this?” It’s not an easy feat to convince your band to let you go crazy on a record.

His story was that first of all, you have to be in a band with your biggest fans. When he told me that, I literally had a tear come to my eye. I mean, Big Sir is that and I can do whatever I want, but I have to make sure I build this foundation for my singer Lisa. I’ve been in the Mars Volta for how long now, and I’m not saying they’re not my biggest fans. They do, of course, love my playing and respect my musicianship, but it’s not my band and they would never let me do that. On Frances, I kind of got to do some stuff, but I’ve never really gotten to do what I want to because it’s Omar’s thing. He has a vision, and I would never ever step on that.

It was just emotional for me because I would love for that to happen someday, where everyone turns to me and says “Go crazy.” To have that situation where you have three other dudes in your band but they’re all encouraging you to break new ground and go crazy, I would love to have that. I had that somewhat in Vato Negro, because Matt the drummer would always be like, “Dude, that’s awesome. Let’s do that.” He was always very positive and encouraging of me. I miss that, because that’s what makes great innovation happen.

Hischke’s record is mind-boggling. On one track he did four bass tracks. There are bass sounds like you’ve never ever heard. Since Josh is in a band with Flea, Flea heard it and flipped out. You can find him on Facebook and Twitter. I’m just his biggest fan. He’s such a musical dude. He’s the reason why I play the Meat Box, he’s the reason why I play the Multiplay Digitech pedal, he’s the reason why I have that DeArmond phaser. He has pedals that I use, too. I mean it goes back and forth. When he and I met we were like brothers.

Any tips on bass players trying to find their sound through pedals?

You know, there’s a lot of bass players getting into pedals right now, and they just buy all these pedals. I’m like, “Did you ever think that just because it’s a low-pass filter, it may not sound good with bass? I played that pedal, and it sucked!” You’ve gotta find the right low-pass filter, not just the most expensive one, or the one that you see a lot of people using. It’s not that easy. You’ve gotta find the one that sounds best with your bass.

I think that the Sovtek Fuzz sounds best with a P-bass. It doesn’t sound with a J-bass, just a P-bass. But, you’ve really gotta get into it. You can’t just buy pedals and think they’re gonna blanket everything you do, because they’re not.

That vibrato pedal sounds unbelievable when you do the Jaco tone. When you use it on a P-pickup, it sounds too muddled for me. I’m not saying I know everything, but I do believe that I’ve seen these dudes’ pedals, and you’ve got to think full spectrum. I’m doing this website right now called PedalsAndEffects.com, and all this is going to be in there. I just want to help dudes with this. It’s not easy.

I’ve been playing with pedals since the early ’90s. I was always looking for something to make my bass sound like an 808. I used to use a Sadowsky preamp, but I used to use that to get into that low frequency to get that big boomy 808 sound. It didn’t always work, and never made the PA and stuff, so it’s constant trial and error.

Imagine if you have a dude who has been trying to do stuff for 20 years, I’m going to have some ideas that are going to save you some time. I know some people will disagree with me, but I’m taking the traditional passive P-bass and J-basses and I’m going to give you that approach, because that’s the most used approach to bass playing. I guess now a lot a guys are using active pickups, but I’m just not a fan of distorting active pickups. I have yet to this day heard a distortion that sounded good with active pickups. When you distort active pickups, that high end is the most annoying thing. It’s not pleasant, and I don’t think most guys think of it.

Interview for No Treble by Kevin Johnson

Big Sir Announce Free Instore Performance at Amoeba Hollywood - March 19th

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 14:34:40 -0800

Amoeba Music’s MONDAYS IN MARCH series continue on March 19th with a FREE all ages in-store performance and signing with Big Sir. Their new album, Before Gardens, After Gardens, is out now on Rodriguez Lopez Productions / Sargent House.

Big Sir at Amoeba Music
March 19th at 7pm
FREE / All Ages

Los Angeles Times Feature: Big Sir talks about creating a new album in the face of illness

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 15:43:05 -0800

During 12 years of sonic partnership, vocalist Lisa Papineau and bassist Juan Alderete’s mesh of meditative lyrics, electro-inflected boom-bap and prog-jazz has combined fury and philosophy in a way that doesn’t have to shout to be heard.

Formed in 1999, their band, Big Sir, brought together the operatic tone of Alderete’s fretless bass with Papineau’s penchant for soulful restraint. On Feb. 7 the band released “Before Gardens, After Gardens,” their first album in six years, via Rodriguez Lopez / Sargent House.

Despite their positive outlook on an album over half a decade in the making, the inspiration it took to make it has taken a serious, very literal toll on their bodies.

Shortly after completing their previous album, “Und Die Scheiße Ändert Sich Immer” in 2006, Papinaeu and Alderete were both diagnosed with life-threatening diseases. Alderete was found to have polycythemia vera, a rare bone marrow disease that makes the body produce too many red blood cells, while Papineau discovered she had multiple sclerosis. And just three weeks before the release of the album, heavily steeped in reflections on life and death, Papineau was also diagnosed with cancer.

Despite their health obstacles, both have been incessantly busy with projects ranging from Alderete’s work as the bassist for The Mars Volta to Papineau’s solo career and collaborations with artists like Air and M83 and ME & LP with Matt Embree of RX Bandits. But even with so many other projects to occupy their time, both admit that their shared sense of humor, affinity for bass and West Coast gangsta rap creates a bond that keeps them together.

Ahead of Big Sir’s gig at Harvelle’s in Long Beach on Monday, Papineau and Alderete spoke to Pop & Hiss about crafting their new album and facing mortality head-on.

Pop & Hiss: What is special about the chemistry you two have with this project as a bassist and vocalist?

Lisa Papineau: Musically for me, the thing I responded to as a singer was the tone of the fretless bass and how much like a voice it sounded and being able to kind of sing along with it, not like you’re a solo singer. And with this project, all the comments about my voice are “it’s whispery sounding.” Well, it’s not whispery and it took a lot to find an organic tone that’s playing along with the bassline and I don’t want to disrespect the space that bassline creates. I’m going to try to slip under it.

How are both of you doing these days after being blindsided with major illnesses right before embarking on the new album?

LP: I’m really struggling with walking and for the past year I haven’t really been able to use my hands. They feel like they’re being squeezed with rubber bands. But more importantly, we’ve spent all these years writing this album that’s a reflection on life and death and accepting death and being OK to move to the next realm. And just as we finish it I find out I have cancer. And I’m just saying to Juan: “You’ve got to be kidding me. This is is like a made-for-TV movie, or like payback from the universe.”

Juan Alderete: Even though we were getting hit with all these health issues, it won’t affect our intent to present this music live and on record and through artwork. Lisa still does all the artwork for the albums. Through medication for my disease, I’m fine. My disease tends to work over time; I feel great right now but in five years I don’t know. Some people, this disease hits them hard.

Aside from your health, was there anything else that what accounted for the six-year gap between albums?

LP: It started in 2006 and then there was downtime because we were both making other records and writing things here and there. But we got a lot more hard-core about 2009 and we ended up cutting out a lot of stuff and doing new songs and we ended up doing a shorter record and using some songs for different projects. Also, we worked on it in between traveling.

Your newer songs seem to have a bit more of an electronic influence than past records. Did you notice any particular stylistic changes on this album?

JA: On the first record we used SB 1200 and MPCs or drum machines. But nowadays we’ve got Logic [beat-making software] and it’s so much easier. Lisa and I love hip-hop and this is kind of our way of creating hip-hop-type music. We might’ve made this kind of record back then, but it was just harder.

LP: We actually recorded a lot of live stuff and then chopped it up. The elements are still the same but maybe we just oriented toward more digitally cut-up stuff which is more hip-hop or electro.

Talk about some of your musical tastes outside of some of the other projects you’ve been in.

JA: I rep L.A. hip-hop over anything any day. And it’s got to be gangster. Lisa was way deeper into Warren G than I was. Before her I’d just gotten into his hits, but she was like, “You’d better check out that album, fool,” so I ended up getting into it even more. But for the record, Rodney O and Joe Cooley are the ones who started gangsta rap. They were the first ones to really go hard in their rhymes. But, seriously, I cannot find a Rodney O and Joe Cooley T-shirt anywhere. I want an “Everlasting Bass” T-shirt. I would kill for that.

Big Sir performs with the Vespertines and C-Gak Monday at Harvelle’s, 206 The Promenade N, Long Beach. (562) 239-3700, www.longbeach.harvelles.com. 9:30 p.m. $5. 21+

Interview by: Nate Jackson

LA WEEKLY Feature: Big Sir

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 12:54:00 -0800

Big Sir Had Serious Health Scares. So They Made an Album About Life and Death

Six years after the members of Big Sir were forced to confront their mortality head-on, singer-composer Lisa Papineau and bassist Juan Alderete are back with their third album of jazz-prog-electronic jams, Before Gardens, After Gardens.

Right around the time they were finishing their last album Und Die Scheiße Ändert Sich Immer, they both fell ill and were diagnosed with serious diseases. Alderete discovered he had polycythemia vera, a rare bone marrow disease where the body produces too many blood cells, while Papineau was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. “The bottom fell out,” says Papineau. “In the midst of this juncture, Juan dreamed a song, woke up, recorded it and emailed it to me in Paris. He said, ‘I know it may be corny to say this, but from now on everything we do really has to make a difference … even if only to us … there’s no point any more to do less.’”

Papineau and Alderete were introduced to each other in 1996 through her band Pet, which she co-founded with composer Tyler Bates (Watchmen, 300). Three years later, their mutual love of ’80s tunes, West Coast hip-hop, and bass led to the formation of Big Sir.

The two were sitting around with their friend, producer Mickey Petralia, trying to think of a proper name. “I think we said something like it should be a name that could be equally used by a 13-year-old’s punk rock grrrl group or a hardcore gay activist group, something tough and fierce-sounding to contradict the ‘94.7 The Wave’ band names the music might invoke,” she says.

Big Sir released its self-titled debut album in 2000 and an album of remixes the following year. Around this time, Alderete created another project, Vato Negro, and later joined The Mars Volta. Meanwhile, Papineau continued working on her solo career and released her debut album, Night Moves, in 2006. She’s since worked with Air, M83, Matt Embree of (Rx Bandits), Jun Miyake, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and many others.

Their latest album is an exploration and reflection of life and death. Its title comes from a poem by Indian mystic poet Kabir about seeking peace and knowledge within. “For me, though,” said Papineau, “what the title evokes is earthly gardens and their heavenly or other-dimensional counterparts. One garden to tend to now and not take for granted, and the other garden not to fear, to see as a place of comfort and deliverance.” - By Ivan Fernandez

Sound Colour Vibration Review: Before Gardens After Gardens

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 19:08:00 -0800

Rodriguez Lopez Productions and Sargent House have been expanding on dozens of releases over the last few years with the plethora of artists that exists between the two. Connected at the heart by Cathy Pellow, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and many others, this is a movement of sound and vision that is gaining considerable reputation as progressive minds are evolving even further from their origins. Boris, Fang Island, Native, Zechs Marquise, Le Butcherettes, Hella, there are so many genre defining artists to name that it’s hard to really sum up the label and Big Sir is one group out of the entire whole that we have been anticipating a new LP from the most. 2012 has been a phenomenal year for music culture already and the arrival of the latest Big Sir album, Before Gardens After Gardens, only adds more depth to the shape of this year. Based around the multi-instrumental and vocal work of Lisa Papineau and the Jaco Pastorius inspired tones of bassist of The Mars Volta, Juan Alderete, Big Sir is rooted in as many fields of electronica as they are in heavy doses of jazz, pop, hip-hop and so much more. It’s a sound all its own and genre definition becomes some what meaningless in the emotional power and provocative nature of the music. 2000 saw the release of their self titled debut release on the short lived Mootron Records and the follow up, Und Die Scheiße Ändert Sich Immer, would be released 6 years later to further critical acclaim. Und Die Scheiße Ändert Sich Immer was given the special vinyl treatment on the Sonny Kay and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez owned imprint Gold Standard Laboratories (GSL). Exactly 6 years later we find a new gestation period and a new cycle of life from Big Sir and it feels right on time with the latest Big Sir offering Before Gardens After Gardens. 11 songs and a little under 40 minutes in length, Before Gardens After Gardens is the summation of the last 12 years of the band and what feels like a launching pad for where Big Sir is going to take their sound in the future. The smooth, sonically blissful fretless bass work from Juan Aldrete creates a florescence that saturates itself into the mix. The bass tones pick up in such a frequency and full mode of sound that it knocks the middle and higher register of the wave patterns into the center of the mix. Stanley Clarke, Jaco, Ron Carter, there are only a dozen out of 1000′s bass players who can add this level of emotional quality into the bass foundations and Juan is walking in these steps actively with every record he touches. Adding a nice pair of headphones only intensifies the listen and adds to the perceptual depth of what long time The Mars Volta engineer Robert Carranza added to this LP.

‘Region’s begins Before Gardens After Gardens, with Juan’s unmistakable eerie fretless bass tone taking no time to pronounce itself and become a dominating aura of color. Not many bass players can play with such class, tonality and style where every approach is accentuated into tones rarely used and a feeling and depth of every note is constant. Lisa Papineau’s vocal layering is heavenly, stirring up an imaginative circle of emotional cycles, with crescendos and descending break down sections at every corner. The drum pattern is tightly grooved and Juan never looses focus of the pocket, always descending and ascending with Lisa as the intention and scope of the piece dives deeper and deeper into Lisa’s oddly shaped lyrical presentation. As the vocals cut out, there is a phenomenal and ancient sounding sample that stands as tall and powerful as a 1000 year old tree. This moment allows a drastic setting to change and the song cycles onward from the basic foundation of melody is started with. Never before have I thought of Timbaland and Jaco Pastorius in the same song, but the tones make my mind wander unlike any branching of music I have been exposed to. The ending section of ‘Regions’ concludes with a blissful state of electronics as the drum patterns become more intricate and the samples and synth work become more saturated into the field of sound. There is a softness to Lisa’s vocal work that balances the music from the synthetic barrage of metallic sheeting. Juan dives into the same book of emotions on his bass and the two become seamless through sound. The piece ‘The Ladder’ shows this subtle interaction between the two in the most delicate way. Lisa starts off the piece with a very warm and large sounding synth part that is met with cascading small layers of extra samples and synth but each cycle is a shading or shadow from a bigger piece that doesn’t fully come to focus. Juan uses his fretless again and runs long slides up and down of his vintage bass, waxing the music over with a very glossy and elegant feeling that only certain types of stringed instrumentation can bring out. Juan’s technique pushes this sound to a very dreamy state with the synth coloring further aspects of the dream in place. Lisa never looses focus even as the song becomes more dreamy and her vocals are as subdued and breath taking as the overall mood of the piece.

‘The Kindest Hour’ the song that follows ‘The Ladder’ is easily my favorite song on the record. With a silky smooth and heavy bass line that ends on a series of harmonics, the vocal tandem between Matt Embree of RX Bandits and Lisa is out of this world. The organ builds on a layer of fluid and electric emotional responses, bubbling upward and upwards, becoming more pronounced as the vocals act in the same manner. There is a type of spiritual feeling as the under tones become more clear and Juan guides the band from beginning to end. There is an elaborate scheme of drum work, the type of drum work that leaves all the room for the melody but adds enough depth to fill on the needed gaps of space. The second half of the song is really built on a head nodding groove, with beautiful, more pronounced and still in the pocket drum work. The level of beauty in the vocals makes this song shine so bright, even with the eerie break down section that eludes away from vocals and introduces a very auspicious and intriguing sound. Once the drums cut loose and you hear the full on groove of where this song goes, everyone becomes synced in heavily and the type of euphoric ambiance of Lisa’s under pinned statements bring a very special feeling to this song. ‘The Kindest Hour’ is the reason I love this band so much and can’t stop coming back to this album. It’s one of the few songs I have put on repeat in a long time for lengths that extend beyond an hour.

Before Gardens After Gardens sheds a lot of ground and features a lot of members and friends of the ORLP and Sargent House families. Guests include Deantoni Parks, Jonathan Hischke, Matt Embree, Teri Gender Bender, Cedric Bixler Zavala, among many others. Electrifying and a big representation of the Los Angeles world that has dominated the lives of both of the duo’s relationship as friends and musical colleagues, Before Gardens After Gardens is a conceptually beautifully ride. It serves as a representation of two musical collaborators and friends of over a decade who have utilized every medium possible based on their strict schedules and obligations to other projects to create music that they love and feel the world needs to hear. Don’t miss out on getting a copy of Before Gardens, After Gardens, one of our favorites of the year thus far.

-Erik Otis

Big Sir “Before Gardens Afters Gardens”
Rodriguez Lopez Productions / Sargent House

Regions
Ready On The Line
Infidels
Right Action
The Ladder
The Kindest Hour
Old Blood
Born With A Tear
Be Brave Go On
Our Pleasant Home
1 Thousand Petals

Buy Before Gardens After Gardens and much more @ Hello Merch

Also, don’t miss out on the interview we conducted with Lisa and Juan of Big Sir this year.

Dirty Impounds Albums of the Week: Big Sir Before Gardens After Gardens Review

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 10:15:38 -0800

Big Sir: Before Gardens After Gardens
(Rodriguez Lopez Productions/Sargent House)

Just lovely, haunting, too, and thought provoking like an itch that wakes one in the night, suddenly aware of some sore spot stirred up that now must be attended. The latest work from this 12-year-and-counting collaboration between bassist-composer Juan Alderete (The Mars Volta) and sublime singer-composer Lisa Papineau (Air, M83, ME & LP) cements their place as one of the coolest, adamantly modern duos of past few decades – think a much less depressive Suicide, a grittier Yaz, or early Eurythmics with less constrictions and you’re part way there – with Before Gardens After Gardens (released February 7). This is the kind of soundtrack one would want in their ear buds walking through the grimy streets of Blade Runner looking for love beneath the blimp billboards offering exciting lives in the off-world colonies. Okay, it’s maybe not that futuristic, but Big Sir does reach into our collective metal chest and squeeze a few fresh beats from our buried ticker, a gently shocking touch for infidels awash in wanton pride, raising heads from the ground, encouragement to be brave even as we’re falling down. There’s some beautiful beat science here, and Papineau’s willingness to use her voice like an instrument and not just a lyric delivery system keeps the colors splashing. Tying it all together is Alderete’s extraordinary bass work, a conversational, very alive presence snaking into every crevice, a thing of feel and instinct that could steal the show if he were less careful or deft. Taken together with well-chosen, musically appropriate guest turns from bassist Joanthan Hischke (Broken Bells), violist Heather Lockie (Mike Watt, Listing Ship), drummer Deantoni Parks & Cedric Bixler Zavala (The Mars Volta), Money Mark, David Sims (Jesus Lizard) Matthew Embree (RX Bandits) and others, Gardens is a testament to longing and dreaming out loud, yearning given melody and rhythm for modern times and beyond. (DC)

Juan Alderete creates the "Vato Vibrato" Tone Print

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:30:48 -0800

In this video Big Sir’s own Juan Alderete creates a TC Electronic TonePrint for the Shaker Vibrato pedal. He names the TonePrint “Vato Vibrato”.

I Paint My Mind: Big Sir – Before Gardens After Gardens

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 09:26:00 -0800

Big Sir is a collaboration between kindred spirits – two people who’s interests, skill, and acumen converge in an incredible melding of aesthetics. They include trip hop & down tempo with rhythms that sometimes break out, bass lines that bring you with them, and dust it all with some of the most heart-tingling vocals you’ll ever hear. Big Sir is of course Juan Alderete (Racer X, The Mars Volta) & Lisa Papineau (ME&LP), and for those of us who consider their previous full length “Und Die Schiebe Andert Sich Immer” a favorite, news of this record was anticipated highly. We at IPMM have been blown away by “Before Gardens After Gardens.”

The record opens with “Regions” as Ms. Papineau softly reminds us that “you’re with us all the time.” The track incorporates supremely tasteful programming with one of Juan’s overtly round and bubbly bass lines, that sounds like a happy bee hive. The duo’s rhythmic sensibilities inspire moving feet on “Ready On The Line”, while “Infidels” evidences Lisa’s unique ability to float over instrumentals as if her vocals were there first. “Right Action” is a tribute to Juan’s love for the Squarepusher realm of bass work, and he kills it. If this track doesn’t implore your inner video game player to take a daytrip, we have little hope for you. The albums’ true victory is in the balance achieved in the ebb and flow of its trajectory. “The Ladder” and “The Kindest Hour” are testaments to this trend, and create a lovely gray space for you to chill out in. We’re also so in love with “Be Brave Go On” and “1 Thousand Petals” which lowers you to the albums conclusion as gently as we could have ever hoped. The album features collaborators such as Cedric Bixler-Zavala, Matthew Embree, Teri Gender Bender, and more…

BUY or LISTEN To Album here &amp;amp;amp;lt;a href=”http://bigsir.bandcamp.com/album/before-gardens-after-gardens” _mce_href=”http://bigsir.bandcamp.com/album/before-gardens-after-gardens”&amp;amp;amp;gt;Before Gardens After Gardens by Big Sir&amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;gt;

Big Sir Announce EU/UK Tour and Two dates in California

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 09:05:00 -0800

Big Sir — the longtime collaboration between singer/composer Lisa Papineau and bassist/composer Juan Alderete (The Mars Volta) - announce Spring 2012 EU and UK headlining tour dates in support of their forthcoming new album, Before Gardens After Gardens coming out on February 7th. Please see complete dates below. In anticipation of this new release, Prefix Mag just premiered another new track called “The Kindest Hour” available to download/stream HERE.

RCRD LBL recently posted the song “Our Pleasant Home” (featuring special guest Cedric Bixler-Zavala of The Mars Volta on drums) which is available to download/stream HERE. Back in December, Big Sir premiered the shimmering pop song, “Ready On the Line” which is available to download/stream HERE.

BIG SIR USA
Feb 20 - Hollywood, CA @ Harvard & Stone w/ Gregory Rogove, Eureka The Butcher & Sadah Luna, & Devendra Banhart DJ’ing. - FREE SHOW
Feb 27 - Long Beach, CA @ Harvelle’s w/ The Vespertines & C-Gak

BIG SIR EU/UK Tour 2012
Apr 7, 2012 - Namur, (BE) @ Sergent Pepper’s
Apr 8, 2012 - Berlin, (DE) @ Spirale Kulturzentrum
Apr 9, 2012 - Hamburg, (DE) @ HafenKlang
Apr 10, 2012 - Solingen, (DE) @ Waldmeister e.V. Raum für Kultur
Apr 11, 2012 - Leipzig, (DE) @ Ilses Erika
Apr 12, 2012 - Munich, (DE) @ Ampere
Apr 13, 2012 - Innsbruck, (AT) @ Los Gurkos
Apr 14, 2012 - Bolzano, (IT) @ Vintola 18
Apr 15, 2012 - Molfetta, (IT) @ Le Macerie
Apr 16, 2012 - Copertino, LE (IT) @ I Sotterranei Arci
Apr 17, 2012 - Rome, (IT) @ Locanda Atlantide
Apr 19, 2012 - Trieste, (IT) @ Etnoblog
Apr 20, 2012 - Rimini, (IT) @ Velvet Club
Apr 21, 2012 - Livorno, (IT) @ The Cage Theatre
Apr 22, 2012 - Milano, (IT) @ La Sacrestia
Apr 24, 2012 - Birmingham, (UK) @ The Birmingham Ballroom / The End
Apr 25, 2012 - Manchester, (UK) @ Sound Control
Apr 26, 2012 - Swansea, WA (UK) @ The Garage
Apr 27, 2012 - Bristol, (UK) @ The Croft
Apr 28, 2012 - London, (UK) @ The Old Blue Last - Binnacle Festival
May 01, 2012- Grenoble, (FR) @ Le Ciel
May 02, 2012- Paris, (FR) @ Le Trianon - Night 1 of 2
May 03, 2012- Paris, (FR) @ Le Trianon - Night 2 of 2

CLICK FOR FULL SHOW INFO & UPDATES

The Daily Texan Reviews: Before Gardens After Gardens

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:54:10 -0800

Big Sir experiments with new sounds

The longtime collaboration between The Mars Volta’s Juan Alderete and singer-songwriter Lisa Papineau (well known for contributing vocals to M83), Big Sir’s minimal setup harbors a complex atmosphere that is eerie, yet absolutely intriguing. The duo retains that quality in their latest release Before Gardens After Gardens, the group’s third studio album.

Album opener “Regions” begins with Alderete’s distinguishable bass playing, as Papineau quietly coos overhead. The orchestral sounds that accompany Alderete and Papineau only add to the song’s haunting demeanor, segueing into the more upbeat “Ready On the Line.”

“Get so high,” sings Papineau over hip-hop whistles and bells in “Ready On the Line,” the song’s melody so memorable and infectious that you can’t help but hum it. The shrill scream that comes from Papineau towards the end of the song is brilliant and emphatic, as if the vocalist has overcome some unspoken challenge that calls for celebration.

“Old Blood” starts off with a buzzing, menacing guitar that battles against Alderete’s distorted fuzz-bass, with Papineau caught in between. “One, two, three, four, five,” says Papineau monotonously, the countdown unleashing a barrage of Bjork-like eeriness and forceful drums. Both songs showcase Papineau and Alderete’s admiration and respect for one another. They both feed off of each other: if one is silent and reserved, the other follows behind, ascending and descending with intensity simultaneously.

Before Gardens After Gardens finds success in its simplified approach. The album retains a Miles Davis, “less is more” mentality, allowing songs and the ideas that accompany them to flourish and breathe. The guest features on the album add to its mystique, from The Mars Volta’s Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Deantoni Parks to Beastie Boys collaborator Money Mark Ramos-Nishita. Each contributor’s part serves as a small piece to Big Sir’s enthralling puzzle.

Although the album is often dark and somber, there are undertones of celebration underneath it all. As Papineau states on the band’s website, Before Gardens After Gardens is an album of “dance and celebration in death’s insistent embrace,” serving as a testament to the unknown, and an optimistic acceptance of it.

Nanobot Rock Two Reviews / Two Takes on Before Gardens After Gardens

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:25:40 -0800

-Greg’s Take- Big Sir: Before Gardens After Gardens

For the last twelve years there has been a collaborative effort which has flown under the mainstream radar that can only leave us wondering Why hasn’t the world taken notice?

The musical talents of Lisa Papineau, who brings experience from M83 and the Watchmen soundtrack, and Juan Alderete, who has donated ripping bass lines to Racer X and The Mars Volta, have been experimenting under the moniker Big Sir for over a decade. This year they are set to grace us with Before Gardens After Gardens, the third release under their combined efforts.

Before Gardens After Gardens combs the landscape of dynamic experimental diversity with tenacity and expertise. Papineau’s vocals deliver grace and elegance that fits between Imogen Heap and Natasha Khan with a personality and attitude all of her own, putting her in a class of such greats, but most importantly aids in driving this release home.

The album begins unapologetically with “Regions,” an immediate intertwining dance of Papineau’s voice and Alderete’s bass. The mesh of progressive vocals and instrumentals established early on in the album garners the attention of anyone and everyone and should not be missed. Sure, Before Gardens After Gardens brings in a plethora of immensely talented musicians ranging from Money Mark Ramos-Nishita to Matt Embree and Cedric Bixler-Zavala, just to name a few. The true beauty within can be found in the compilation and vision established by the heart and soul of the album; one which could not be formed without the obvious passion from Papineau and Alderete.

As you transcend the plains of modern musical thought with Big Sir, there is one glaring disappointment with the album. It is less than forty minutes long. When looking at an album of such great songs and composition we have to find something to keep it in check.

The last twelve years have brought two musicians to this point. It is a culmination of superb entertainment thrown into eleven tracks. This is the kind of album we’ve waited for to kick off 2012. The bar has been raised for albums this year and at this rate, it’s going to be a great one.

-Clay’s Take- Big Sir: Before Gardens After Gardens

One thing that makes the arts so fascinating is the social stratification between the audience, the artists and the people who bring the two together. Every person views a piece differently and various things speak to them or draw them in. Ask someone “what’s your favorite album?” If the person works in a cubicle inAnytown,USA, the album is generally something that universally speaks to people. If they are a singer, chances are it is an album with astounding vocals. If they are a drummer, they will probably say a hip-hop album but secretly it is a Neil Peart venture. Ask a sound engineer and the answer is an album no one has heard of because they “really enjoy the sound editing and the mix.”

The thing is the sound engineer is the one who has the most qualified opinion and their favorite album is one you probably should have heard of and should be in heavy rotation in your library. There should be an annual award for “Best Album You’ve Never Heard Of” at the Grammys and it should be handed out by a balding guy with a pony tail, plastic frames and a black Zildjian t-shirt. In fact, we’re going to start one right now.

2012 has received its first entry for the BAYNHO Award in the form of Before Gardens After Gardens by Big Sir, a duo featuring Lisa Papineau (best known for adding her vocals to M83) and Juan Alderete (bassist for The Mars Volta). The album, in all of its lo-fi minimalist splendor is meant to be enjoyed in its entirety, not to be cherry-picked for individual tracks.

The album lurches out of the gate with an awkward drunken stumble as “Regions” starts immediately with a funky bass line and Papineau’s smoky voice. After the initial awkward step, the album settles in its stride with expertly timed peaks and valleys of emotion. Each track is a svelte bed of drum machine and synthesizer sounds overlaid by haunting vocals and quirky, catchy rhythms. Through the 38 minutes, the music paces itself like a long con and nestles into your subconscious. It rears its head at times like in “Old Blood” just to let you know it is still there, coloring in your day. By the time the penultimate track, “Our Pleasant Home,” rolls around you realize Big Sir has snared you with their lo-fi groove and you are hooked.

The sounds of Before Gardens After Gardens are rich and funky, but are niche enough that it’ll be a tough sell for mainstream consumption. On one hand, that is unfortunate because everyone should have a chance for Big Sir’s music to permeate their consciousness. On the other, it gives me another fake award to hand out.

I love my job.

Behind the Hype Review: Before Gardens After Gardens

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:11:27 -0800

With over two dozen play throughs over the past couple weeks, my first album submission of the year puts me on a good note. Big Sir’s latest album, Before Gardens After Gardens, is their first LP in many a year. Comprised of the beautiful songstress Lisa Papineau (known for her work with Air and M83) and legendary The Mars Volta bassist Juan Alderete, Big Sir is a staple of the Sargent House / Rodriguez Lopez Productions family.

Returning to this album is Juan’s signature high treble Fender bass sound that made me fall in love with Non-Stop Drummer from their self-titled album. Also returning is the lovely layering of Lisa’s voice throughout the album. It always made me wonder what would happen if she had backup singers in tow at the live show. But I digress, on to the favorites of the album.

The second track, Ready on the Line is catchy as all hell, with a high tempo drum machine and heavy voice layering. As one of the singles from the album, I’m sure Lisa will break out her next level dance moves at their upcoming Los Angles shows.

This album and tour is pulling great features in for the ride. The sixth track, The Kindest Hour, features RX Bandits front man Matthew Embree with echoing vocals. The bass and strings are almost much to be admired, and had me wonder if it was in fact stand-up bass in this track.

My favorite track is Be Brave Go On. With accordions, Juan’s hypnotizing bass line, and odd timing, it was a no brainer. The lyrics are very relevant to this particular moment in my life, so those are automatic points in the book. The breakdown toward the end of the song carries the powerful mantra “Be brave and thankful all the way on, all the way, all the brave go on”, coupled with sharp synth to close out the song.

Big Sir has the ability to demand attention, while also being ambient and warming the mind from behind the eyes. The album releases on February 7^th, and the small Los Angles tour before their European tour starts soon, so check out the dates, and join us.

Last time, Matt Embree and Cedric Bixler-Zavala came through, and Chris Tsagakis is a for sure guest this time around, so who knows what may happen. ~Flak

PREFIX Track Premiere: "The Kindest Hour" by Big Sir

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:38:00 -0800

“The Kindest Hour” will appear right at the halfway mark on Big Sir’s upcoming 11-track album, Before Gardens After Gardens, which makes me think it could be an important transitional song. Singer/composer Lisa Papineau (Air, M83) and bassist/composer Juan Alderete (The Mars Volta, Racer X) create this pretty, eerie (also pretty eerie) tune with help from Heather Lockie and her moody viola playing, which is contrasted by Alderete’s smooth, clean bass. Also featuring Cedric Bixler Zavala (The Mars Volta) on drums and Matthew Embree (RX Bandits) on guest vocals.

Although subdued, Papineau’s melodic singing is of major note here, as it adds dimension to her partner’s muscle and, overall, fills out the otherwise sparse music. The voice and the instrument meet up here and there, eventually creating a watershed of sound that boils over as if you turned the stove off a second too late. The result is something like a cathartic overflow of warmth—thanks, in part, to the blanketing organ—ultimately faced with an icy wash of male-female vocals. “Hour,” which you can stream below, is a compelling audio embodiment of feelings that could be as strongly expressed visually as they are here. Big Sir’s Before Gardens After Gardens will be available Feb. 7 on Rodriguez Lopez Productions/Sargent House.

Bowlegs Album Review: Big Sir's Before Gardens After Gardens

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 11:51:38 -0800

Big Sir’s third record is a twitchy creature at heart. Smooth trails of melody are stirred up with a flickering set of rhythms, soft synth lines and various guises of bass guitar. The duo – Lisa Papineau, and The Mars Volta bassist Juan Alderete – continually tweak their output, playing with elements of soul, funk and even the odd foray into drum and bass BPMs.

Regions opens the album with a funked, sliding bass-line and clap-happy backbeat. Papineau’s vocal breathes intimately across the sparse backing – synths fill the glacial atmosphere. The minimal approach is nothing new, but Big Sir have enough creativity to remain listenable. So where some songs might fail to connect in an emotional capacity (the looping break that is Ready on the Line is of little interest), there are tracks like Old Blood which find new territory in distorted guitars and a gutsier approach.

Be Brave Go On has Alderte on full funk mode, his bass slapping (in a thoughtful manner) while Papineua displays her ethereal and hushed intonation. It doesn’t really go anywhere, but as the title line is repeated with more and more intent it becomes a strange highlight. It’s followed with Our Pleasant Home, the live drum sound and electronic strings becoming a hypnotic canvas for the Papineau to display her falsetto edge.

Big Sir have probably made their best record yet in Before Gardens After Gardens, trickling icy soul and fiddly patterns into the mix, all making for a set well worth a listen.