http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/Mu ... cle/307911Lanois embraces digitalReleasing new CD on website has got producer excited about the future
Mar 01, 2008 04:30 AM
Greg Quill
Entertainment Columnist
Despite his reputation as a sonic purist with eccentric retro peccadilloes, Daniel Lanois isn't a snob about digital downloading, provided artists get paid for their work.
In fact, just before Christmas, the music producer, guitarist, songwriter and – since the debut of his self-referential documentary, Here Is What Is, at the Toronto International Film Festival last September – filmmaker embraced the digital future wholeheartedly by releasing his latest CD, a generously embellished audio version of the music in the film, solely in a digital format.
Well, two formats, if you want to be picky. And when it comes to sound quality, Lanois, the much-lauded and abundantly rewarded producer of U2, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, the Neville Brothers, Peter Gabriel and Robbie Robertson, among others, is very picky.
His 18-song opus, available at redfloorecords.com, features primo American drummer Brian Blade, Canadian organ/piano virtuoso Garth Hudson (The Band), and an assortment of stellar sidemen working with him in studios as far apart as Morocco and Lanois's own recently acquired facility in Toronto.
It is the first album, to his knowledge, to be made available in full, high-fidelity WAV files as well as compressed, iPod-friendly standard MP3s.
"It's too early to tell if one format is more popular," says the Hull, Que.-born, Hamilton, Ont.-raised Lanois during a recent phone interview from Los Angeles. He admits he prefers listening to music in full audio resolution – on CD – rather than MP3.
"Listening to MP3s on earbuds is like watching Gone With the Wind on a cellphone. In time, compressed audio files may be a historical footnote, a technical aberration. But if that's what people want, I'm going to sell it to them.
"We're not operating on the Radiohead level," he adds, referring to the controversial experiment last year by the mega-hit British pop band who ditched their record label, EMI, and released their seventh album, In Rainbows, through their website as a digital download, asking buyers to pay the price they thought the music was worth.
"I am trying to do a similar thing, just more quietly. I'm operating a neighbourhood corner store, not a big-box outlet."
True to his chronicler's instincts, Lanois is also making album graphics and liner notes part of the $9.99 download packages (individual tracks cost 99 cents).
"I activated the site as a way of controlling my own music," he continues.
Here Is What Is was released without the benefit of a media blitz and the brouhaha expected to promote important work by an artist/auteur of Lanois's calibre and renown. Everything he does on his own behalf, including his performances in unusual and off-circuit venues (such as invitation-only guerrilla performances and a gig at the Apple Store in downtown Manhattan), has a deliberate, low-pitched ring to it, the better to emphasize the distance between his modus operandi and the hoopla of the commercial music business.
"There was campaign, no ramp-up," he says. "I wanted to set up an operation that allows me to act spontaneously, to record music and make it available immediately to anyone who might be interested."
In time, he hopes to do just that. He says he'd like to offer digital downloads from his unreleased back catalogue, as well as "hidden" tracks and musical sketches recorded in the middle of the night, then mixed and uploaded hot off the plate for breakfast-time buyers.
"The record industry doesn't do this. I like obscure and ambient music, and I figure there must be others who want to know they can get it on the Internet when the mood strikes.
"It keeps me enthusiastic about the future of music. It keeps that side of myself alive. Not everything can be a hit . . . not everything is a radio," Lanois says.
"A digital website is fantastic. You can choose what you want to play and record. You're not driven by demographics. Musicians get to make the decisions. When we go to a restaurant we don't ask a third party to select our food; we expect the chef to be in control, to offer a fine display.
"I've always wondered who owns the airwaves . . . they're public property that have been put in the hands of commercial broadcasters. With the Internet, we have an alternative. I've always been a pirate at heart."
Right now Lanois would like us to know that, like Radiohead, he's following through on the digital release with a hard-copy CD version of Here Is What Is, to hit record stores March 18.
"That was always my intention. I like record stores. It worries me that they're disappearing. They're part of a bohemian society that's slowly becoming invisible."
Five years ago, Lanois took a break from producing other artists in order to concentrate on his own career as a writer, multi-instrumentalist, performer and recording artist.
Now he's in L.A. preparing to begin work on U2's next recording with British producer and regular collaborator Brian Eno, who is featured in the movie and audio versions of Here Is What Is as a kind of mentor and guide.
"We're back where we started. But I keep up a balanced diet. I'm happy performing live – that's one thing that has never changed and never will. It's where music begins and ends."
Lanois is also planning to produce a solo album for Hudson – "just with piano, I think, and then I'll get him onstage with a Steinway at Massey Hall, in a nice Italian suit and a fedora, let him play whatever comes into his head and send him back home with a big wad of money."
And he wants to keep exploring the artistic ground between music and film, he adds.
"Wherever I go, I try to have a good cameraman around, and I take a bunch of hand-held digital recorders and place them in strategic positions. I try not to let anything slip away. And I'm always on the lookout for a good filmmaker who needs a good soundtrack.
"I'm always writing, just not fighting the way I used to. There's a song on my album called `I'm Not Fighting Anymore,' and it's about moving from one chapter of my life to the next. At a certain age, you look at the world in a different way.
"I'm not fighting anymore . . . but that doesn't mean I'm fighting any less."
) to be sure.