luke mcgarry

Download: The Juan MacLean ‘Give Me Every Little Thing’

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(from Less Than Human on DFA)

There’s Juan MacLean the man and there’s the band—who’s in it officially?
There’s me, and Nick Millhiser, who has always been in my band, who is now doing something called Holy Ghost on DFA. Jerry Fuchs who has always been the drummer is back. Then Nancy Whang, who sang on a lot of stuff with me but has never really played live with me before. Now she’s full-on singing in the band. My new album—it’s mostly vocal-oriented songs with a lot of back and forth singing between she and I. I do the same I’ve always done. Singing and playing keyboards. Some percussion stuff. Generally the process is—I sit at home writing and recording stuff into my computer and get sort of rough outlines of songs together. Then I go to our big studio in New York—the DFA studio—and start replacing all the parts with live playing. Like Jerry the drummer will come in and replace whatever drums I’ve programmed. We go back and start replacing everything, so everything is more or less played live. At DFA, everybody here—a huge part of what we do is about the fact that we have outrageous amounts of vintage gear. It’s actually really expensive. We record to tape a lot the time still, which people haven’t really done for years. And we have a lot of synthesizers and things that are really rare. I feel like it’s one of those things that if people don’t really necessarily know what that is, it definitely comes out in the recording.
Based on ‘Happy House,’ some were led to believe the new stuff may be a bit ‘happier.’
My last 12” ‘Happy House’ is a happy song—obviously it has the word ‘happy’ in it. But it’s probably the happiest song on the album. I’d say the entire album is based around the theme of relationships gone bad. There’s a lot of duets between Nancy and I. Actually a lot of it is very unhappy. There’s a lot of dark things on it—that’s for sure. I’d say a lot of it is based on things that have happened with me and Nancy. We like the idea of a male-to-female back-and-forth kind of thing.
A prominent theme in life.
Yeah, that’s the thing about it. It’s one of those things that’s unavoidable. Certainly everybody’s been there. Beforehand, I made a concerted effort to map out an album that was basically duets between Nancy and I that dealt with a lot of that stuff. I had the idea before I started making the album. In the past it hasn’t been that way at all. In the past it’s been much more doing things a song at a time.
How does your worldview enter your music?
Oh, it’s a depressing answer actually. And I think it’s probably true for Nancy as well. I think a lot of things have to do with the fact that we both have played in pretty big bands and traveled a lot and lived that kind of life. And again—so much of the album is about how—for both of us—relationships being destroyed over and over again by people and having to put up with that.
Do you have to choose between music or your art and having your life in order?
Yes. Definitely. Yeah. I think it’s a definite choice—it seems really that Nancy and I have both had to face and deal with that more than once.
So music comes from a turbulent place for you.
I’d say it certainly does.
Does something have to be dark or heavy to leave a mark?
I think that if I’m honest, or even if I’m not honest, that is such a big part of who I am that it’s impossible for it not to come out in music that I make.
You taught English for a while, right?
When my first music career was over I went back to school and got certified to teach and started teaching.
Juvenile delinquents?
I ended up in a lock-down facility for high school-age kids. It was pretty intense.
How long did you do that for?
Three or four years. Not too long. I really liked it. But I ended up making music all over again. Sort of got dragged into it.
By your good friend?
James Murphy. And that’s how DFA started. Literally the label started as I had made my first 12”. We were trying to think of where to put it out and that’s how DFA was formed. We put out that first 12”—‘By The Time I Get to Venus.’
What does DFA stand for?
Death From Above. Which we sort of downplayed very quickly. After 9/11… Whenever we’d get on planes, we’d have DFA stickers on things and sometimes we’d make the mistake of, you know—you’re bringing your record bag on the plane and your gear, and they may say, ‘Well, what does DFA stand for?’ And you say, ‘Death From Above.’ And they open it up and there’s all these crazy electronics in it.
Aside from close encounters with airport security, how do you keep things interesting in day-to-day life?
I spend most of my time doing one of three things. When I’m home, I do a lot of remixing. Well, and working on my own music. Then it’s either going away and DJing or when I have an album coming out or playing live with a band. But really I’m now DJing much of the time. It seems like everything kind of feeds everything else. By DJing, you’re going all over the world and you get a good sense of what’s going on, what people are sick of, what’s going to work, what’s not going to work. Which lets you go home and that definitely influences how I make music, for sure.
Do you think the DJ crowd differs from a crowd that approaches a band? Even if you’re making dance music.
Definitely. They’re definitely two different things. I feel that not too long ago, generally people that would go to see live bands would never go to clubs to hear DJs. It seems like that’s changed a lot in the last few years. Now there’s a lot of crossover. Whereas before, like ten years ago, it was a one-or-the-other type of thing. Things have gone back and forth quite a bit. The lines have been so blurred that now people get away with—they’ll be billed as playing ‘live’ but they’re actually not doing much more than DJing. Like people that use laptops or that kind of thing. Like Justice—people go to see them and perceive it as a live thing, but, you know, they’re DJing.
Is dance music in a new phase?
It has been for a while. The mixing of live elements and sort of pre-recorded types of things. There are certain things that for me will never work. Like going to see someone just playing a laptop basically—I always find that really uninteresting. There are all kinds of interesting things people can do. But also a lot of at times people are kind of lazy about it and hit play on the laptop and they’re not really doing much. Why not just put on a CD at that point?
Here’s a philosophical question. If you had to take three foods on an island for an indefinite period of time, what would they be? Endless quantities of them. But they’re the only three foods you can eat.
This is going to be really surprising, but the thing that I eat more than anything else is yogurt, granola and banana. And I actually make my own yogurt and I make my own granola.
How do you make yogurt?
You need a yogurt maker. It’s really hard to do. Number two—pizza. Especially being in New York, you end up eating pizza five days out of the week. Then the last one would be lobster because that’s my favorite food of all time.
Fresh lobster straight out of the shell?
Yes. For sure.

—Daiana Feuer

THE JUAN MACLEAN ON SAT., SEPT. 13, AT THE EL REY, 5515 WILSHIRE BLVD., LOS ANGELES. 8 PM / $16 / ALL AGES. GOLDENVOICE.COM. THE JUAN MACLEAN’S ‘HAPPY HOUSE’ IS OUT NOW ON DFA. VISIT THE JUAN MACLEAN AT THEJUANMACLEAN.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/THEJUANMACLEAN.