Fred Armisen loves doing interviews. It’s a uncommon trait for somebody of Armisen’s stature in Hollywood: an A-list comedy large who spent greater than a decade on “Saturday Evening Reside,” skewered hipster tradition for eight seasons on IFC’s sketch staple “Portlandia” and who at present stars because the lovably deranged Uncle Fester on Netflix’s Addams Household revival, “Wednesday.”
And but Armisen is totally honest when he insists he’s delighted to be in press mode for his new album, “100 Sound Results.” “I like it,” Armisen guarantees as our Zoom dialog goes over the hour mark and I apologize for holding him. “After I was rising up — [and] I take into consideration this on a regular basis — if a David Byrne interview or a Mark Mothersbaugh interview got here on the radio or no matter, I actually consumed each phrase of it,” Armisen says. “It was as necessary as no matter they had been selling. I already had the album, however I needed to listen to what went into this document.”
Armisen is equally forthcoming in regards to the creation of “100 Sound Results,” a literal catalog of extremely particular noises that would happen throughout a wide range of settings, comparable to music venues and shops (“Music Venue Worker Kicking Everybody Out Whereas Throwing Away Bottles”), airplanes (“Overhead Compartment Closing”) and haunted homes (“Haunted Home Demonic Voices”), the latter of which was prime of thoughts as he conceptualized the venture.
“It was a sense of one thing that was lacking,” Armisen says. “I simply keep in mind sound results — or particularly haunted mansion albums had been simply round. It was just a little little bit of a nagging whim. Like, ‘Huh, no matter occurred to these? The place do the brand new ones reside? The place do individuals get sound results now?’ I’m positive there’s a place, nevertheless it didn’t really feel like there was a hard-copy model. I’m positive there are sound libraries you would go to on-line, however I used to be like, ‘The place’s the precise album?’ It simply saved popping up in my head. Like, ‘Man, I’m wondering what it’s wish to document these? Perhaps I’ll do one.’”
To maneuver the thought alongside, Armisen went to choose the mind of his longtime Chicago buddy, prolific recording engineer Steve Albini, who based the recording studio Electrical Audio in 1995 and famously recorded Nirvana’s “In Utero,” amongst a whole bunch of different era-defining rock albums. (Albini died of a coronary heart assault in 2024 on the age of 61.) Albini related Armisen with Dave Grohl, whom he thought would possibly be capable to level Armisen within the route of an L.A.-based producer who wouldn’t thoughts engaged on “100 Sound Results” in piecemeal trend — two weeks right here, two weeks there — each time Armisen bought a break in his schedule. That’s how Armisen began working with producer Darrell Thorp (Foo Fighters, Beck, Radiohead), who the comic describes as laser-focused on the job at hand, regardless of his rock ’n’ roll pedigree. “He’s labored with Paul McCartney and Dave Grohl and all of the greats, and by no means was he like, ‘I’ve bought some rock ’n’ roll tales for you,’” Armisen says. “He’s all about, ‘How can we make this sound actually genuine?’ … As a lot as this phrase will get used — ‘skilled’ — Darrell is an actual producer and recording engineer. He actually is there for the job.”
Fred Armisen and Riki Lindhome
(Ali Gradischer / Getty Pictures)
Armisen additionally pulled collectively a workforce of associates and collaborators, together with his spouse (and fellow comedian-actor), Riki Lindhome, Tim Heidecker, Invoice Hader, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Amber Coffman and Alice Carbone Tench. Lindhome assisted in capturing sounds whereas on trip (“Out of doors Occasion Strolling On Pebbles”) and in inns. Observe 80, “Room Service Ooh,” is strictly what it feels like, with a clattering lid being lifted off a plate adopted by Lindhome’s exclamation at what’s beneath. In the meantime, Heidecker, who has labored with Armisen on a number of previous tasks, just like the 2020 Showtime comedy “Moonbase 8,” helped with the tenting sound results, which, for the document, befell in Armisen’s yard. (Armisen is ardently anti-camping.) “Sometime we’ll do an album collectively of simply me and [Heidecker] speaking,” Armisen says. “He actually is the funniest individual I’ve ever met.”
For anybody who has adopted Armisen’s unconventional street to comedy, “100 Sound Results” nearly comes throughout like a Venn diagram of his diverse pursuits. He’s actually no stranger to a recording studio; lengthy earlier than Armisen moved to Los Angeles within the late Nineties to pursue a profession in TV and comedy, Armisen spent his formative years in and round punk-rock scenes. Rising up in Lengthy Island, he was obsessive about the drums and sat behind the package in highschool bands, and within the late ’80s, he moved to Chicago to drum within the punk outfit Trenchmouth. When the group broke up round 1996, Armisen took on gigs as a background drummer for the Blue Man Group and even shaped a salsa band.
As Armisen’s comedy profession finally eclipsed his music background, he nonetheless discovered methods to weave the latter half into his tasks and sketches; one among his better-known SNL characters was Ian Garbage, an ’80s British punk with a predilection for singing flattering songs about Margaret (a.okay.a. “Maggie”) Thatcher. In 2018, Armisen launched a Netflix particular known as “Standup for Drummers,” which was additionally launched as a document and received the comedy album Grammy the next 12 months.
Although “100 Sound Results” may not seem prefer it has a lot in widespread with “Standup for Drummers,” the throughline is Armisen’s observational humor, that are communicated throughout a handful of winking (however true-to-life) situations. For instance, in a collection of sound results set inside a music venue, there’s a “Guitar Tuned however Nonetheless One way or the other Out of Tune” and a “Sparsely Attended Present Encore With Somebody Shouting ‘The place’s Jim?’”
Armisen acknowledges that there’s a comedic ingredient inside “100 Sound Results” — however he additionally hopes filmmakers will discover the gathering genuinely helpful, particularly since his results are supposed to be hyperrealistic when the vast majority of accessible results are likely to sound staged. “There’s a tone to applause in motion pictures and TV that I don’t suppose exists in actual life,” Armisen says. “You may truly really feel a director going, ‘Motion!,’ particularly in scenes with a band enjoying, and the group goes too loopy. In my concertgoing expertise, I don’t suppose individuals go loopy in that manner. It feels like somebody going, ‘Come on, you actually love this band!’ And it by no means feels actual.”
Fred Armisen in his Netflix particular “Standup for Drummers.”
(David Moir)
At the same time as Armisen strikes previous the album-release stage and into selling far much less area of interest tasks, he says he’ll all the time be pondering of Albini, to whom “100 Sound Results” is devoted. Armisen says he most admired Albini’s (at occasions notorious) directness and dedication to creating shoppers’ work sound the very best it might.
“As I’d be going into engaged on a TV present or no matter, I generally suppose, ‘What would Steve Albini do on this state of affairs?’” Armisen says. And most of it is determining the ability of the phrase ‘no.’ That basically helped me. If I used to be too afraid to say no a couple of scene or a venture, I’d suppose, ‘OK, what would I do if I used to be Steve Albini?’ And hastily, I had a voice.”
Armisen continues: “However the true soul of our friendship is how a lot Steve made me snigger … He knew his job. He was like, ‘My solely function is to make you sound the very best you’ll be able to.’ And I attempt to method work that manner. Even on SNL, I used to be like, ‘That is for Lorne [Michaels]. How can I be a soldier to this present? How can I ship? [It’s] the identical factor with engaged on ‘Wednesday’ — how can I do my finest for what they’re asking me to do?’
“However I miss Steve on a regular basis. And as has been defined to me, he’s nonetheless part of me. Every time I do stuff, he’s nonetheless alive.”
