Mac DeMarco is the subject of the latest cover story in Music Tech magazine. The feature focuses on how DeMarco recorded his new instrumental album Five Easy Hot Dogs on a cross-country road trip. It notes that DeMarco traveled with an impressive collection of gear worth over $20,000, including a keyboard that played a crucial role in the recordings: "The Minimoog was the lead singer of the record. I'm so glad I took him along." But despite his accumulation of nice equipment, DeMarco is moving away from one type of device: effects pedals.
At first, DeMarco explains that he's growing disinterested in running sounds through effects in general:
I don't really buy gear any more. I've got pretty much every super famous old preamp now, a couple consoles, every really old fancy mic you could ever want – I have a lot of nice shit; nice tape machines and synthesizers, nice guitars, you know. But I think that less is more for me at this point.
I didn't use a computer to record until probably like 2016 or 17. And, at first, I was like, "Okay, here we go – we'll put this effect on here, we'll do this, we'll do this…" And pretty quickly, I realized I should just really limit myself. I don't know, I like getting the sound at the microphone…Instead of buying more gear, I'd rather just move the mic around or record in a different room. That's what is more interesting to me now.
He elaborates that guitar pedals in particular are on his shit list:
They're stupid. They're cheap pieces of shit with crappy electronics. It's just crap in the path. I don't like crap. I don't care if it makes you sound like Jimi Hendrix or whatever. I don't want it. I don't want it! It just stresses me out thinking about it. And the cables that people use in between them. Oh, man. And then the power – crappy. Everything's crappy. It's just crappy. And I don't want them crapping up my shit. No crap.
Although he concedes he's using a small pedalboard on tour right now — including a tuner, a vibrato pedal, and an impulse response effect for his acoustic guitar — he rejects "sound-goodizer" pedals categorically. "All the pedals should be put in a big pile and we should light 'em on fire." Don't expect Mac to make a trendy shoegaze record anytime soon.
