Jimmy Tamborello, known as Dntel to most, has been making music for more than a decade. In 2001, he had the indie world buzzing when he released Life Is Full Of Possibilities, making him one of the most notable figures in the turn-of-the-century glitch scene. Commercial success hit Tamborello as one half of the Postal Service, the other half being Ben Gibbard of Death Cab For Cutie. The sole Postal Service album, Give Up, is Sub Pop’s second best-selling record to date, and the “Such Great Heights” single was used on TV shows and covered by Iron & Wine, whose version in turn made it onto the Garden State soundtrack. Tamborello has worked with artists from Conor Oberst to Grizzly Bear, and he still engineers electronic music and hosts an internet radio show. On Dntel’s latest album, Aimlessness (Pampa), he dialed back the guest vocals, focused on instrumentals and made an ethereal, spaced-out electro album. Tamborello will also be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with him.
Tamborello: When I’m stuck on a song, I grab one of these pedals and run a sound through it, and it usually gets me going again. There’s the TimeFactor, ModFactor, PitchFactor and Space. I’m not sure why they didn’t call the reverb one SpaceFactor. Maybe, they’re trying to get away from the whole Factor thing. You can also get rack effect units from Eventide, but I kind of like having the stompboxes, where you’re turning knobs instead of typing in data.
The first one I got was PitchFactor. Even though I’ve always thought of harmonizers as a pretty limited, specific effect, there’s actually a lot you can do with this, from bending audio signals with the PitchFlex to pulling new melodies out of a sound source with the HarPeggiator. The Space pedal is my other favorite. It’s mostly just a really good sounding reverb, but you can get more drastic drone effects with “infinite” and “freeze” functions. These pedals are expensive and maybe hard to justify when there are so many good, more affordable software FX plug-ins. If you prefer something physical, though, these are really useful and fun.
Video after the jump.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUuIusSCp8I
