American record producer, mixer and engineer Sylvia Massy started her career in the San Francisco punk rock scene. She later progressed to working with artists such as Tool, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Prince and Smashing Pumpkins, to name but a few. Massy is well known for her experimental approach to sound recording, and her work on Tool’s ‘Disgustipated’, from the Undertow album, is a prime example.
“For Undertow, I wanted to create a truly outrageous sound, like a big, disgusting explosion with notes spilling out onto the floor. I wanted something that hadn’t been heard before. Seemed like a piano might be a good place to start. Upright pianos were once home entertainment centres, back before houses were wired for electricity. There are plenty of wrecked pianos out there in the classifieds, easily obtained for nothing — or next to nothing — if you can haul them. My first idea was to go big: hire a crane, lift a few pianos several storeys up, and drop them while recording the impact. That didn’t happen. No crane company wanted anything to do with it. So, we kept it indoors.”
The Pianocalypse
“My friend Marko Fox worked at Owen Piano in LA. I paid him $100 to haul two old uprights to Grandmaster Studios in Hollywood on Cahuenga. We set the pianos up on the stage in the back warehouse and I built a multi‑layered mic rig to capture every aspect of the performance: direct contact mics, close mics and distant room mics. I used a pair of wooden puck Dean Markley contact mics and stuck them — using gum — directly onto the back soundboard of the first piano, one on the low side and one on the high. Next, I opened the front panel and placed a pair of Shure SM57s close to the hammers to capture the piano’s percussive attack. Finally, I set up a pair of vintage Neumann U67s on tall stands in the back corners of the room.
“I purchased safety goggles, gloves, sledgehammers, axes and a pickaxe. Headphones were dialled in and ready to go. I ran a click track to keep everyone in time. The mics were routed through tie lines to the vintage 1972 Neve 8028 console with 1084 EQs. I sent the U67s through the studio’s Fairchild 670 compressor to a pair of tracks. My assistant waited in the control room for my signal to start the 24‑track Studer A827 reel‑to‑reel recorder.
Sylvia Massy: The band took turns blasting holes into the front of the piano using Danny Carey’s shotgun.
“Headphones on, levels set, tape rolling. We began with the sawed‑off shotgun. The band took turns blasting holes into the front of the piano using Danny Carey’s shotgun. It created a huge, reverberant roar in the room. One of the Shure SM57s was lost during the initial shotgun pass — it had been directly in the line of fire. We lost that track, but the rest recorded well.
“Then we took the axes and sledgehammers and choreographed a kind of beautiful destruction, sending shards of wood, ivory, and wire into the air. Oh, and the beautiful noise! The second piano was tipped off the stage, where it fell onto its back with a heavy wham, and was then dismantled piece by piece. We listened to every excruciating plink and spring as the strings lost tension. The pianos cried and groaned as they were torn apart. They felt alive.
After the recording, I gave the tapes to my friend Eric ‘Static’ Anest, who assembled the chaos into a terrifying piece of music, finally adding Maynard’s voice ranting about sheep and carrots and yelling, ‘This is necessary!’ The band called the song ‘Disgustipated’ and placed it as the final track on the album.”