Just last night I jumped on Instagram and saw a new reel from established engineer JJ Blair explaining his take on mixing low end in guitars. I promise you this is going somewhere.
His general theory (and I mean, is it even a theory? it’s kind of fact) is that most low end associated with guitar is actually just the bass filling in. His example was Black Dog where he flipped between soloing the guitar and the bass showing how most of Page’s riff is in the middle of the spectrum. While this wasn’t really that interesting or groundbreaking, it did stay with me for two reasons.
First, it reminded me that I need to go back and rewatch his breakdown of the Bee Gee’s “Jive Talkin” multitrack which is worth millions of dollars. Four on the floor.
Second, it created a connection between this use of bass and guitar to something I’ve been obsessed with for some time: the underused tactic of having two people singing the same part with one going low, one going high (sky point Michelle Obama). This trick is nearly undefeated in how it can create the most beautiful mesh that has played a part in some much of the music I love. Notable examples include Rainer Maria (Caitlin and Kaia), X (John Doe and Exene), just about every Ida song and now my latest obsession: Beekeeper, a short lived rock band from New York in (you’ll never guess it) the mid 90’s.
With guitar, bass and vocals provided by the brother sister team of Karla and Matthew Schickele, hearing the soft, dual vocal attack sounded very familiar and sure enough Karla went on to join Ida and perform on my favorite album “Heart Like a River” (the closest thing we ever got to a Carpenters reunion).
On drums is the ridiculous Jan Kotik who swirls around dissonant guitars that always resolve to what I once described to a friend as “the Disney chord” – one that sounds like a benevolent wizard waving his wand. (I came up with that after hearing this song by Sharks Keep Moving (it gets there around 1:14) shockingly released at the same time as this Beekeeper record – this record is on fucking Southern Records in 1998 how did I not hear it until 2025!)
I feel like after telling the general facts about this band you can already hear exactly what they sound like, and they kind of do, but better. It’s like how I feel like Mulholland Drive is David Lynch perfecting all of the goals of his preceding filmography into one perfect point of time/sight/sound. That is what Beekeeper does for that particular brand of mid 90’s indie rock clearly heavily influenced by Slint, Polvo and Low. Thirteen songs, and I’m gonna be honest, I can only talk about the first five. Because when we get to six, I always say “I need to hear that again” and jump back to repeat these five ridiculously heavy and soft opening tracks that never get too much like anybody else. Each listen reinforces my description their magnificent melting pot of all of the best artists of the era, again coalescing it all into one perfect dot of time/sight/sound. I’m counting “sight” because this record is killing me so much that it appeared in a dream I had a few days ago, with my favorite track, Flight, providing a soundtrack over a beautiful scene that felt like heaven. I woke up feeling great.
The harmonies, the bass playing, the Disney chord, the buried vibraphone over the shaker in the chorus that all leads to the fucking religious exit as you go from thinking Karla Schickele is your traditional whispering indie rock vocalist and start realizing she came to earth to share her gift and allow you to see the light of god. Meanwhile drummer Jan Kotik does the thing that the random meathead of the era who insisted on playing 900 time signatures in 24 seconds never understood, as he takes the ridiculously more challenging assignment of making some of the oddest meters groove like a Headhunters song.
I don’t know what I could write that could possibly explain the masterclass you’ll hear when you hit play.
Go for it, don’t waste a moment.
FIVE STARS
