Gear Rundown: producer and ambient composer Dan Frizza aka Mittere

Mittere is the musical project of Sydney based Producer/Engineer/Musician, Dan Frizza – whose stacked resume boasts the likes of King Princess, Tones and I, Turtle Skull and Flyying Colours.

The project is a sprawling, cinematic exploration into the world of ambient electronic infused folk music. Mittere showcases Dan’s skill at creating moving soundscapes, whilst utilising noise as an instrument to adapt all facets of his studio and musical knowledge that he has gained over the years in the industry.

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On his new release ‘Gone’, Mittere dives back into his childhood and how one small fleeting moment can influence someone’s entire trajectory in life. Sonically, the track is reminiscent of ambient heavyweights of the likes of Washed Out and Sigur Ros, combined with a taste of minimalist psychedelia such as Spacemen 3 in the layered, heavily affected guitars and ethereal, emotive vocals. This single is also accompanied by a spellbinding short film made by Marguerite Lorraine, which follows the emotive and personal narrative of the song. It’s the perfect visual companion to absorb as the lush and immersive soundscape washes over you.

Mixdown recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Dan to chat all things gear-nerd, his preferred workflow and how his background as a producer and engineer has informed his work as an artist.

To start things off, I’d love to ask about how your journey as a producer and engineer informed the sonic palette you were working from when you began writing and recording this body of work? What most inspired you? What was the vision?

I guess you could say I always had an interest in finding strange and intriguing sounds. Sometimes I would be inspired in a moment to come up with something sinister, other times there might be the need for an ethereal natured sound, or anything in-between.

For me it’s always about helping express the feeling that needs to be conveyed in that moment. When I started writing and delving into my own music, I found different ways to express those feelings, through noise, feedback and all kinds of weird ways utilising different machines to create unique sounds on a particular feeling. My first song ‘Fool’ began one afternoon when I finished a client’s mix earlier than expected, I had something I wanted to try and figured that this was a good time to do that.

I had a good friend/colleague (Miles Thomas) come and play drums for another project the next day. I got him to stick around and play on the track. Once I heard back what we could do in terms of rhythms with the song – I was in, and realised this experiment’s going to work. From there I wanted to create a full body of work and designed the album from start to finish as I intended it to be, writing songs based on what the last chord of the previous song would end on and use that to start the idea of the next song. Because of this, I was able to create a free-flowing record that naturally ebbs and flows between each song – the vinyl listen will be heard in this manner which I’m pretty excited for once they arrive!

Inspiration wise I just looked to anything Sigur Ros, Alex Somers, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, My Bloody Valentine, Autolux or any other artist in that circle would do. They always had a special part in my musical sphere and now I could directly reference them to inspire my music.

Tell me about your songwriting process – Is it ever a collaborative affair, do you tend to tinker alone and build from those skeletons, or is it a combination of both?

I tend to just start the beds of the tracks off alone to piece the overall idea/theme together. Sometimes I just end up with a vocal and a synth by the end of the first initial session, other time’s they’re almost fully formed pieces. I try and just go until I have completed the idea, I do this as I tend to not be able to come back to it easily – if the entire form isn’t put down in the one sitting, it usually means that idea disappears forever.

At that point I look to good man Miles Thomas to come and throw down the rhythm tracks. I tend to cut a bit of a basic/weird beat together for most things I do as I try and inspire him. When he sits down to play to the track, he will usually bounce off of that, and in turn it means I end up keeping a blend of live and electronic drums, which I think is kinda cool.

From there its usually fully formed or close to it and I just go and tie up the loose ends. Probably worth mentioning: I record and write all of my final vocals at the same time, which is usually during the demo phase. I have a process that only makes sense to me, my writing inspires my delivery, which inspires the message – I guess it’s kind of a prolific way to do things, to start recording final vocals as I’m figuring out vocal melodies. It seems ludicrous, but it makes sense to me which I guess is all that matters. In turn I would probably otherwise never be happy with it if I had too much time to lament on that side of things.

Talk me through your recording workflow from demo to track completion. Do you begin in the bedroom or head straight to the studio? Any preference of DAW/special demo set up that goes the extra mile?

For this first album ‘Boy’ I didn’t put anything down until I was in the studio, but my more recent albums, I’ve found a good process from home. That process in the studio was pretty cool – I set everything up as if I was in a session and aimed to keep everything as final as possible, even if it was the first time penning the idea.

A little bit of a decadent way of doing things – I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to utilise a large format studio in that way (thank you, Anthony Garvin & Forbes Street Studios!).

But generally, what I’ll do is piece the bones together with the idea to potentially keep everything I’m putting down. I’ve got some real nice guitar, synth and vocal chains I’ve developed over time. I’ll get into specifics of those later on.

At home, I’ve found designing some DAW templates can really help get a quick flow happening in the moment. I have a setup of a few VST’s along with a heap of different FX busses so when I start putting down ideas, I can quickly build a sweet little vibe from. Once they’re in my DAW, the sounds might stay as they are or they might completely change as time goes on, but as long as there’s something that’s exciting happening in the moment, I can work on the fine tuning later on.

Which pieces of equipment are the most integral to the essence of your project? Is there a stark difference between what you like to write and record with?

I think the instruments to me are the tools to the sounds created, these tools can be used in many different manners to create sounds outside of the orthodox approach, and I feel the hardware serves to embellish those sounds and, if you’re lucky – put you in new territories.

I’ve found particular instruments useful for particular situations/sounds, and although my instrument list is narrow (I own 4 x guitars including my bass & a couple synths), I feel I’ve learnt how to conjure different sounds out of those instruments. As soon as I pick up a guitar it automatically puts me in a space that I wouldn’t get from another guitar. These instruments have no boundaries to me, my motto is – if it sounds good, no need to fix it.

Sometimes I come back to those instruments at the recording phase to elaborate on them, refine the part or make sure the sound is as focused as I can get it. I find a lot of the time the parts or sounds I come up with in the demo phase are broad strokes of ideas. By the time I come around to finalising the part, the idea has been refined naturally over time and perhaps I’ve thought of a more interesting way to put it down.

Are there any pieces of gear you’ve acquired, be it something cheap that punches massively above its weight, or a less-wallet friendly splurge, that have tangibly influenced the way you write and record music to this day?

Absolutely! Pretty much everything I own comes with a short novel story about the journey with them, and how I’ve come to work them into my process. All these instruments have so much personality that I find them hard to part ways with once they become part of my setup, like a little collection of family heirlooms.

One of the more recent acquisitions I can think of that does this for me is my Revox A77 tape machine, I bought it off a friend real cheap and in disrepair. I refurbished her back to life, since then I’ve been making fun little tape loops and saturating everything I can get my hands on through it.

Recently, I was working on a record with an Australian band called Skunkhour, the vocalist Aya Larkin, had an idea to experiment with tuning down the song, to then pitch it back up to the original key and find fun little tones and artefacts that made the vocal (and basically everything we did it with) sound unique, whilst creating different tones and perspectives we may not have otherwise found.

We ended up tracking the vocals 3 x steps down from the original key, whilst doing this we decided to tune the synths down, to then speed them back up, but instead of using Ableton, we did this via the varispeed on the tape machine! As that process was all analog, there was no accurate way to tune it back up, aside from using my ears, so it took some finessing but the results were quite interesting and just how I had hoped – that ‘je ne sais quoir’ which helps these machines stand the test of time.

Another piece of gear that’s kind of my secret weapon, is my Electro Harmonix Memory Man, not sure how old it is but probably 90’s-ish, this thing is a bloody ripper, I basically use it for the chorus setting, I can’t quite put my finger on why I love it so much or why it sounds sooooooo pleasing to my ears but it’s constantly engaged when I’m recording any synth parts and most of my guitar parts.

What are the visual mediums that you find best allow you to express yourself as an artist outside of music – is it important for you to be able to display your creativity in every aspect of this project’s output?

I felt it was always important to have a visual aspect for these sounds I create, it seemed to just make sense for them to go hand in hand with each other. I’ve recently pieced together a film clip for my latest single ‘Gone’, turned out it was more of a short film at 9:06mins long and a hell of a lot more work than anticipated!

The final outcome of that was incredibly inspiring – to have the landscape to explain and transfer a lot of those feelings and stories from the song with a more direct manner. I think having the visual element has a sense of full circle for me in a lot of ways, with the story being told via picture and having these long form shots that I always imagined to coincide with the musical side of this project, seemed to just kind of make sense to me and perhaps fell into place in a lot of ways, but sometimes you don’t know if its going to work until you actually just do it.

Don’t get me wrong, there was definitely a lot of stabbing in the dark for me and I had to forgo a lot of control of the project at that point, which I think is an important aspect for anyone of any project to have the heart to do, as I didn’t have any experience or understanding as to how or why things we’re needed and taking place for the visuals, but thanks to amazing Director/Friend/Co-conspirator Marguerite Lorraine – I was able to rest in good hands. Looking back I’m very proud of what we ended up with. Although there was a large element of unknown for me throughout it, it paid off taking that leap and the outcome to me was a big confidence boost – this is the right way to go about making this art, a little light bulb moment watching the first draft of ‘Oh this is actually going to work”.

How do you recharge your creative batteries? What in your life inspires your music that isn’t music? It could be as logical as watching a film or listening to records, or as obscure as gardening or taking a long walk.

So when I was a kid I was introduced to 2 life changing things, first was music, the second was surfing, growing up near the beach and having a surfing obsessed father – it was just part of day to day life, naturally, in my adulthood my obsession for surfing has only grown and I’ve found it to be a great creative outlet, sport, balanced lifestyle and just all round healthy activity to have in my life. That’s my full therapeutic recharge right there.

When I was writing my second album I figured out a process that after I had begun writing something, I would get in a groove and usually conk out or hit a creative wall around 4-6hrs later. Which I would break up by heading to the beach, it was funny because I always found that while listening to the track on the ride to and from the beach, or sitting in the ocean thinking about the song, I would always find a solution to whatever hurdle I had, and usually by the time I got back home. It was a great teacher in that perspective is an integral part of this process and helps maintain that healthy insight for the best way forward. It can be so inspiring to have that element, in the ocean, sharing your early morning rituals with nature to then go home and start creating something, whatever it is you might do for a living – this way of starting or breaking up a day can only be a positive thing!