Me in my studio: Tempers

Tempers are NYC-based duo Jasmine Golestaneh and Eddie Cooper who craft “dark, ice-cold electronica blended with a sinister disco and danceable beats”.

Jasmine, born in Florida, is of Latvian-Iranian descent, and grew up in Paris and London before moving to New York. She has recorded and performed as musician for most of her life and her visual art, primarily collage, has been shown in galleries throughout New York. Eddie is a NYC native who spent years in Berlin, where he released records on electronic labels like !K7 and Eskimo.

The pair describe their collaboration in an uncommon way: "We have these sort of unspoken criteria when we're writing music together. We never really need to explain what that is but we both know when it's missing or when we've hit it."

Their debut album Services is out now digitally and on vinyl via Berlin-based label Aufnahme + Wiedergabe. We take a look inside their studio and have a gander at some of the gear that made the album...

“Most of the songs on our new album “Services” began in the studio; our process usually involves writing and recording simultaneously, so it’s important that we work in an inspiring, creative space, not just a place to track vocals and instruments.

"We spend a lot of time here of course, and we’ve managed to create a nice balance between DAW with it’s in-the-box creativity and natural, analogue elements. That interplay is actually the basis of our production style, and it’s front and center on the album.

“Our studio is a hybrid space, used both for music and audio post-production - that’s why you’ll see a screening room with a 5.1 setup alongside our music gear. The room is floated and very well treated, which means we can really trust that our mixes will translate to different listening environments.”

“This is my favorite piece of physical gear; it’s not a cult synth, which is part of what attracts me to it. The Opus doesn’t have a characteristic Moog sound, first and foremost because it’s polyphonic - I’m never that excited about monophonic synths, because to me there’s no tension in the sound. The feeling of creating two and three-note intervals filled with pain and beauty is really what I’m looking for in analog synthesizers.

“I found it here in New York - as you can see it’s held together with duct tape. I’m curious but frightened to find out what would happen if I were to remove it. And the circuits are filled with charming quirks of course; all four D# keys trigger the same terrible sound, so we avoided that note on the album. We used it all over the album, but maybe most interestingly on our two quietest songs, ‘Summer Is Gone’ and the acoustic version of ‘Strange Harvest’.”

“We recently got this old reissue of an even older Ampeg, and it has a very nice tone for recording. We add a lot of software effects to the guitar lines Jasmine and I record, so the clean channel provides a really flexible tone to work with. And the reverb is extremely dark and muddy, which is what I’m always trying to achieve anyway. For some reason one of the inputs is labeled “ACCORDION”, which seems a little presumptuous.”

“The U87 isn’t the only mic we use, but it’s definitely our go-to. Jasmine’s vocals, especially the more delicate sections, really come through with a lot of detail with the U87.”

“The louder sections of Jasmine’s vocals drive the Avalon very well. It’s so versatile, we also use it on drums, acoustic guitar, etc. We’ll sometimes record vocals on a SM57 as well - it’s of course not traditionally a vocal mic, but there’s a dark smoothness to it that’s sometimes appropriate.”

“We have these nearfield Genelecs, with larger ones up front; both sets have their own subs, and it’s very helpful to be able to switch between them. The Avantones are... semi-useful, I check mixes on them more out of curiosity than anything else. If there’s an element in a mix that really pops out on the Avantones, then I’ll know to take a look at it and reign it in, but otherwise they mainly sound like a wall of mid-range.

“In general I don’t worry that much about monitors, though that’s maybe a luxury in a good-sounding room. No matter how much you spend on monitors, it takes a lot of time to learn them. And after that, you don’t think about them at all. I tend to think that people’s preference of one monitor over another is simply a reflection of that learning curve.”

Services is out now digitally and on vinyl via Berlin-based label Aufnahme + Wiedergabe.For more information you can check out the Tempers official site, or follow them on Twitter and Facebook.