Tool producer Joe Barresi discussed buying ‘a couple hundred’ rolls of tape for Tool material in a new Dean Delray interview.
“After ‘10,000 Days,’ they decided to back up all their old stuff, so we ended up buying a couple of hundred rolls of tape. And my assistant backed up all of ‘10,000 Days’ to fresh tape.
“And also then, at that point, they started dumping some archival stuff to tape. Just because the tape is a mechanical thing – you can bake it, it’ll play back the rest of its life.
“Digital, that’s a whole different world. Trying to find a hard drive that will open up on a computer, and then the version of Pro Tools or whatever it is that you’re using at the time is completely impossible.
“We put everything to tape at some point, that’s why we had all these rolls of tape laying around.”
These guys tracked this record live?
“Oh yeah. If you watch some of this YouTube footage, you blow a load instantly when you’re watching Danny Carey play ‘Pneuma.’
“I’ve seen it a million times as I recorded it, but I still watch it and go, ‘He’s another human!’ The first time I ever met those guys I was standing behind the rehearsal room waiting to go in, and I thought there were eight dudes in there.
“I’m like, ‘Who the fuck is playing percussion in there?’ I didn’t really know.
“I knew he played pads and stuff but from ‘Lateralus’ to ‘10,000 days’ his game changed completely because he also used these Mandala pads and he was able to trigger them with seven zones, and triggering battery, and all these things that he recorded.
“He’s very into ethnic drum kits and stuff like that, so he’s triggering microphones as well, doing crazy shit. So I literally thought, ‘Who’s got the extra four limbs in there?’ And it’s all Dan.” Ultimate-Guitar transcribed his comments.
