Max Ducker

Fri 6th Aug, 2010 in Features

“Right the time for talking’s over Max; it’s time for blood and guts.”

Such is the calibre of threats Cellar Sessions’ Max Ducker has received from disgruntled neighbours in his 12 plus years of recording bands from the confines of residential houses. However he hasn’t copped a noise-related verbal lashing like this for a while. This kind of abuse happened in a time when the Denmark (the South Coast town)-born soundman took his recording skills to the homes of others.

These days he’s done with the mobile recording business. Over the past six years he’s established an impressively professional DIY home studio in North Perth. A place where local bands can record live, jam as loud as they want and the outside world only hears a low roar.

As you enter the front of the home/studio you’re greeted by presumably psychedelic cacti and a humble timber Cellar Sessions sign. It’s your typical well-worn rental home- the type that will eventually be knocked down or renovated. A joint like this with its wooden floor boards and limited insulation would normally be an acoustic nightmare. But Ducker’s got it covered. In between rolling tobacco and swigs of beer, he’s chatting to me out the back of the house.

“I’ve done my best to minimise for the neighbours and for sound purposes; building isolation booths so amps get locked away in boxes and the drum kit areas are lined with acoustic foam which soaks up a lot of it,” Ducker says.

“It sounds like how we’re listening to a stereo now, it’s not punishing to anybody. It’s the only way I think you could have a studio in a residential place.

With a CV that includes work history as ‘the sound guy from the ear-punishing Hydey front bar’, there’s no doubt Ducker is Perth’s go-to man for bands that want their recordings live and loud. He says his job is to give the bands whatever sound they want. He recalls recordings of everything from solo acoustic guitars and pianos to “dirty garage feedback”.

“I love a lotta different flavours of music. But I guess more the; I hate to use terms like ‘swamp’ sort of sounding [bands] like Scientists and Beasts of Bourbon and that sort of rougher Australian sorta twang music. That’s my forte or the early 90s nasty [stuff] without getting too metal orientated.”

“But I wouldn’t pigeon hole myself to say I only like one flavour that’s for sure. I think in the sorta game I’m playing you can’t just say: ‘well look I only produce garage records or I only do that sorta music’. You’ve gotta have an ear for pretty much the whole gamut.”

When he gets the chance to record the ‘nasty Aussie stuff’, his passion and skill for it is obvious. He recently put out a Cellar Sessions compilation featuring the dry moody sounds of Perth acts like Cat Black, Bonehouse, The Bible Bashers and his own monster Mongrel Country. It’s all dusty guitar sounds, twang and snarl throughout. It’s little wonder a Neil Young-loving Eddie Vedder labelled Perth’s music scene as “fucking incredible” after hearing such sounds at The Hydey last year.

Ducker’s Mongrel Country recorded one of the most acclaimed local releases of 2009 at Cellar Sessions. Blunt Magazine gave it 4/5 and its originality was widely praised throughout various media. I tell Ducker the album’s countrified dark elements could have been a worthy alternative to Neil Young’s Deadman soundtrack.

This becomes particularly relevant as he explains the self-titled album’s cinematic connections. It features a sample from the 2008 Aussie flick The Square which has resulted in the album falling into some influential film industry hands.

“We did the right thing; we contacted… I think it was Roadshow that put that movie out and then they talked to their lawyers and to the Edgerton brothers (who directed the film) and Bill Hunt and within two days they emailed us back going: ‘approved by the lawyers; go for it. All you gotta do is send us five copies of the cd when you’re done’,”

“You usually can’t get your music into the hands of companies like Roadshow. They probably get people sending in ideas and cds all the time so it was pretty much a win win. It’ll be very cool if the Edgerton brothers and Bill Hunt and people like that get hold of it and maybe end up using it for something.”

Listening to Mongrel Country you would not expect Ducker to be as approachable as he is. This is a man who wears a mutilated pig mask and scowls through a distorted mega phone on stage.

As a recording engineer he’s as friendly and Aussie as they come; a bloke who’s all about that mysterious thing politicians call ‘the fair go’. But his fair go is focused on recording bands and a whole lot more believable than Ms Gillard and Mr Abbott.

“I basically charge $40/hour which is probably a bit less than what most studios charge but because it’s at a residential property you gotta keep the dollar fair. Musicians don’t have a lot of money so I think that’s sort of a decent amount to ask.”

“They’re paying you for a job and you’ve just gotta give them what they’re after.”

He admits there are limitations and sometimes bands come in expecting things that are beyond them.

“They’ll rock up with tiny little practice Peavey amps and its like: ‘well dude there’s no way I can make that amp sound like a two stack Marshall amp’. Until you explain that to them and they go: ‘oh yeah I see what ya mean, we’ll see what we can get out of it’ and I go: ‘ok we’ll see what we can get outta that piece of shit but it’s not gonna sound like that unless you spend the money on the gear’.

Ducker has just finished recording Queensland band Six Foot Hick and is currently working on such local acts as These Shipwrecks, Blazin’ Entrails, Like Junk, The Lungs and Raw Nerve. He’s been entrenched in local music for years and while he’s extremely dark about The Hydey’s closure, he’s pretty damn positive about Perth’s current music community.

“There’s always new bands poppin’ up, I think Perth’s gotta pretty rich sorta scene, there’s a lotta bands crankin’ and a lotta diversity.”

“We’ve all got mates who will only come out if there’s a touring band which is a real shame because there’s so much good music in Perth for them not to go out and see a local act. They could be just as blown away by a local band as say a touring band they’ve bought from JB HiFi or whatever.”

It’s clear Max Ducker lives and breathes original Perth music and he’ll undoubtedly continue to record it the way he likes it: live, loud and nasty… but fair. It seems no amount of threats to his blood and guts will deter him. What happened with that blood and guts guy anyway?

“He ended up kicking in the door and doing the whole monkey man thing; you know ‘rah rah I’m gonna kill you’ and I apologised to the guy and he walked next door. I dunno if he didn’t realise but the owners of the place we were living in lived next door so he went to try and get them on side,” Ducker explains.

“He was like: ‘these cunts we gotta get them outta here, they’re makin’ too much noise’ and they went: ‘listen mate I think you better fuck off. You just kicked in our door; that’s our door’. So he didn’t get any love there.”

“I think he was just one of these arses. We used to hear him beating on his wife; just horrible fuckin’ shit. He wasn’t a happy man I mean who says: ‘time for blood and guts’? We’re not playing resident evil.”

Catch Max and the Mongrel Country swine at the Civic for some Friday the 13th debauchery before they take a break to record new material.