Why Chris Schlarb?
Here is a quick example: if you want to approximate an orchestra of instruments with a single keyboard, I am probably not the right one for the job. My best work utilizes any number of unique, real world instruments including tabla, euphonium, mandolin, marimba and upright double bass. I thoroughly enjoy working with real instruments, in real spaces, with real musicians.
If your film, video game or album requires texture and atmospheric depth, unique or unusual live instrumentation, and thoughtful arrangement, I would love to hear from you. For the last decade I have explored the ambient, jazz, folk, electronic and modern classical genres as a member of both the American Composers Forum and ASCAP.
I specialize in taking small and medium sized budgets and turning them into expensive sounding recordings. I operate my own mobile recording studio and engineer most sessions, saving time and cost.
My work can be heard on this site and read about in the New York Times, All About Jazz, Time Out New York, Chicago Reader and Pitchfork.
Record Labels
Asthmatic Kitty
Sounds Are Active
recordings
Electric Guitar Pedal Board
I try to keep it simple. In fact, for most of the last 10 years, my use of effects pedals has been downright spartan. At this point, I think I have finally put the right combination of sounds together. The only difference with this photo and my actual performance set up is that the BOSS [...]
Schlarb Family White Christmas Album 2009
The response to last year’s Schlarb Family Christmas Album was so enthusiastic that we couldn’t wait to get another one out in time for this Christmas. Things got started in October when kids really dug into a few Paul McCartney tunes on The White Album. Soon, Elisha knew the melody and lyrics to “Rocky Raccoon” [...]
Haunted House Soundtrack
All the way back in 2005, my good friend Orlando Greenhill and I were asked to record the soundtrack for a haunted house at Martin Luther King Jr. park in Long Beach. We were given an auditorium to record in and enlisted two teenagers from the neighborhood. As usual, we recorded under the Create (!) [...]
IN TRANSIT presents: 16mm
On May 19th, 2008, I Heart Lung went into Matt Wignall’s Tackyland Studio in Long Beach and recorded music to accompany a series of colorful short films by Canadian visual artist Jonathan Dueck. Jonathan has designed album covers for Soul-Junk, Rafter Roberts, Liz Janes and many others, he is also responsible for bringing West African [...]
The Widow Babies- Jetpacks
In January of 2009, The Widow Babies and I began recording Jetpacks. Our first album together, The Mike Watt EP, was recorded in a single day. Jetpacks, however, consisted of three days in the studio with additional time for tracking, mixing and overdubs. To my ears, Jetpacks sounds different than anything coming out of Los [...]
September Fortnight
The next two weeks look to be unexpectedly busy. In addition to sound, foley and composition work in the studio I will be performing twice and engineering three live events. For whatever reason, I don’t play all that often in Los Angeles or Long Beach anymore. If I’m not on tour, I’m usually at home [...]
Unboxing Nels Cline and G.E. Stinson
As many of you may know, I run the Sounds Are Active record label in what doctors and psychologists call my “spare time.” Today, I am very proud to hold in my hands, the label’s 50th release: Nels Cline + G.E. Stinson’s Elevating Device. Nels and G.E. are long time friends who have both accomplished [...]
Kickball Vs. Microphone
While I was out at a park recording playground sounds for a short film I saw a large group of older Japanese men and women playing kickball. Apparently they finished before one man had his fill. He proceeded to kick the ball by himself around a large field.
At 2 seconds you can hear him kick [...]
Song For Charles Rocket
“Song For Charles Rocket” is a piece of music I wrote for Destroyer of Brains, a free jazz ensemble from Los Angeles. For this demo recording I threw the Zoom H2 in front of my amp and looped the bass line while playing the lead melody over it. It should be fun to compare this [...]
We Scream: Voices From The Ice Cream Underground
For the last six years or so I have wanted to make a documentary film about ice cream truck drivers and paleteros (cart and bike vendors). Having spent years delivering newspapers, copies and organic fruit myself, I have always felt a certain kinship to these professions. What has interested me most about them, however, is [...]
Hoedown Throwdown
Summertime is almost here. The nights are getting longer and the kids are out playing after 9pm. I heard singing in the courtyard through the kitchen door and grabbed my Zoom H2. Apparently this is the chorus to Miley Cyrus’ song “Hoedown Throwdown”. There are five or six voices singing here including my son and [...]
Twilight & Ghost Stories NYC
All photography by Scott Friedlander ©2009
Shannon Fields and I started talked in the early winter of 2008. He was booking four months in advance for the calendar at John Zorn’s venue, The Stone. Each month one person picks all of the music that will be played there, two seatings per night, one at 8pm and [...]
Shadow Company (Documentary Score)
In February of 2006, documentary filmmaker Nick Bicanic was putting the finishing touches on his expose of the flourishing mercenary economy in Iraq. He had already assembled an impressive film with an outstanding soundtrack that included tracks from Madvillian, Caribou and Murcof.
Bicanic needed moody ambience to support a few minutes of dialogue and was [...]
Schlarb Family Christmas Album 2008
We didn’t have much money this year so we started a tradition instead. Every year, as a family, we will try to make a short Christmas album with everyone contributing. This year, we got a little Fragile with it. We have tunes as a family, and tunes in smaller groups.
The high-concept, two part “Christmastime [...]
The Widow Babies- The Mike Watt E.P. (2008)
The first song I ever heard The Widow Babies play was “Mike Watt Created The Universe With A Bass Solo”. I was recording the group at the request of concert promoter and musical provocateur, Sean Carnage for a music film called Friends In Other Dimensions. Sean knew my musical leanings and said I might be [...]
Two Twilights
Photo by Nariposa
In two weeks time I have travelled over 3,500 miles to perform Twilight & Ghost Stories. The first performance, on July 19th, at San Francisco’s Hemlock Tavern was a cramped, frenzied, artistic success that included a wonderful ensemble of musicians including an interesting substitution: cellist Alex Cort and his wife gave birth to [...]
Up For Air
When I am able to look back on the frequency of posts on this blog I will, most likely, be able to track my own productivity. The more work I get done, the less I post and so on.
Right now I am in the final few weeks of one video game project that I have [...]
Another Great Convergence
Everything is starting to come together again. I usually have so many projects ongoing that this sort of thing is inevitable and happens a few times a year.
Here, for example, is a short list of what has transpired in the last month:
Finished mixing the new I Heart Lung album, Interoceans.
Drove out to master it [...]
I Heart Lung Gets Asthmatic, Tours
Wow. What a few weeks it has been. Tom Steck and I have been working on wrapping up all things Interoceans and yesterday, our good friends at Asthmatic Kitty Records announced the signing of seven new artists to their roster, among them, I Heart Lung. Fine company indeed.
Now, we gladly leave for a week on [...]
Seven Days
Last Thursday my wife and I had the incomparable pleasure of watching and listening to Herbie Hancock perform live in front of a tiny crowd of 200 people. And if one musical legend wasn’t enough, Joni Mitchell made an unannounced three song cameo and brought the house down and, honestly, me to tears. I wrote [...]
Snow Din
Just last week my fingers were numb from rehearsing and recording songs for the new Liz Janes album due out later this year on Asthmatic Kitty Records. Today, they are suffering from a slight frost bite thanks to a weekend trip to the mountains near Big Bear, California.
With focus returned, this week will see [...]
In Twos
A peculiar run of duos began last week as Tom Steck and I ventured out to Culver City’s Jazz Bakery to watch a fellow guitar/drum duo in Bill Frisell and Joey Baron. You can read my review of the event as published by L.A. Record here.
A few days later trumpeter Kris Tiner and I performed [...]
Why I Would Never Be A Good MC
The first words that come to mind when attempting to rhyme “famous” are “Harold Ramis.”
In Between
Seven days ago my wife and I woke up in Nick Hennies‘ house in Austin, caught some excellent breakfast tacos and jumped on a plane home. The night prior Nick and I got a bit of recording in for a video game score that I’m working on. We both remarked how much we would enjoy [...]