Anthony J Resta | Flying in the Face of Convention

Anthony J Resta | Flying in the Face of Convention
March 3, 2022
Anthony J Resta | Flying in the Face of Convention

Exploring Sound and Style

When a producer/engineer/musician amasses well over 130 albums projects, songs placed in blockbuster films, and has worked with artists the likes of Elton John, Duran Duran, Collective Soul, Megadeath and Perry Farrell, you might expect them to have a signature sound, and a well-developed sense of what constitutes commercial success. There are a number of these types of creatives, whom artists seek out to get a little of their time-proven magic served up to help their careers. Anthony J Resta has flown in the face of these conventions, and has created an über-successful career doing things just a little differently.

“I like to create music that has momentum, and intrigue, so people will go, “Woo, what’s that?” To create a journey for the listener that has some surprises, turns and twists.

Resta is an avid collector and user of vintage audio gear, and his studio is littered with keyboards, guitars, effect pedals and more than a few musical oddities that he uses to serve his distinctive muse. Starting off his musical life studying piano and flute, he added guitar in his teens, and then drums, even studying at Berklee College of Music as a jazz drummer. This eclectic background has served him well as he moved forward in his career, and he draws on all these musical skills in his daily work. From his drumming background he developed skills at programming the Linn Drum Machine back in the ‘80s. His fascination with and use of electronics, MIDI and computers has grown over the ensuing years. Nowadays he mixes acoustic and electronic sounds freely, guided by his sense of what will best serve the song, and a constantly curious and exploring sense of sound and style.

A Little Left Of Center

Anthony professes a love for and influence from Frank Zappa, Bela Bartok, Stravinsky and prog bands such as King Crimson and Yes. He went through a period of serious love for electronica, and genres such as drum and bass, and the intensive programming skills required for making that music. “I still have elements of D&B music in my work,” enthuses Resta. “Back in the day I got good at step programming things like 32nd-note triplets: you could put ten hours into eight bars!”

“I like to make music that’s not generic: I work really hard at that.

In the late 80’s he was creating very experimental music that often married spoken word poetry and found sound with his experimental electronic soundscapes. Just experimenting with the technologies and developing his chops, for his own enjoyment. While he was writing songs with Dale Bozzio (Missing Persons) she mentioned him to guitarist Warren Cuccurullo, who had recently left the band to join up with Duran Duran. Warren asked Anthony to send over some songs, and on the back of the cassette he included some of those experiments. Warren was drawn to those experiments over the songs on side A, and he played them for the band. Shortly thereafter, Resta heard from management that the band thought his cassette sounded better than the album they had been working on for six months! They sent him a song to mix, warning that they did this often, and it was unlikely they would use his work, but to give it a try.

After first trying to mix it like how he imagined Duran Duran would want it, he just threw that aside and decided to do what he loved, and with the freedom that had caught Cuccurullo’s ear in the first place. He replaced heavy guitar parts with blown conch shells on the intro, added some wordless cowgirl vocals and even replaced Steve Ferrone’s drums with his own playing. He mixed it using some of his favorite now-vintage gear like the DBX 120-SDX, which synthesized lower bass tones to fatten up the sound. When the band got his mix, he heard back right away from Simon Le Bon, who replied, “Anthony, you’re mad, we’ve got to get you over here straight away!” His unique approach struck a chord with the band, and he went on to an eight-year/30 song relationship with them.

Going even further to the fringes, Resta joined with Nick Rhodes and Warren C to create a project called TV Mania, which recorded a now rare album called Bored with Prozac and the Internet. Resta explains, “a lot of it is fashion models saying stupid things like, ‘I’m dying to wear that stuff,’ and ‘It’s crazy: you put on a jacket and you’re different.’ Really far-out stuff like that.” The music wasn’t originally released, until Rhodes found the tapes and finally put them out in 2013.

Tinker, Tailor, Ever The Experimenter

When asked to describe his musical approach, Resta shared, “I’m all over the place; I use a lot of modular synths, I run my guitar through crazy stereo signal paths with pedals, tape delays and such. I love vintage gear: old tube amps and even cheap plastic organs and children’s toys. I was always into all this psycho-acoustic, spacial manipulation hardware and techniques, like the Roland RSS stuff, the Ursa Space Station and doing all these complicated delays cascades across the stereo spectrum etc. I love creating really rich, dense textures—I’m a sound designer from the get-go.”

“A mixture of futuristic and retro has been my thing for a long time.”

Discussing his view on the role of a producer, he offered, “I find that the more experience people have, and the more that they’ve gone down a road that they’re not really happy about, those end up being our long-term clients, because we take them to a place. I feel that things can be accessible without being cookie cutter—that’s my focus. I listen to what their favorite influences are, really study them, and then together we try to come up with something new. Each project is different; sometimes I’m really hands on and playing a lot of instruments, and other times it requires you to just sit back and try to listen like you’ve never heard the song before, even though you’ve spent 100 hours working on it.”

Modern Day Favorite

Resta does a lot of work “in the box”, and he shares one of his favorite tools of the trade. “I don’t remember how I first stumbled across (Delta Sound Labs) Fold, but I checked it out, fell in love with it, and started posting little clips of me using it. It’s a super useful program. I love how Fold helps parts pop out of a mix without being annoying. Even on a kick drum: I’ll bring up the Fold-processed sound on an Aux and blend it in, it can make things sound the way they would sound when you’re cranking it way up in a big room.”

“I love how Fold helps parts pop out of a mix without being annoying.

“I like to go into the subtle coloration aspect,” he continues. “Take listening to a bass on really tiny speakers: when you have a sub all is good, you can get those super low 808-type tones, but when you listen on some tiny computer speakers, which has become the most common way people listen, you lose all of that. So I’ll make a copy of that bass track, cut off the lows below 300 or 500Hz with a band-pass filter, and then run it through Fold and blend that back with the original signal to get something that has more character and presence.”

“Everyone is chasing after the latest techniques and terms: side-chaining, clipping, peak-limiting, and they’re wanting to do it on everything. And sure, it sounds powerful, but after about 40 seconds you need a break, it quickly fatigues your ears. I use distortion or grit all the time, and it’s not always super obvious; I use Fold to help parts speak in their own space without ripping your ears off.”

I like using Fold’s LFOs synced to the tempo, and take a really simple part with maybe just whole notes and turn it into a really interesting rhythmic part.

Looking Back and Looking Ahead

When asked to share anything he’s learned over his career, Resta offered, “Stop trying to chase a certain style or sound that is working for somebody right now, just because you want to cash in, or be what they are. Because by the time that you figure it out and are able to do it at that level, it’s already going to be in a hairspray commercial. So you might as well do something original.”

“I’m really passionate about what I do,” muses Resta, “and the fact that I’ve been able to do that for my entire career is really a dream come true. Sure, a lot of people have Lamborghinis and mansions and I’ve never been that successful, but I’ve got four kids, a happy life, and I feel so blessed to do what I love. To me that’s worth a trillion dollars."