The Ventilator mastermind on Bar/None’s October 9 reissue of his 1996 debut

Transmission 426: Interview with Ventilator

There’s a particular strain of American guitar music that only ever gets made in bedrooms, and Matt Devine made one of its quiet masterpieces in a second bedroom in North Hollywood, on a Tascam 388 he barely knew how to operate. He’d just walked out on Permanent Green Light, the band he’d shared with former Three O’Clock frontman Michael Quercio, tired of splitting songs and vocals down the middle. What followed was Ventilator: a name lifted from the Rolling Stones’ “Ventilator Blues,” the fan that cooled Keith Richards through the Exile on Main St. sessions, and about as unglamorous an origin story as rock and roll allows.

Title: Reseda Spleen
Artist: Ventilator
Release Date: 2026-10-09
Genres: Alternative Rock, Indie Rock, Power Pop
Label: Bar/None Records
Description: Matt Devine discusses Ventilator's 1996 debut Reseda Spleen ahead of its October 9 reissue on Bar/None Records.

The record that emerged, Reseda Spleen, took its title as a joke aimed in two directions at once: at Baudelaire’s Paris Spleen, and at Reseda, the unlovely stretch of the San Fernando Valley where Devine had spent his post-adolescence. Recruiting Byron Reynolds on drums, Jeff Caruana on steel guitar and old friend Brad Laner on bass for one track, Devine built the album piece by piece against the limits of eight tracks and an apartment with no proper grounding, mixed by Earle Mankey. It came out in 1996 on Delmore Recordings and vanished almost immediately, save for a pair of belated raves. Thirty years on, Bar/None is finally giving it the release it always deserved.

Featured image: © Karl Rumpf

What was the defining moment that made you decide to leave Permanent Green Light and launch a solo-driven project? 

I had been building an environment at my apartment to be creative and make music, and doing so really captured my imagination. Playing in clubs wasn’t as fun as it used to be, and it seemed Michael kept to himself more, and I kept to myself, as we rehearsed less and less. At some point, I told him I wanted to move on. It was exciting… “Wow, what now?” Beyond that, the story isn’t terribly compelling. Each of us was heading in different directions.

What’s the first thing you wrote or recorded once you decided to go it alone? 

I recorded the acoustics for “Lint Duet” in September of 1994, within a week of my quitting Permanent Green Light. I had bought this Russian compressor through an ad in the back pages of some gear magazine. It has a lot of character, and I remember digging how my old Gibson acoustic was sounding through it. In the recording, I hear the ambience of the neighborhood. I just let go and embraced the sounds. You can hear cars driving down Colfax Ave outside the apartment at times in the track, and listening to it now really takes me to that place in time.

How did you decide who to bring in on which songs? 

Jeff Caruana and I were good friends and had been playing guitar together for years, including in my first band Lazytown. Jeff’s always been a sounding board, and I’d share new songs I’d written to get his feedback. So when my new music started to come together on the Tascam 388, he’d come over and listen, overdub ideas, and then we’d go eat at Phil’s Diner in North Hollywood, bum around the Valley for the day, and go back to the apartment and overdub some more. My buddy Robert Sullivan, who played in Possum Dixon, knew I was looking for a drummer, and he suggested I meet Byron Reynolds. Byron immediately made it real. He owned an excellent Ludwig drum set and he plays impeccably, and that’s really half the battle when you’re recording drums. I just needed to make sure not to screw it up when tracking him. Linda’s contribution came about as I had written a melody for the chorus of “Lansdowne,” which was particularly melancholy, and asked her to sing it. Her voice sounded lovely and reminded me a bit of what Nancy Priddy’s background vocals do for Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne.” She gave the tune an ethereal vibe. I invited Brad to play bass on “Earthquake Song” just because he’s a fantastic bassist. I know he’s known for his wildly massive guitar tones, but his bass playing should be celebrated more, methinks.

Did the name Ventilator come before or after the songs took shape? 

The name was chosen after the songs were happening. I had heard that the ventilator in “Ventilator Blues” is an electric fan that was cooling down the Stones while they were recording Exile on Main St. in Keith’s basement. “No matter where you are, everybody’s gonna need some kind of ventilator.” Exile’s the greatest rock ‘n roll record of all time for me.

Besides the Stones, who else was shaping your ear at the time? 

In high school in the ’80s, I was into bands like Redd Kross, the Replacements, and Husker Du, as well as the music that informed them that I had heard from my older sister’s record collection, like the Sex Pistols, the Dolls, and the Velvets. Guitar music excited me during a decade when synths and gated drums reigned supreme and just weren’t my bag. So rock ‘n roll sustained me and still does. As far as music contemporaneous to recording Reseda Spleen, I know Monster doesn’t get a lot of love, but “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” really knocked me out. R.E.M. was taking risks, and hearing that motivated me to move forward and do my own thing. Wilco’s A.M. was released when I was halfway through recording Reseda Spleen, and that was amazing to hear. I met Jeff Tweedy back then a couple times, the first time in late summer of ’95, and I told him, “I love your record, it’s so compressed sounding.” And he replied proudly, “I think it’s more compressed than any other record.” I dug that, as compression was one of those studio tools I had really taken to. Also, getting to know Brad Laner better was great. Brad’s someone who makes music his way. We got tight when I was working on the last stages of the record, and he was definitely egging me on.

What made you fuse Baudelaire with your Valley roots for the title?

I had read Paris Spleen, and it popped into my head as a gag. I grew up in North Hollywood, but I lived in Reseda for a few years after high school. It was definitely well into the beginning stages of suburban decay. Bebop Records & Fine Art was still there, a live space run by an artist that turned out to be the first venue I ever performed at in my first band, along with The Country Club and a way cool record store called Record Trader. Naming the record Reseda Spleen seemed suitably absurd, as Reseda is as far from Parisian life as you can get. The idea of it being the backdrop to poetically mourning a vanishing city seemed preposterous at the time. Now that so many vintage diners, ranch homes, and unique 20th-century buildings are routinely getting torn down in the San Fernando Valley though, it actually isn’t so funny and is definitely something to grieve.

What was the hardest technical hurdle of recording at home on an 8-track? 

There are limits with eight tracks obviously. You have to plan ahead and get your point across within those limitations, but that kept things streamlined, for Reseda Spleen at least. With the Rock Folk Suicide recordings that followed, I did a lot of bouncing to get more onto tape or to apply a treatment to a pre-recorded track, and this affected the fidelity. I was also recording in an electronically ungrounded apartment. This is actually unsafe to some degree, and battling buzz was a bummer but manageable. On a couple songs, I would use a pickup with my Gibson acoustic to get a sound, running the signal into my amp so it would bleed in with the miked guitar. I would track this with bare feet and perch the cable connector through my toes because this stopped the buzz!

What kept Rock Folk Suicide on the shelf until 2008? 

I really leaned into those recordings. I was pushing the 388 harder, bouncing tracks, slowing and speeding up the tape while overdubbing, using the Akai quarter-track that’s on “Schadenfreude” more, just getting weird. This is late ’96 through ’97. I think the expectation from people after Reseda Spleen was, “When are you playing live? Why aren’t you recording in a ‘real’ studio?” This wasn’t how Reseda Spleen happened and wasn’t where I felt productive. I had helped Possum Dixon with the album that Ric Ocasek produced, and I left that band in early ’98. I continued tracking a few more Ventilator songs, but then the 388 died. So the Rock Folk Suicide tapes just sat around. Linda and I moved to Austin in ’04 and I met a musician there, Ty Chandler, who had a label called Almost There Records. Ty heard Reseda Spleen and asked if I had other Ventilator music, so I shared some. He liked what he heard and asked me to put a sequence together. I cherry-picked what I thought were the best mixes, and he pressed up CDs in ’08. I have unreleased tracks and different mixes from the Rock Folk Suicide era, so there might be a different record there if it ever gets reissued.

Beyond Baudelaire, what else outside music left a mark on this record? 

My buddy Jeff Caruana had decided to leave California for flight school in Colorado, which gave me pause. It seemed like such a brave path for Jeff to take, and here I was, still playing rock ‘n roll. I had just read a book on airships and The Hindenburg, and it told the story of the crash of the USS Shenandoah. Zachary Lansdowne was the commander of the Shenandoah. I wrote “Lansdowne” as I made a connection to flying, aspirationally speaking. It represented my ambivalence about playing music, but that didn’t last long. I wasn’t piloting a Cessna at 10,000 feet above sea level, let alone flying an airship in the 1920s, but I was taking a risk of my own, I guess. 

Does anything sound different to you now than it did in 1996? 

Michael Graves remastered the record, and he did a superb job and brought out a lot of detail and low end. I think “Happy New Year” especially benefited. Among many other projects, Michael has remastered a lot of Omnivore Recordings’ releases, including their complete Big Star’s Third and I Am the Cosmos. How cool is that?

Could there be new Ventilator material, or is this a closed chapter?

Jeff and Byron and I have been getting together recently to play, hang out, and grill on my Big Green Egg. We’ve been setting up in my living room and picking and grinning. It’s all about fun and friendship and gratitude for what Bar/None has done for the music. The 388 is gone, but Ventilator lives on. God bless Ventilator and all who sail with it. 

Photos courtesy of © Ventilator

Matteo Damiani

Matteo Damiani is an Italian photographer and author. Curator of the sites Retrofuturista.com; weirditaly.com; china-underground.com and others