Artist/Recordists

Primarily known as a visual artist, Dan Reeder – born in Louisiana but residing in Nuremberg, Germany for four decades – is the epitome of a Tape Op interview subject. He builds his own instruments, microphones, mixers, and computers. Additionally, he also engineers, mixes, and...

Emily A. Sprague may be best known as the primary songwriter and vocalist for the band Florist, who have released five albums since 2016. But she also composes and records ambient-adjacent electronic music, primarily using modular synthesizers, and is about to release her fourth...

Many might know actor/producer/writer/director Adam Goldberg from having been in films like Dazed and Confused and Saving Private Ryan, or TV shows such as Fargo and the reboot of The Equalizer with Queen Latifah. But what you might not realize is that he’s been putting out...

It’s Sunday night in Manhattan at Irving Plaza, and Dan “The Automator” Nakamura takes the stage behind a mouthwatering wall of synths, across from Kid Koala [Tape Op#159] and his three turntables. Deltron 3030 is back to rock the same stage where they made their New York debut...

On the suggestion of Tape Op's Sales & Operations Director, Corey Reidy, I decided to check out the career of Jeff Rosenstock. His early bands, The Arrogant Sons of Bitches and Bomb the Music Industry!, built up grassroots followings via a DIY ethic, and, as Corey told...

Ambrose Bye laughingly calls himself a “nepo baby with a laptop.” As the son of internationally-renowned poet Anne Waldman, Bye practically grew up at the Buddhist-inspired school in Boulder, Colorado – now known as Naropa University – where Waldman and Allen Ginsberg started...

Jules De Martino and Katie White are The Ting Tings. Their debut record, We Started Nothing, featured the hit song, “That's Not My Name,” one you may have heard in Apple iPod ads and many films over the last several decades. Home is their fifth and newest album, produced...

Being in motion while at rest is a good way to describe Detroit’s Zach Saginaw, better known as Shigeto. The self-avowed “jazz school dropout” possesses a critically vetted track record, delivering meticulous records where jazz, hip-hop, and IDM elements blossom from casual...

Azalia Snail's recording career began with a TASCAM recorder running on batteries in the forests outside of New York City. From those early, carefree experiments, she has continued to embrace creation as a way of life, releasing solo recordings and collaborative works with...

There are too many bands Fred Thomas has touched in his 30 years of touring. Ask him for a count on projects, and he'll tell you he doesn't keep track. The end of 2023 saw Fred's departure from Tyvek, a focus on pop ensemble Idle Ray, reissues from old solo...

Born Lance Howard, Lance Skiiiwalker was "discovered" by Kendrick Lamar and signed to Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE) a number of years back. Lance's first full release, Introverted Intuition, and his recent album, Audiodidactic, are excellent examples of studio...

Known as the Sonic Sorceress, composer and synthesist Lisa Bella Donna has a talent for fusing the esoteric with the technical. Working from a remote Appalachian home-base, the composer's days are spent mapping sounds in dense woods, drinking cowboy coffee, and cooking tin...

I first heard of Jacob Collier when I watched his arrangement and multitracked solo performance of Stevie Wonder's "Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing" on YouTube almost a decade ago. Jacob's creativity captured my attention so completely that I...

Blak Emoji is the project/band of producer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Kelsey Warren. His recently released third album, Eclectro, is a fun and inventive listen, so I dropped him a line and we got down to chatting about how it was made.

I've known Beau Sorenson for close to ten years now, and around two years ago I met his wife, Maryam Qudus. They are recording engineers and producers, and both create their own music. They work out of Tiny Telephone Recording (often referred to as Tiny), and Tiny's...

Sarah Tudzin loves solving sonic puzzles, in a quest to bring unexpected depth to her clients' albums as well as her own. With Illuminati Hotties, Tudzin's main songwriting outlet in which she is guitarist, singer, and producer, she's mined veins of punk, from...

In the alternate reality where everyone still reads recording credits off of their album sleeves as the record spins, we would see the name Leon Michels on many of them. Having worked with household names such as Lana Del Rey, Dr. John, Jay-Z and Beyoncé, The Wu-Tang Clan, and...

Around five years ago I went to see Low [Tape Op#31] play in Portland, and their opening act was a guy with a guitar who had a unique singing style. At first, I sort of tuned him out, but within minutes both myself and a friend of mine turned to each other and said, "This...

I think the best music reaches you on a subconscious level, connecting with you in a way that's not always immediately obvious – when you hear something that makes a real connection, you know it's there even if you don't quite know why. Logan Farmer's Still...

Ian MacKaye and I have been friends for over 20 years, ever since I convinced him and the band he was in, Fugazi, to come and play at the "Food Not Bombs" 20th anniversary free show in San Francisco (with Sleater-Kinney and the late Vic Chesnutt). The band's only...

We interviewed Tycho's Scott Hansen after the release of his Epoch album for Tape Op#123. With the addition of vocalist Hannah Cottrell, also known as Saint Sinner, his new release, Weather, introduces a new chapter in Tycho's music and gave online publisher Geoff...

New Zealand's Mark de Clive-Lowe is your conductor, musical tour guide, and conduit to the past and future. From accomplished jazz artist to a shaker in London's underground music scene, de Clive-Lowe has been part of over 200 releases and continues to produce, perform...

British-born, Nashville-living Jamie Lidell is a singer, beatboxer, recordist, producer, engineer, songwriter, code writer, husband, and father. He has collaborated with Beck, Cristian Vogel (as Super Collider), Feist, Chilly Gonzales, Mocky, Subhead, and Simian Mobile Disco...

I still remember my first experience hearing Taylor Deupree's Northern on a winter night back in 2007. Reaching into a stack of borrowed CDs in my apartment, I randomly selected a disc for some musical accompaniment while washing the dishes. The album began so stealthily...

Tycho's Scott Hansen is a busy man. As the frontman, principle songwriter, producer, as well as the creator of the band's album art and live visuals, he has no shortage of things on his plate. It's the sound of the future that owes so much to the past. I sat down...

It's the dream of many home recordists, but for Ruban Nielson it actually happened. He recorded some songs at home for fun, posted them online, and a buzz started around them — leading to record labels, tours, and albums. Unknown Mortal Orchestra's recent third album...

Psych Pop has been enjoying a healthy resurgence. The loudest shots from the latest wave were fired by Tame Impala when they released Innerspeaker in 2010, soon becoming one of the biggest indie acts in the world. Whether due to interstellar grokking or flattering imitation, an...

Australia's Tame Impala, led by Kevin Parker, have taken the classic psychedelic sounds of Cream and "The White Album" era Beatles, combining them with elements that can only exist in the modern age. Their debut, 2010's Innerspeaker, was celebrated by...

Teetering stacks of cassettes and CDs line every wall, occasionally broken up by whimsical relics, such as the bust of Elvis lamp and vintage board games. There are a lot of ideas that live in this room, recorded and archived in various formats. Stationed in a nest of equipment...

"This is a good story to start a Tape Op interview," Chris Cohen of Deerhoof tells us as we press record on the tape recorder. "I just learned yesterday that you can use inserts in Pro Tools Free. Up until now, every time we'd do an edit or EQ something or...

Any one of Les Paul's amazing careers would make him remarkable. His wide-ranging excellence (and longevity) make him a legend and a living treasure. He is in the hall of fame for songwriting, invention and rock and roll — and has earned five Grammy awards. Les Paul...

Was this record really recorded in a garage?

Yes, it was. I now dub it the Mirage Garage. It's my back house here in Pasadena [California]; a little shack out back where I have all of my instruments and a modest recording setup.

Did you guys rehearse these songs, or was it...

The Shins debut album, Oh, Inverted World, is a testament to the power of home recording. A band with great songs captures those songs using the gear they can afford and manipulates the recording process to turn technical limitations to their advantage. For their second release...

Stephin Merritt is the mastermind behind the music of The Magnetic Fields, the 6ths, the Gothic Archies and Future Bible Heroes. He is also one of the most important and influential songwriters in recent history. His lyrical confidence is apparent, strolling with ease from pop...

He's been a member of The Three O'Clock, Jellyfish and The Grays. His voice and instrumentation appear on albums by Beck, Susanna Hoffs, Eric Matthews, Aimee Mann, and Air. He co-wrote, produced, and performed on many of the songs on Brendan Benson's two CDs. And...

Jon Brion is well known as a session musician, record producer, solo artist and now, with the work he did for Magnolia, a scorer of films. In his world, all of this is equally important and interrelated. He's worked with artists such as Aimee Mann, Fiona Apple, Robyn...

Ween gets away with murder. It is one of the few bands that writes, records, and releases exactly what it wants. The group's songs can be daring, funny, offensive, and tender. Composed of Mickey Melchiondo (aka Dean Ween) and Aaron Freeman (aka Gene Ween), Ween has released...

It was, strangely, a sunny day in the middle of a Portland winter when I came by to pry Elliott out of a studio/office space (actually, it's a room off the side of the Undercover Inc. office) where he was working on "leftovers" from his 3rd solo album-in-progress....