Interviews
By Heather Mount
A studio manager juggles responsibilities and must also find the time and space for creativity. It takes a level head and a scopic vision to stay sane and to be brilliant. Knitting Factory Recording Studio manager Sascha Van Oertzen runs her Studio with an ease that only comes from mixing experience...
Interviews
Jennifer Herrema and Neil Hagerty have led the Royal Trux for a number of years now. They pulled a coup of sorts w...
Interviews
Ray Carmen has been a part of the underground "cassette culture" for over ten years. As might be guessed by the heading, Ca...
Interviews
Home recording has taken some serious leaps during the nineties. A four track and a couple...
Interviews
While some of my favorite albums were made in huge studios with big budgets, I'm also...
Interviews
Neutral Milk Hotel began in the early 90's as a 4 track cassette project by Jeff...
This is a story about how I got to live my fantasy of walking through the door of the building at 3 Abbey Road and saying, "We're working in studio two." It's second only to the one where I walk through the door and the receptionist says "Good morning Mr. Martin." This was made possible by my generous friend Elliott Smith, whom I believe had a similar fantasy. We were joined by our buddies Rob Schnapf and Tom Rothrock, who took care of the recording duties, and Sam Coomes from Quasi, the best rock band in the world.
Butch Vig has created a big name for himself in the recording world. In 1984 he and Steve Marker founded Smart Studios in Madison, Wisconsin, and started working with tons of indie bands (like Killdozer, L7, Urge Overkill), including quite a few albums for records labels like Touch and Go, Slash and Sub Pop. As time went by his reputation got bigger, leading to work with Smashing Pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana (Nevermind) and Sonic Youth (Dirty). Then, as if this wasn't enough, he and Steve put a band together with Shirley Manson and Duke Erickson and called it Garbage. When we got the opportunity to inter- view Butch, it was originally going to be in San Francisco. After some contemplation, John Vanderslice of Tiny Telephone studio and M K Ultra (himself a former Tape Op interview victim) came to mind. John runs a very analog orientated studio, so I figured with him chatting up Butch, who works extensively in Pro Tools, we'd get some sparks flying. And what happens? They got along like peas in a pod...
In just a few short years, Scott Colburn's Gravelvoice Productions has been involved with a wonderfully diverse collection of artists and recordings. His Seattle, Washington studio offers an analog 16-track, digital editing, and plenty of charm. Scott engineers, produces, and contributes musically when needed. He's also an avid record collector and for years was known as Shaggy (a la Scooby Doo) because he looked exactly like him. To start off the interview, Scott agreed to answer some silly profile questions.