Interviews
By Larry Crane
In Dave Grohl's documentary, Sound City, viewers were treated to stories from the vivacious, smart, and funny Paula Salvatore — the manager of Sound City Studios for nine years. But what one might not learn from that appearance is that Paula has since run the famous Capitol Studios for over 25...
Interviews
When one thinks of the great recording engineers who have indelibly shaped the recorded history of jazz music, names like Rudy Van Gelde...
Interviews
The Middle Hudson Valley of New York State has long been a bastion of creativity, counterculture, the arts, and especially music. Whi...
Interviews
I've been a fan of The Low Anthem since hearing their 2007 album, What the Crow...
"The Heart of Rock & Roll" Certain bands are meant for certain times, and arguably no band better captured the "Hip to Be Square" culture of the roaring 1980s than Huey Lewis and the News. From musical pop culture landmarks like "The Heart of Rock & Roll," "I Want a New Drug," "Heart and Soul," and "Workin' for a Livin'," Huey and the guys fused rock 'n' roll, soul, and new wave into a new sound that legendary producer Jim Gaines helped craft from the ground up, from the band's very first hit "Do You Believe in Love" all the way through the end of a decade-long greatest hits run. Gaines could also be found working side-by-side with late Stevie Ray Vaughan — producing many of the guitarist's most celebrated hits, including "The House is Rockin'," "Crossfire," "Tightrope," and "Life by the Drop." In addition, Jim also worked with guitar legend Carlos Santana on his Grammy-winning, chart-topping Supernatural LP, not to mention also tracking and mixing hits for Steve Miller. Sitting down with Tape Op for a rare interview, Gaines began by looking back over his own career as one of rock's great producers: "I'm a lucky guy. I'm just a hard-working hillbilly from Arkansas, and I've been very lucky throughout my career to be involved with all these great artists. That's the way I look at it."
Randall Dunn is creating what might be Seattle's next chapter in the dark and loud tradition of Northwest music. From the Sonics and Jimi Hendrix, to the U-Men and grunge, the Pacific Northwest has a reputation for spawning loud, raw blues. A tireless and prolific man, his discography includes Sunn O))), Earth, Eyvind Kang, Master Musicians Of Bukkake, Rose Windows, Skerik from Critters Buggin', The Cave Singers, Oren Ambarchi, Marissa Nadler, Jessika Kenney, Boris, Akron, Sun City Girls, Midday Veil, Kinski, Faith Coloccia, Jesse Sykes, Black Mountain & Wolves In The Throne Room. Randall draws from his experience with Drone, Metal, Avant-Jazz, Folk and even film soundtracks. He travels deep and wide with the musicians he records. Randall just might turn the page in Seattle's family bible — the part where it rains and rains and Noah starts building that ark...
The API 535-LA is a line-amp module based on the company's venerable 325 booster card. It utilizes the same AP2503 transformer, 2510 differential amp, and 2520 op-amp that have been the DNA building blocks inside the company's consoles for decades. The module provides up to 45 dB of gain, and it...
I don't know how many unicorns PSI Audio had to milk to fill up this 20'' tall box full of magic. Actually, it's not really a milk box; it's more like a wedge of Swiss cheese. Coincidentally, its multifaceted shape reminds me of the polyhedral dice used in role-playing games about dungeons and...
When I interviewed Sylvia Massy almost a decade ago [Tape Op #63], I had no inkling I'd eventually end up in a book of hers, especially alongside much more famous folks like Hans Zimmer, Al Schmitt, Jack Joseph Puig, Bruce Swedien [#91], Geoff Emerick [#57], George Massenburg [#54, #63], Bob...
Last year, I was recording the upcoming album from Exit Verse (ex-members of Karate, Chisel, Brokeback) at MINBAL in Chicago. Most of the time, the band wanted to keep the lights off in the live room. Late in the day, when the sun was close to setting, there was just enough natural light in the...
I love reverb — all types and on all sorts of instruments. Over the past few years, I've enjoyed using spring reverbs on my mixes. They bring a unique and sometimes unpredictable flavor to a mix. Demeter makes a great spring reverb [Tape Op #109]. Audio Kitchen made one for Billy Bush that I covet....
I think a lot of Tape Op readers have been waiting years for a book like this. Howard Massey is the author of the Behind the Glass series and co-author of Geoff Emerick's Here, There and Everywhere [Tape Op #57, #55]. For his new book, Howard documented the history of classic British recording...
Soon after longtime Tape Op writer Garrett Haines, owner of Treelady Studios, sent me a detailed review of the SPL IRON compressor, Jessica Thompson, former Chief Mastering Engineer at The Magic Shop, contacted me to offer her opinions too. I always look forward to Jessica's contributions, and...
In my review of the Blue Mo-Fi headphone [Tape Op #105] last year, I stated that it was the most innovative headphone I'd ever seen. Lola is the new, younger sibling of Mo-Fi. It shares the same custom-made 50 mm drivers and overall design of its older sibling, but its feature set has been slimmed...
Carl Tatz is an award-winning studio designer best known for his PhantomFocus System [Tape Op #82], a wholistic approach to optimizing all aspects of a monitoring system in order to achieve the best performance from the speakers, the room, and ultimately the engineer. To that end, his company, Carl...
Primacoustic has been making high-quality sound-control products since 2000. I have owned a pair of Primacoustic Recoil Stabilizer speaker-isolation platforms [Tape Op #62] for many years now, and I love them. I had recently upgraded the acoustic treatment in my new mix space, and things were...
Contributing writer Eric Tischler reviewed the original StudioLive 16.4.2 digital mixer and interface for us in 2010 [Tape Op #80]. Eric loved the mixer enough that he swapped out his analog Harrison console and Otari 2'' tape machine for a StudioLive 24.4.2 and laptop. A couple of years ago,...
There are many important components of an audio chain. You save your pennies to get a nice mic, a new preamp, perhaps some different flavors of outboard gear; or if you work in-the-box, maybe you collect plug-ins. Congratulations, you have begun your journey on the path to a gear acquisition habit...
Name me any boutique, high-end, tube preamp that has been on the market for over 30 years. That's right, Demeter's VTMP is the only one that's been around that long. I remember using one in a local studio over 17 years ago, and while not having enough time to properly evaluate it, I recognized that...
ZAOR was founded in 2014 by Italian master piano-builder Michele Zullo. His company's product line of stylish, modular, studio furniture came to my attention just this year via Simon Côté of Audio Plus Services, ZAOR's new North American distributor. Among ZAOR's suave offerings, the Miza Griprack...