Interviews
By Luke Photography, Geoff Stanfield
If you are a music producer, mixer, label owner, songwriter, or electronic music maker, you owe a debt to Lee "Scratch" Perry. He was, and continues to be, a spiritual guide and compass for true artistic expression. He is a dub pioneer, the first to turn Rasta culture and beliefs into a popular...
Interviews
Jamaican electronics whiz kid Hopeton Overton Brown got his moniker "Scientist" from none other than one of dub music prod...
Interviews
I remember the first time I heard the Dub Syndicate album, Tunesfrom the Missing Channel, in 1984. I was used to reggae being ...
Interviews
Co-founded by Emch in 1999, Subatomic Sound System is a collective of musicians and others...
Interviews
Grant Avenue Studio, based in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, is a prestigious, fabled, and...
Jon Castelli is a mix engineer and producer working out of his studio, The Gift Shop, in the Arts District of downtown Los Angeles. Jon studied with Tony Maserati for five years and has since constructed a dense body of work on his own with artists such as Khalid, 6LACK, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Ke$ha, and Ariana Grande. I met Jon Castelli a few years ago and I was impressed with his skills, not only as a talented engineer and producer, but also because he has that special quality that pushes him to excel at his craft. I learned a lot about contemporary mixing techniques from talking with him, and I think his story will interest others.
I first met Kyle Crane at the airport in Austin before a barrage of SXSW showcases in 2012, when the band I was playing with flew him in from L.A. to be our drummer for the week. Eight years later, Kyle is one of the most in-demand drummers in Los Angeles. He has recorded and toured extensively with Daniel Lanois [Tape Op #127, #37] and Neko Case [#127], and has worked with many others, such as M. Ward, Pomplamoose, Glen Ballard, and Kurt Vile. He also served as Miles Teller's drum double in the critically-acclaimed 2014 film Whiplash, lending hands, sticks, and blistering acumen to its pivotal musical moments. His first solo record – released this year under the name Crane Like the Bird – is underpinned by a collection of guest performances that reads like a Who's Who of both indie rock and modern jazz, including: James Mercer (The Shins), Peter Moren (Peter, Bjorn and John [Tape Op #65]), Ben Bridwell (Band of Horses), M. Ward, Luke Steele (Empire of the Sun), Sabina Sciubba (Brazilian Girls), Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes), Brad Mehldau, and Kurt Rosenwinkel, to highlight a few. I caught up with Kyle before an Oakland performance with Neko Case to talk about the record and his career path. Kyle is a pure performing musician, so we spoke little about the technical side of recording. That said, his life is a case study on how to survive and flourish in the modern music industry; no small feat, as most of us know.
As one half of The Black Keys with Dan Auerbach [Tape Op #127], Patrick Carney has witnessed their band achieve the sort of commercial success they would have once considered impossible. But more than "just" a drummer, Patrick is actually a guy who found his way into this band by being into home recording. Many of the early Black Keys' albums were "homemade" by the band, and they've been hands-on with producing and recording ever since. Patrick's career as a producer has seen him work with Jessy Wilson, Calvin Johnson, Tennis, The Black Lips, The Sheepdogs, and *repeat repeat, as well as Michelle Branch, Patrick's wife and a very talented musician in her own right. Dan and Patrick had completed Let's Rock in 2019 when I rolled up to visit his Audio Eagle studio outside of Nashville. Photo: Patrick and Michelle at Audio Eagle
DIY Recording Equipment (DIYRE) is a cool company, making great, easy-to-build DIY studio gear. I've written a few enthusiastic reviews of their kits for Tape Op, and I was glad to get an hour of DIYRE founder Peterson Goodwyn's time to talk about how he ended up on this path.
In my experience, germanium circuits are not for the faint of heart. Not for playing it safe. Not for those seeking clarity, or wanting to retain transparency. This type of design is for the engineer looking for certain textures on the front end while committing to a sound. The Kludge Audio Model...
Chameleon Labs has been around since the early 2000s, when they made their mark with their popular inexpensive British-style mic preamp and EQ, the 7602 [Tape Op #51]. John Baccigaluppi reported in his review of the 7602, that when compared with a real 1073, "...the 7602 is pretty much dead on." In...
GIK Acoustics is known for its beautiful, effective, professional room treatment solutions, so you may be asking why an acoustics manufacturer of their stature would bother to offer foam panels at all. Though it may be true that foam treatment is not as dense or effective across the mid and lower...
"Why did the producer cross the road? Because that's how The Beatles did it!" I forget who first told me that joke, but if you can relate to it the way I do, you're going to want to check out the new Kush AR-1 Vintage Mu compressor plug-in. The Kush AR-1 is modeled after the Lisson Grove AR-1...
Arturia expands its AudioFuse line of USB audio interfaces with the 8Pre, a versatile single rack space unit eight input preamp/audio interface that has up to eight channels of ADAT I/O, plus USB-C connectivity. My testing for this handsome "dual-mode" unit included use cases as both a standalone...
The UAD VT-737 is a recreation of the renowned Avalon Designs 737 tube channel strip [Tape Op #28]. At a glance, the basic features of the channel strip include a preamp section with +45 dB of gain, a -20 dB pad, a phase reverse, a high gain switch for low output sources, selectable mic/line modes,...
I first met Bryce Gonzales about five years ago through our mutual friend and pillar of the Los Angeles music community, Jonathan Larroquette. Jonathan is a longtime manager, fixer, and fixture at Jack Waterson's renowned music shop, Future Music. Between Jack and Jonathan, there is basically no...
Built for the 500 Series format, the Avedis E12G has 12 bands, instead of the customary ten found in many graphic EQs. The additional frequencies provide for 12 kHz (filling the gap between 8 kHz and 16 kHz found in some EQs) and 22 kHz adjustment. Controls detent at zero and have a range spanning...
I've been using the same nearfield studio monitors for almost ten years now. My main pair is no longer in production, and my alternate pair is from a company that shut down – and I've been concerned about what might happen if any of these break. Over the past few years, I've grown accustomed to the...
Andrew Roberts started Purple Audio and came out with the MC76 limiting amplifier in 1997. Informed by Andrew's years as a tech, the MC76 implemented the classic UREI 1176 Revision E compression circuit using modern components and beefy build quality (see Tape Op #117's Behind The Gear interview)....
Chase Bliss pedals have become somewhat of an obsession for me as of late. Hopefully, it‘s healthy – I can't tell anymore. Ostensibly a two-channel micro-looping delay, M O O D is Chase Bliss' crowning achievement in weird-making. It makes me so happy. If you're unfamiliar with Chase Bliss or their...
A huge part of Eventide's identity lies in their lineage in modern recorded music and the resulting imprint these contributions have left on the landscape of record making. Imagine your record collection without the H3000, or the Reverb 2016 [Tape Op #48], for that matter. The list goes on and on...
This book, subtitled Stompbox Effects for Creative Music Making, is a welcome guide to how the conversation around instrument pedals and recording has evolved over the past few years, especially with the introduction of simple interfacing solutions like the EXTC [Tape Op #100] from Radial...
Gamechanger Audio is a Latvian-based company founded in 2015. Since then, they've released the Plus Pedal, the Motor Synth, and this new line of Plasma distortions. With their namesake as a constant reminder of what they are striving for, each of the former devices has been designed from a...
Not everyone needs a click track, but even the best of musicians can struggle at slower tempos on a Tuesday morning in an unfamiliar environment with headphones strapped on. If the band is tight, I shy away from smearing headphones with nasty bleeping tempo reminders. Pro Metronome is an easy to...
The decade that had the most impact on my musical growth and development was the '80s; it was a ripe and fertile time for new recording technologies and techniques. Many artists seemed quite intent on pushing new arrangements and writing boundaries, while simultaneously being influenced by new...
u-he's Satin is a "tape simulation" plug-in unlike any other that I have used. It's not an exhaustive emulation of a specific analog machine, nor is it a simplified saturation box. Instead, Satin aims to provide a comprehensive tool kit of interactive controls to create your own simulated tape...
Tascam released something that will interest growing studios. The SERIES 8p Dyna offers 8-channels of mic pres with 1-Knob analog compressors, phantom power, eight analog outputs (on DB-25 or TRS), dual optical outs (8-channels at 96 kHz via S/MUX, less at higher sample rates), and Word Clock I/O....
Described as a "Dynamic Stereo Width Maximizer," SideMinder was developed by Jeff Rippe, former president and chief engineer of Rocksonics, and current mixing and mastering engineer at Raising Jake Studios. This is not a plug-in that adds synthetic stereo to a mono track; instead, it brings out the...
Leapwing Audio, makers of the exceptional DynOne dynamics plug-in,now approach stereo manipulation with the release of StageOne. With three distinct uses, this plug-in is beneficial in mixing and mastering situations. An uncluttered interface offers one column per process: Width, Depth, and Mono...
I'm sure you've read countless interviews and reviews in Tape Op mentioning how analog gear can impart "depth," "weight," "sheen," or that elusive "glue" to a track or a mix. Much of the time, these discussions revolve around the classic preamps, EQs, and compressors of the '50s, '60s, and '70s. In...
With the release of the new Apollo x4, UA keeps the hits coming with a revised and expanded desktop interface utilizing the recent conversion upgrades found in its rackmount sibling "x" range. At a little less than twice the footprint of the Apollo Twin [Tape Op #121] form factor, the x4 offers...
A few weeks ago at the airport, I noticed a Best Buy vending machine ready to dispense various electronic goodies like laptop chargers, headphones, lightning cables, and an audio interface. I'm sure that somewhere in the world there's a gas station that has one for sale – they're everywhere! So,...
Ten plus years ago I was the proud owner of a Neve 5104 console. I admit, it's a far cry from a vintage Neve sporting 1073 modules, but it's what I could afford at the time and I liked its sound. But as is the case with any piece of vintage equipment, it required constant love and attention. It...