Interviews
By Larry Crane, Madeline Marino
In his 80s, John Cale is still (thankfully) releasing interesting music. He is a founding member of The Velvet Underground and a pioneer in drone music, as well as a producer for legends like The Stooges, Patti Smith, The Modern Lovers, Happy Mondays, Squeeze, and Sham 69. His recently released new...
Interviews
The Blasting Room, a studio in Fort Collins, Colorado, has been in operation for 30 years. What began as a home base/practice room/b...
Interviews
If you've been keeping up with the explosion of popularity around hardcore and heavy alternative music, chances are you've...
Interviews
Yuka Honda has been a figure in the New York City avant-garde and indie-rock scenes for...
Interviews
Brad Cook has been making and recording music since he was a kid growing up in Eau Claire,...
Interviews
After Tape Op's online editor Geoff Stanfield interviewed both Noah Lennox and...
When singer, songwriter and pianist Jon Regen met famed UK synth wizard and producer Matt Johnson after a Jamiroquai gig back in 2018, he had no idea the two would soon begin a fruitful partnership that would take them both into acclaimed, uncharted waters. With Regen, a new parent based in NYC, and Johnson across the ocean in London, the duo set out on the seemingly Herculean task to make an entire album remotely in a pre-COVID world. Their first effort, Regen's 2019 release Higher Ground, received praise from outlets like Rolling Stone, Billboard, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Four years and one pandemic later, the team is back with Regen's 2023 follow-up album, Satisfied Mind. A genre-busting ride through jazz, pop, electronica, and more, this new collection of songs features cameos by luminaries like Ron Carter, Rob Thomas, Pino Palladino, Dave McMurray, Larry Goldings, Tim Lefebvre, Jeremy Stacey, and others. We caught-up with the duo as each prepared for their own respective solo tours.
How does a skilled jazz drummer become a hip-hop producer, musical director, DJ, and film scorer? Working with Common, J Dilla, Madlib, Paul McCartney, and Diana Krall, Karriem Riggins has accomplished so much in the musical realm. Add to all this work his new software release, Native Instruments' Komplete Instrument Play Series: Karriem Riggins Drums, an interesting side project where he's offering up kits, one-shot hits, grooves, and patterns full of unique, tweakable sounds and feels. We caught up over Zoom while Karriem was in an airport lounge on his way to Atlanta, Georgia. As he told me, "I just did a lot of work in New York, and I'm making my rounds."
After Tape Op's online editor Geoff Stanfield interviewed both Noah Lennox and longtime collaborator Pete Kember [#46] for the Tape Op Podcast about their work together, and their recent album Reset, he wanted to dig a little deeper into Noah's musical beginnings and process. Geoff dropped editor Larry Crane a line, who decided wanted to then interview Pete Kember, and catch up with all that's happened in his interesting career over the last couple of decades. We last chatted with Pete Kember, aka Sonic Boom, way back in Tape Op #46, about his years in Spacemen 3, his Spectrum and E.A.R. projects, and more. Since then, he's kept busy, including producing MGMT's Congratulations and Beach House's 7 albums, mixing Moon Duo, and producing and collaborating with Panda Bear on a number of projects, notably the recent Reset album.
Drawmer isn’t the only audio company that offers a saturation processor, but they are the only brand I’ve encountered that offers one with this much functionality, a great price point, and all in one rack unit. The name may suggest at least two features, but there are even more. Like its name, the...
As I began writing my review for Neve’s 88M – the company’s first step into the world of USB-powered desktop interfaces – I struggled to find words to describe Neve that hadn’t been used many times before. Adjectives such as “iconic” and “timeless” were earned over six decades of experimentation,...
Ever since getting a very patient and life-changing call from mastering engineer John Golden [Tape Op #121], where he explained that my snare drum and overhead mics on many of my mixes were out of phase, I've been a stickler for keeping phase and polarity relationships intact, especially on drums....
It seems fitting that Universal Audio offers the Capitol Mastering Compressor plug-in. When the first hardware units were made, Capitol Mastering engineer/tech Ian Sefchick [Tape Op #134] drew from his love of the Universal Audio 175 compressor and his desire to pair its tube front end with a...
If you’re reading Tape Op reviews and love recording with ribbon and dynamic mics as much as I do, then you’re probably already familiar with Cloudlifters. Also known as “mic activators,” they’re essentially mic preamps that go between the microphone and the “main” preamp. Instead of outputting...
I recently got an email from Matt Walton at Iron Age Audioworks, “Hey John I’ll be in the San Francisco Bay Area in a few weeks installing a console. Maybe we could meet up for a beer or coffee?” Installing a new console? I was intrigued, and so it was that a few weeks later I rode my bike over to...
There are a lot of Rhodes piano plug-ins out there, but Universal Audio's Electra 88 Vintage Keyboard Studio sets itself apart in some critically appealing ways. It has a large dynamic range, comes with an array of studio tools, and allows for deceptively tweaky options via a user interface that is...
With the Hornet, Useful Arts had a mission: In 2018, the company's founder, Peter Swann, teased that a yet-to-be-named solid-state mic pre/DI “small enough to throw in a backpack” would arrive, with hopes to “make great sound accessible to everyone.” As promised, the one channel Hornet is smaller...
Kali Audio has swiftly established a notable reputation in both professional and home studios, and quite a few professional engineers have been quoted saying that Kalis match or outperform monitors costing significantly more. Therefore, I was curious to check out their new IN-UNF ultra-nearfield...
Despite all the amazing plug-ins available for delay these days, there’s something inherently cool and desirable about early first generation digital hardware delay units, hence so many plug-in emulations of them. With the newly updated Lexicon PSP 42, PSP Audioware has captured everything that...
When I first saw the Lindell Audio LiN2A Vintage Leveling Amplifier, I admit I got excited. I use my Lindell Audio LiN76 [Tape Op #153] quite a bit, so I couldn’t wait to try this one. As soon as I pulled the LiN2A out of the box, I saw that one of my minor nitpicks of the LiN76 had already been...
I try a different vocal microphone on just about every record I make. Some are technically great, but too sterile for my taste. Others – particularly tube large diaphragm condenser (LDC) mics that I’ve settled on – have vibe for days, although, the self-noise of these mics (at least the knock-off...
When I tested the ADAM Audio A7V nearfield monitors [Tape Op #153], I also acoustically measured my control room for the first time. It brimmed with problem areas. Though I will defend home recording with my last breath, I am well aware that – at least from an acoustic perspective – bedrooms do not...
I've been a fan of Soundtoys' Little Plate [Tape Op #123] since it came out years back, but in the back of my mind I aways wondered if "Little" meant a more complicated version was coming, in the vein of their Little MicroShift and its bigger sibling. Now SuperPlate is here, and it earns its title....
I've been a fan of Kim Bjørn and Bjooks' series of hardcover synth nerd bibles since the initial release of Push Turn Move in 2017. For those unfamiliar with the series, Bjooks publishes a series of gorgeous, hard cover, heavyweight, photo-essay style tomes, each with a specific focus on music...
When I saw the Peluso ad for their shock mounts in the last issue of Tape Op, it immediately piqued my interest. I have several vintage microphones that do not have good shock mounts that Peluso makes custom shock mounts for. Shock mounts are one of the frustrating parts of running a studio, as...