Interviews
By Danny Murphy, Brad Bordine, Leigh Marble
Last summer, a friend was all excited about an upcoming show by a "keyboard duo" from Seattle. They played some kind of experimental electronic pop. Octant? Never heard of them, I shrugged. How exciting is a keyboard duo? "Well," he said, "they build their own light-controlled...
Interviews
John McEntire is known for many personas. Some see him as a musician, having played drums and other instruments in bands like Bastro...
Interviews
Beware stereo salesmen everywhere. Be on the lookout for customers appearing with a reference album bearing the audio trademark of o...
Interviews
On a blustery Boston day, Robert Fisher and Pete Weiss sat down in Robert's living...
Interviews
Dave McNair has done a lot. He's played guitar in garage bands, toured with The Silos...
Martin Feveyear and Christian Fulgham opened Jupiter Studios in 1994 but are running their first local print ad this year. Word of mouth, artistic focus, great sounds, and plenty of vibe have attracted a steady mix of enviable projects. In their years of operation, Jupiter has seen the likes of Mark Lanegan, Tuatara, Presidents of the United States of America, Sir-Mix-a-Lot, Nevada Bachelors, Super Deluxe, and many other Seattle artists. In the process, they've proven themselves an excellent place to track, mix and, master albums or demos.
If I told you Matmos made audio cut-up, experimental, electronic music that closely parallels conceptual art, you'd probably write them off as some snobby, avant garde, artsy-fartsy, black turtleneck and a goatee noise group. If I informed you that their latest CD on Matador records, entitled A Chance To Cut Is A Chance To Cure, was constructed mostly from manipulated field recordings of cosmetic surgeries, you'd probably pass it off as a morbid gimmick that sounds cute on paper, but probably wears thin after repeated listenings. I could spend the rest of this page trying to convince you that despite their art school angle, the duo that make up Matmos (Martin Schmidt and Drew Daniel) are super nice and have managed to turn the sound of liposuctioned fat into a playful, foot-tappin' ditty. But I know what's really going to make you sit up and take notice of these guys is the fact that everyone's favorite elfin diva, Bjork, has hand picked these two to be the opening act on her upcoming world tour, and is using them as a vital part of her backing band (consisting of Matmos, Bjork, a harpist, and a 60- piece orchestra). These guys are rad- I know it, and Bjork knows it. So sit back and prepare to receive the gospel of Matmos as told to me, Chachi Jones.
Do you ever wonder if some people truly have a vision or whether they just get lucky? I still haven't figured out what attribute to apply to Lynn Fuston, perhaps a little of both. Last year, just around April Fools Day, he assembled the largest assortment of currently manufactured microphone...
(VST 2.0, MOTU MAS and Digidesign DirectConnect) I recently had the pleasure of using Native Instrument's Hammond B3 plug-in appropriately dubbed the B4. For those of you like me, who have lusted after the unique character and mystique that has surrounded this most famous of Hammond organs; yet...
My dad raised me on swing-era big bands and crooners. In the heat of the summer, we'd be down in the cool basement with a stack of 78 RPM records. Many years later, he showed up at my New York apartment with those same records. A well-equipped son, I have all the necessary gear to play everything...
I used to think that gates were all the same. I bought an inexpensive quad gate years ago and have used it quite a bit for cleaning up a bit of tape hiss or amp noise during mixing. When I tried to use it for cleaning a vocal track I always felt it was a bit slow on opening up at the top of a...
This Russian beauty will amaze you. It sounds really, really good. Its frequency response is 60 - 17 k and is nearly flat from 170 - 17 k (there are some slight 2 dB bumpsaround3k,5k,and11k).Ihaveusediton acoustic guitar, lead vocal and in a variety of positions on drums, pretty much every place...
Being familiar with Ted Fletcher's colorful (literally and sonically) line of preamps, compressors and EQs, I was very intrigued by this new microphone. It is a large diaphragm true capacitor microphone, as opposed to your typical electret condenser. According to the manual the design is based on...
You know how there are certain things that come in to your life and once they do you realize that you just can't live without them? That was the experience I had when I first heard the L2M Mastering Limiter/Expander from Requisite Audio Engineering. It seemed as if anything I ran through the unit...
On first listen the Fostex NF-1A sounds different from most monitors. Many have a smiley-faced EQ curve, with lots of boom and sizzle to make things sound good. If your critical listening needs have not yet been met, check out the Fostex NF-1A. You'll find it provides more midrange detail, where...
Before I jump into a review of these courses, allow me to tell you little bit about myself. I've been home recording for about 13 years or so, first with a 4-track and an Shure 57, now with an 8-track, a couple of pieces of outboard gear, and a few more mics - nothing too fancy. In the meantime my...
The right-honorable Portastudio line has now entered the digital realm, and once again they've produced a well- engineered, affordable product. At the risk of sounding like I'm on the payroll, the 788 responds so well to such a wide variety of needs at such a cheap price that it's hard to imagine...
One relatively inexpensive piece of gear that can have a lot of impact on your recordings is the good old pop filter. For most, this is a fabric mesh screen to place in front of a vocal mic in order to prevent plosives - those horrible pops created by "P" and "B" sounds when a burst of air comes...
Playing to a click track is a blessing or a curse, but I'm sure every musician or engineer has had to deal with it more than once. For a while I was burdened with one that would only give me 2 bpm intervals, which never seemed quite right, and trying to figure the tempo of a song was always a hit...
I recently had to mix a record at a studio with literally NO outboard gear. What's a girl to do? So I went to the local music store and bought one device: the D2 Digital Delay by T.C. Electronic. I was happy with it's flexibility and therefore was encouraged to try T.C.'s next endeavor: the Triple...