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Peggy Sue, ‘Choir of Echoes’
British alt-rock group Peggy Sue wrote and demoed the songs for their latest album, Choir of Echoes, in their North London practice space before...
Profiles
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Producer Dave Tozer: Philly Musical Roots, With New York Production Style
Dave Tozer is a true music junkie, and his passion is infectious. Writing, recording, arranging, producing, editing, mixing—he just thinks of music that way,...
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Product Highlights From Winter NAMM 2014, Day Three
Product Highlights From Winter NAMM 2014, Day Three
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Larrabee Studios: The Best of Old-School/New School, With Style
On a Tuesday night in late 2012, past the 11 o’clock hour, Larrabee Studios in North Hollywood was crazy packed and jumpin’. Jimmy Douglass...
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Cool Spin – Various Artists: Music From and Inspired by ’12 Years a Slave’ (Columbia)
Forget the brutality that suffuses Steve McQueen’s brilliant film, 12 Years a Slave. This album, assembled by John Legend, who also sings a couple...
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Crisis Management While Tracking: Solving Problems Against the Clock
Like a Polaroid left out in the sun, the hegemony of multiroom tracking facilities in our industry is fading fast. With it goes the...
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Sam Roberts Band’s ‘Lo-Fantasy’
Engineer Michael Rendall uses the word “ecstatic” to describe the playing on Lo-Fantasy, the latest rock-via-’70s-funk-and-punk album from the Sam Roberts Band. The dynamic...
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Nir Felder’s ‘Golden Age’
Jazz guitarist Nir Felder touches on different “ages” on this solo release. The former sideman for contemporary artists Esperanza Spalding, Jack DeJohnette, Meshell Ndegeocello...
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Rosanne Cash: ‘The River and the Thread’ Weaves Southern Influences
In 2009, Rosanne Cash and her husband, producer/musician/recordist John Leventhal, made The List, a selection of covers from a longer list of essentials that...
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The Reverend Horton Heat: ‘Rev’
Jim Heath’s longtime psychobilly outfit releases its debut for Victory Records this month, and Rev does not disappoint. There’s plenty of freaky tongue-in-cheek thrash...
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Recording the Perfect Vocal: A Session Checklist for Nailing the Keeper Track
Anybody who has been in this business long enough can relate: You’ve recorded the perfect track, everything sounds amazing! The bass is phat, the...
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When Musician Becomes Master: 40 Years Later, Capitol Engineer Cuts His Own Tracks to Vinyl
Ron McMaster’s life has come full circle twice over, intersecting in the intimate setting of the George Augspurger-designed room he has worked in for...
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Ry Cooder and Friends Captured Live
Ry Cooder recorded his first live album, Showtime, back in 1976 at San Francisco’s intimate Great American Music Hall. His latest, Live in San...
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DTS Headphone:X – An 11.1 Experience That Brings the Consumer Into the Mix Room
It’s one of the most impressive demos you will hear. Stellar, dynamic, full-range music. Familiar-yet-somehow-all-new technology. And a Wow! factor that keeps professionals and...
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Cool Spin – Vienna Teng, ‘Aims’ (Soltruna Records)
For her fifth studio album, singer/songwriter/keyboardist Vienna Teng has paired with producer/musician Cason Cooley to create a texturally rich and stylistically diverse album that’s...
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Northeast U.S. Session News
Owner/composer Jamie Lokoff has been writing commercial scores for NBC Sports, Century 21, Planet Fitness, Thomson Reuters and Stetson in Studios B and C,...
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‘The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records’: Remastering American Voices, in Mass Quantities
Paramount Records, above and beyond any label from the time period, had the very worst sound quality and the very worst pressing technology available,”...
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Lewis Watson Records ‘Some Songs With Some Friends’
This four-song EP from singer Lewis Watson features the guitar-and-vocals-focused opening track “Even If,” which was engineered by Jonathan Gilmore, and produced and mixed...
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Billie Joe and Norah’s Harmonious ‘Foreverly’
“Billie had been listening to this record and had grown attached to it,” explains Chris Dugan, the go-to engineer/mixer for Billie Joe Armstrong’s projects,...
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Mastering on the Cutting Edge: Quality in the Age of Low-Res, Low Budgets and Multiple Formats
We should all give thanks for mastering engineers. Despite small budgets, low-resolution distribution, level wars and the DIY democratization of the recording business, the...
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Wonder & Lightning: Meet the Duo Behind Janelle Monae and Deep Cotton
What’s in a name? Are the two guys at the other end of my interview phone call Nathaniel Irvin III and Charles Joseph II?...
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Alejandro Fernandez: Phil Ramone’s Last Hurrah Is an International Hit
In early October, Mexican singing sensation Alejandro Fernandez’s latest album, Confidencias, leaped out of the box to Number One on Billboard’s Latin Pop charts,...
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Trevor Morris Rising: Music, Tech and a New Santa Monica Facility
Trevor Morris knows and feels music, and always has, from high school days in London, Ontario, that included being commissioned to write a piece...
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Cool Spin – CBGB: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Omnivore Recordings)
This is one of those reviews that could just be a track list. There are so many fantastic songs on the soundtrack to CBGB,...
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Sarah Jarosz ‘Build Me Up From Bones’
For their third album together, roots artist/songwriter Sarah Jarosz and engineer/producer/label exec Gary Paczosa cut all of the tracks in Paczosa’s personal studio in...
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Wild Child with Ben Kweller
Musician and producer Ben Kweller says one of the big draws to working with Austin-based indie-folk band Wild Child is their unique instrumentation. “I’ve...
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Jon Batiste & Stay Human, ‘Social Music’
A gifted, restless musician with boundless artistic ambition, Jon Batiste is never content with one take, one approach or one genre. His latest, Social...
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Session News
Folk-rock singer-songwriter Jack Johnson was in Studio A for promo recording, including live ISDN radio interviews and a live acoustic performance (produced by Johnson...
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Eddie Kramer and the Early Days of Electric Lady
When Jimi Hendrix and his manager, Michael Jeffries, decided to buy the recently closed Generation Club in Greenwich Village in mid-1968, the plan was...
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The Clash ‘Sound System’
The Clash—the seminal English punk band comprising guitarist/singers Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, drummer Topper Headon and bassist Paul Simonon—only made five albums, but...
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Boardwalk Empire Volume 2: Soundtrack Puts Listeners in a Musical Time Machine
In HBO’s stellar series Boardwalk Empire, music may enhance, or undercut, a scene of joyous debauchery, violence or sorrow. But whatever the mood, the...
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Dr. Lonnie Smith Octet
Hammond B3 organ master Dr. Lonnie Smith teamed up with alto saxophonist Ian Hendrickson-Smith (a former member of the Dap-Kings) to re-imagine some of...
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Newpoli: Italian Folk Revived
Everything old is new again, and that includes traditional Italian folk music, which is being brilliantly revived by an octet called Newpoli, made up...
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Producer Ryan Hadlock
It wasn’t a slam-dunk that Ryan Hadlock—owner of Bear Creek Studio outside of Seattle and producer of high-profile projects by the likes of The...
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Northwest U.S. Session News
Singer-songwriter Neko Case worked on her latest album, The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love...
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Northwest U.S. News & Notes
Seattle’s legendary Robert Lang Studios and Brick Lane Records recently announced a strategic partnership to provide artists access to an SSL Duality SE V3...
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‘Sweet Relief III: Pennies From Heaven’: Benefit Album Is a Musical Gift
The Sweet Relief Musicians Fund has been aiding artists with disabilities for 20 years. The organization’s concerts, events and record releases have featured performances...
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Neko Case: Making Music Inside, and Outside, the Comfort Zone
Craig Schumacher describes the process of making Neko Case’s latest magnificent album as a process involving critical relationships and balance: “When she’s here, it’s...
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Mixing The Julie Ruin
Engineer/studio owner Eli Crews moved from Oakland, Calif., to Brooklyn about a year ago to become the chief engineer at musician/producer Shahzad Ismaily’s new...
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Trombone Shorty, ‘Say That to Say This’
When he wasn’t onstage or supporting young musicians through his Trombone Shorty Foundation, the magnetic musician/vocalist Troy Andrews—aka Trombone Shorty—was in the studio this...
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DJ Earworm: Mashup Pop’s Top Chef
DJ Earworm, the pseudonym of Jordan Roseman, is funny and relaxed, yet underneath, his computer-wiz intensity and composing skills have led to mashup fame....