Interviews | No. 171
By Sam Retzer and Meghan Minior
If you know a thing or two about punk and hardcore from the last few decades, you’ll know the name Will Killingsworth. His band, Orchid, brought unbridled passion to the ‘90s screamo scene, while Bucket Full of Teeth explored more noisy experimental fringes. From his Dead Air Studios in...
Rob and I used to warm up for high school jazz band practices with an endless vamp of “Too Many Puppies” by Primus on drums and bass, respectively. In our small town of Waynesboro, Virginia, the turn of the ‘90s saw the thump of Led Zeppelin morph into the churn of Slint as we discovered...
Emily A. Sprague may be best known as the primary songwriter and vocalist for the band Florist, who have released five albums since 2016. But she also composes and records ambient-adjacent electronic music, primarily using modular synthesizers, and is about to release her fourth instrumental...
Connecticut-based Goose is a band with what might seem a meteoric rise into the public consciousness, but they have been building a loyal fan base the same way that artists like the Grateful Dead and Phish had before them, with nearly a decade of endless touring. Their latest release, Everything...
When I recently interviewed Emily A. Sprague for this issue of Tape Op, she mentioned having played on an LP by artist Hannah Pruzinsky who goes by h. pruz. I’m glad Emily turned me on to pruz, as their new album Red sky at morning that Emily played on is a really beautiful set of songs....
Located in (yes) a former meat market, Pete Min calls Lucy's Meat Market in Eagle Rock, Los Angeles, his two room recording studio and home. Artists such as Meshell Ndegeocello, Real Estate, Lake Street Dive, Orville Peck, Chris Dave, The Monkees and others have used his engineering...
Liz Pelly is the author of the book, Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist. It's a well written and well researched book, and a fun read even though the subject is pretty dark. Spotify, and music streaming in general, have changed not only how we listen...
If you know a thing or two about punk and hardcore from the last few decades, you’ll know the name Will Killingsworth. His band, Orchid, brought unbridled passion to the ‘90s screamo scene, while Bucket Full of Teeth explored more noisy experimental fringes. From his Dead Air Studios in...
With the goal of releasing records recorded at the highest fidelity with minimal processing, Doug Fearn and brothers George and Geoff Hazelrigg began Outer Marker Records a few years ago, using DSD (Direct Stream Digital) recorders as opposed to the more typical PCM (Pulse Code Modulation)...
In 2025, Jim-E Stack (born James Harmon Stack) had three big releases out – Bon Iver's SABLE, fABLE, Lorde's Virgin, and Aminé's 13 Months of Sunshine – that he'd worked on as a producer and co-writer. Living in L.A., he's also worked with Charli XCX, Empress Of,...
I have a lot of favorite rock bands, but one that always puts a smile on my face was the original lineup(s) of The Saints. This Australian band released the first non-US punk single, “(I’m) Stranded,” in September 1976, even preceding some well-known London combos. The core of the original...
On Temperance, a musical Reverb
Formed in 1971, Eventide soon became one of the first companies to build digital delays and other future-shaping audio processers. Their H910 Harmonizer may have changed the sound of records forever. Their SP 2016 was the world’s first digital audio processor,...
