Interviews | No. 173
By Alex Ruger
I recently had a chance to chat with Paul McCabe, Senior Vice President of Research and Innovation at Roland Future Design Lab, to talk about their new moonshot, Project LYDIA, as well as his views on AI in music that underpins its development. We first met at the 2026 NAMM Show where I...
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...
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...
I was fortunate to meet Dennis Weinreich several years ago while he was in San Diego, California, visiting his daughter. Looking for a studio to do some work from while away from his home in London, he came by for a tour of my spot (Rarefied Recording). As we chatted, I became...
Possibly most recognized as the bassist for Lone Justice, the pioneering '80s country rock band, Marvin Etzioni had actually begun as their producer before joining the group and contributing his songs and expertise. He's since gone on to produce a number of artists, including...
Ambrose Bye laughingly calls himself a “nepo baby with a laptop.” As the son of internationally-renowned poet Anne Waldman, Bye practically grew up at the Buddhist-inspired school in Boulder, Colorado – now known as Naropa University – where Waldman and Allen Ginsberg started the...
Sonny Smith, of Sonny & The Sunsets, has been called a "San Francisco garage rock hero" by Pitchfork and "an institution" by SF Weekly, who asked, "Is there a more iconic San Francisco album?" of Sonny's first with the Sunsets, Tomorrow is Alright....
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...
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...
I met Stella Mozgawa a decade or so ago at Panoramic, the studio I co-own, when she played drums on Cate Le Bon's Crab Day LP, produced by Noah Georgeson and Josiah Steinbrick and engineered by Samur Khouja. Over the years, I'd see more of this crew, especially Stella and...
Bob Attiyeh founded Yarlung Records over 20 years ago, and they have gone on to release almost 60 albums since then, all recorded in stereo, live, straight-to-tape, and almost exclusively using custom-built gear. Yarlung specializes mostly in classical music but has featured jazz and...
