We interviewed Sasami Ashworth back in Tape Op#157 and she’s also featured in our new book, Making Music: Conversations With Record Producers. Now, we’re excited to announce a new podcast series that Sasami, or SASAMI as she’s known professionally, has produced and brought to us, called Overdubbed with SASAMI. 

The first two episodes, with Jack Antonoff and hemlocke springs, are out now!

Sasami has been playing music for a long time and is a...

We have an interview with Sylvan Esso coming up in our November issue [Tape Op #176], but in the meantime check out this new live session, Live at Sid the Cat Auditorium, June 2026, exclusively on Qobuz, our favorite music streaming service. It’s a really fun, energetic five-song set. Besides the principals – Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn – the band is joined by Ben Lumsdaine on drums, Michael Libramento on bass, Dev Gupta on keyboards, and...

The "new" Car Seat Headrest album, Teen of Denial (Joe’s Story), has been out since May 20th, 2026, and (as usual) the web is filled with paranoia, misinformation, and assumptions. I get the idea many people don’t understand the difference between remixing, remastering, or re-recording, but for what it’s worth (aside from the lyrics and the new mix) this is almost exactly the same record as the original. Will rewrote  lyrics to a...

The Grateful Dead show at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland on June 30th, 1985 has a star next to it on many Deadheads' lists. The 14,000 capacity venue, designed by Frank Gehry, was a favorite for both the band and the fans. 

This particular show has some real gems, and although it certainly has some loose groove and shaky vocal moments at times, it remains a classic. The 15 minute version of "Shakedown Street" that...

The sunshine memories of a long-lost Laurel Canyon have continued to seep into Beck Hansen's bones and reflect back through a reverb-soaked pool, morphing into the shape of song forms and sheets of orchestral tone poems.
There is a slow-motion quality to Ride Lonesome, that comes from its down tempos, and incredible restraint from Beck's longtime collaborators; Jason Falkner (guitar/keys)[Tape Op #35], Smokey Hormel (guitar), Justin...

In issue #149 of Tape Op, I was lucky enough to interview Catherine Anne Davies about her musical career as The Anchoress. We've kept in touch a little bit since, and when her new album, As We Once Were, was announced she dropped a line and suggested another chat. I think we should just do this for every record she puts out, as we had another enjoyable hour-long discussion about so many things. Please check out her new album, and previous...

I had a session coming in that was seeking to record, overdub, and mix three songs in one 10-hour day. I figured I'd need some help, so I hired one of our faithful staff as an assistant. I had her come in early, set up a drum set and microphones to my spec, get levels, route headphones, and more. This allowed us to have a 10 a.m. start time and begin rolling almost immediately. As I was getting the singer/guitarist situated in an iso booth, I...

This new release from Adrian Younge [Tape Op#119] is a modern day Afrobeat offering that has some modern sensibilities, but a foot firmly planted in the era of the genre's classics from Fela Kuti [#173] and Tony Allen. Afro-Disco Makossa was conceived by Younge from the question, "What would a Ghanaian producer in '76 have made if he set out to create an American disco record for his hometown?" The result is an up-tempo, trancey...

Our new book, Making Music: Conversations With Record Producers, is out now and you can find it at your favorite book store and online!

If you want to buy a copy online, we’d appreciate it if you buy it directly from our publisher, the fine folks at Akashic Books:
https://www.akashicbooks.com/catalog/making-music/

It’s also available at these online retailers:

Powell's Books
Bookshop.org
Barnes and Noble
Amazon

Here’s more info on the book from Larry’s...

We did an article on Daniele Luppi back in Tape Op#40, and since then he’s released quite a bit of music including the very cool 2011 Rome collaboration with Danger Mouse, Jack White [Tape Op#82], and Norah Jones. 

He has a new LP, Wilma, being released October 8th, and you can hear the first single, “To Some Degree,” a collaboration with Michael Kiwanuka [#140].  The tracks on Wilma are built on archived library...

In April of this year, Sam Shepherd, aka Floating Points, was in San Francisco for 11 performances of his piece for the San Francisco Ballet, Mere Mortals. I caught one of the shows and it was amazing, both musically and visually. Sam was in the pit with his Buchla modular synthesizer, joining a 70-piece orchestra playing live as 40 dancers performed on stage with additional visuals and staging. It was a huge production in every sense of the word...

Our book reviewed by James Barber on his Substack (subscribe!)

Making Music: Conversations With Record Producers

Larry Crane established his underground bona fides in ’80s Chico, CA band Vomit Launch before moving to Portland, where he opened Jackpot! Recording in 1997. His resumé is impressive, including sessions with Elliott Smith, Cat Power, Stephen Malkmus, Quasi, and the Go-Betweens.

He’s also the genius who merged the underground music fanzine...