ISSUE ARCHIVE
NO. 171 | Nov 2025
NO. 170 | Sep 2025
NO. 169 | Sep 2025
NO. 168 | Jul 2025
NO. 167 | May 2025
NO. 166 | Mar 2025
NO. 165 | Jan 2025
NO. 164 | Nov 2024
Jan/Feb 2000
Hello and Welcome to Tape Op number 15!
Kick off yer shoes and hang out a bit, would ya? Alright. Boy, a lot of crazy stuff has happened since the last issue... The fact that we're going to be printing up a new mag every two months might interest you a bit. Look for a new issue around March 15th! I just hope we can keep up with the pace. I went to New York several times in the Fall. I was on panels for CMJ and the Independent Music Forum where I got to spout off about using whatever gear you can get your hands on to the utmost and such — and I got to be on some other panel for a bunch of suits where I pretended to know about MP3s. But the killer adventure was when John (you know — our publisher) and I went to the AES [Audio Engineering Society] and met with a bunch of gear companies and tried to convince them to run ads in our wonderful little magazine. That's right, your humble editor has to go do stuff like this. Anyway, it was actually a treat to check out new gear (Tascam has a stand-alone 24 track hard drive for under $4000!?) and meet some of the people who build this cool audio stuff (like Bruce Bartlett, John Hardy, David Bock, Evanna Manley, Doug Fearn, Brent Averill and others) but I also had a funny revelation. I was bouncing around in the back of Geoff Daking's van with John and fellow engineers Darron Burke and Dave Ackerman after an amazing Italian meal up in the Bronx, when it hit me: We are the new legends in the making. A lot of our readers (and writers) are the ones who are (and will be) making the amazing records. We can gush all day over the recording achievements of Brian Eno, George Martin, Roy Thomas Baker and others but we can create our own legendary work now! Everything has already been done? Bullshit! Let's go for it!
Hit record now!
Larry Crane, editor
— LARRY CRANE,EDITOR & FOUNDER
Pavement. The band that sets many an indie rock heart aflutter. Well, they no longer exist now, having performed their last show in London last fall. We chatted extensively with Pavement's "leader" St...
Gary Young was the flamboyant original drummer for Pavement. He was also the engineer for all their recordings up through the Watery, Domestic CD. He still resides in Stockton, California, and runs hi...
Listening to DJ Spooky's 1996 debut Songs Of A Dead Dreamer it's clear why his nickname is "That Subliminal Kid" — it's because his music plays like the soundtrack to your inner mind. The sound of pol...
Let's get one thing out of the way first: I love old technology. If I had the space, I'd have a workshop full of old radios, open reel tape and wire recorders, valve amps, old keyboards and vintage gu...
Macha are a different band. Their use of Indonesian and other "ethnic" instrumentation within the format of what you would call a "rock" band is rather unique. The instruments add a texture not availa...
Hey, we've never covered any studios in the Minneapolis area, so here we go. Plus, usual interviews seem to take the format of history and projects done; this one covers some lively and useful topics...
Steve Reich is a composer of music that gets loosely lumped into the classical genre. But make no mistake-his music will never be mistaken for Mozart, Beethoven or Bach. At age 62, Steve Reich's music...
Somehow, somewhere, somewhen, someone shared with me the sonic sensibilities of Ken Nordine. I was delighted with his word play (or were the words playing with him?), his deep, clear voice (an acciden...
John Hardy runs The John Hardy Company out of the basement of an old and pretty house in Evanston, a few blocks north of the Chicago limits. His M-1 preamp uses a transformer-based, discrete solid-sta...
I am standing on the precipice of realizing a magical dream that I have carried with me since my youth. You see, I have recently purchased a basement. There is, of course, a house attached to the top of this basement for my wife and I to live in, but that is really just icing on the cake. I own a basement. And if you fall into the correct demographic for this publication, you know where I'm going with this... basement studio! I've been living for three years in a tiny little 1-bedroom apartment with an MS-16 deck, a Mackie 32-4 board, a rack of outboard stuff, about 150 gallons of assorted cables, a wife, and a cat with a huge ass. You can understand my joy at the prospect of a more spacious workspace. The aforementioned inventory (with the exception of my wife and cat) was purchased by my band "Home" with two record advances. And while we still have a wish list longer than my arm, we've got the basics covered and have been biding our time since 1996 to find the space to build a proper temple for what we call "The Devil's Isle Wet Lab". Dear friends, I would like to invite you along for the journey we are embarking on. A journey from raw cement basement to cushy recording studio that will no doubt include more tribulations, snarls, and opportunities for learning than I can imagine with my childishly optimistic mind.
We hear about a lot of great studios here at Tape Op but not very many are run by 75 year old grandmothers. Elsie Childers runs her Trusty Tuneshop studio on her farm in Nebo, Kentucky. The big room h...