Welcome to issue #19 of Tape Op.

Somewhere on the thorny road to legend, hotel recording genius (and Eric Clapton victim) Robert Johnson wrote, "This stuff I got'll bust your brains out." While he may have been referring to the poison that took his life, he may as well have been describing the aftermath of a conversation with Jim Dickinson. An instant Memphis luminary, Jim has played with artists such as Sam and Dave, James Carr, The Rolling Stones, The Flamin' Groovies, Sleepy John Estes, Bob Dylan and countless others while simultaneously producing records for The Replacements, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Green on Red, Calvin Russell, Toots and the Maytals, Ry Cooder and Big Star (to name a few). Some sane men go crazy after long stretches in the hit factory, becoming so firmly entrenched in the hyperbole and dissolute entanglements of the business that they can no longer hear music. Luckily, Jim is fine. One afternoon, we talked about his attempts to control nature, mendacity and Paul Westerberg in a lifelong quest for the "fuzzy little sound" that first inspired him.

I saw XTC live on November 23, 1980, at the Masonic Temple Auditorium, Detroit, MI, USA opening for The Police. The only problem with the show was that I had no idea who XTC was. I remember a visually...

It made sense that in the summer of 1999, the 10th anniversary show of the current line-up of The Ex took place in Amsterdam and included Shellac as well as a host of great experimental Dutch bands an...

Death Cab For Cutie attacked me when I heard their first album, Something About Airplanes. I was floored by the melodies, and the overall sound of the entire album. Their first album was constantly in...

We interviewed Phill Brown in issue number 12 of Tape Op. Over the years he's worked with some of the greatest artists ever, like Jimi Hendrix, Joe Cocker, Traffic, Spooky Tooth, Jeff Beck, Led Zeppel...

At any given instance in time, David Bottrill partakes in one of three activities. He is either submerged in the realm of slumber, routing signals on a recording console or is seated in an airplane high above the ground. In fact, he travels so often that the next time you gaze up at the sky and see a plane scrawl across it, he just might very well be inside it. And where would his destination be? A place with a recording studio no doubt. And on an aeroplane, one can sleep. From an early age the native Canadian found himself in the intimate work habitat of musical vanguards Brian Eno [Tape Op #85] and Daniel Lanois [Tape Op #37 & #127]. He was not only responsible for skillfully operating world-class equipment, but was also forced to push his own creative envelope. A few short years after his indoctrination into the studio he relocated to Real World studios in the UK, where he worked on such notable albums as Peter Gabriel's So, Passion and Us. Bottrill is renown for being diverse with a forte of applying his techniques to a wide range of artists: liner notes in albums by King Crimson, Clannad, Tool, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and even Kid Rock immortalize his moniker.