Woodland is the name of Gillian Welch and David Rawling’s studio in Nashville, and it’s also the name of their new album. On Woodland, the duo continue to show their deep connection as collaborators. The album has a wide open sound that features their seemlessly blended and intimately recorded vocals, and the light touch of a backing band that includes drums, bass, pedal steel, banjo, and airy strings on tunes like "What We Had" and "Hashtag". "Lawman" and "The Bells and the Birds" have a lovely somberness, and the album as a whole has a "live off the floor" feeling to it that we hear less and less of these days. Woodland will stay in our "recently played" column for the forseeable future.
We interviewed Gillian and Dave back in 2001 for Tape Op #85.
Tape Op is a bi-monthly magazine devoted to the art of record making.
April 15th marks the 25th anniversary of Tape Op Magazine! To mark the occasion, Tape Op founder and editor Larry Crane is making a series of short videos talking about the journey of the mag and some of the memories had along the...
Bay Area native Scott Hansen, a.k.a. Tycho (Tape Op #123), has just released his sixth album, Infinite Health on Mom+Pop Records/Ninja Tune.
Fans familiar with Tycho will hear Infinite Health as a logical progression in a sequence of...
I'll bet if you asked any busy business owner or manager what they spend the the most time doing, it would be the art of telling people, "No." For years I've found this to be true in regards to running Tape Op Magazine. "No" may seem a negative...
Arooj Aftab's Night Reign
Arooj Aftab is a four time Grammy-nominated artist we featured in Tape Op issue #157. With Pakistani roots, she sings in Urdu and English, and became one of my favorite vocalists the moment I saw her performing on a live...
For his new release, Honey, Caribou's Dan Snaith (Tape Op #35, #105) wears his Detroit techno influences on his sleeve, and uses AI to explore and reimagine vocals as well as manipulate his voice, to create an album of dance tracks that...
I dropped by Powell’s City of Books last night to say hello to Daniel Levitin and hear him talk about his new book, I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine. I interviewed him in Tape Op #74 way back in 2009. There’s a lot of...
I just read an excellent new essay called The Case Against Free in which the author suggests that the "free economy" is drying up the economic resources needed to make quality creative works. The article focuses on recordings. It's a well...
Some may remember us running excerpts from Phill Brown's book, Are We Still Rolling?, many years ago. We're proud to announce that Tape Op Books will be releasing Are We Still Rolling? this Fall. It's one hell of a read. In the meantime enjoy Phill's...
I got to see ex-Grandaddy Jason Lytle play a semi-secret first band-backed show (with ex-bandmate Aaron Burtch) last Saturday. Quite fun and a great set of new songs. Jasons' album, Yours Truly, the Commuter, comes out May 19 on ANTI- records. We...