We interviewed Mike Campbell for issue #150, right around the time he and his band, The Dirty Knobs released their second LP, External Combustion. A year on, the band has released a new collection of music, Vagabonds, Virgins and Misfits. The Dirty Knobs consists of Campbell, guitarist Chris Holt, bassist Lance Morrison, and drummer Matt Laug. Much of the album was co-produced by longtime Tom Petty studio collaborator, George Drakoulias.
Check out the video for "Dare to Dream" (feat. Graham Nash)
Subconscious Auditory Effects (SAE) is a term I have cobbled together to encapsulate a broad range of phenomena in this barely-studied field of inquiry. An SAE is any measurable effect on a person caused by a sound, or change in sound, that is...
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...
Ivan Anderson reviewed the Red Panda BitMap 2 pedal in the latest issue of Tape Op, but he also makes great and highly entertaining videos for many of his reviews. Enjoy!
Tape Op contributor Allen Farmelo sent us this thoughtful piece on why the mag doesn't feature many "negative" reviews. Makes sense to me. I imagine anyone out there wanting us to write reviews ripping apart gear all the time still might come up...
It's that time of year again where we go back through our digital listening histories or simply look over at the turntable to get a handle on just what we were enjoying this past year. There were a ton of great releases this year, many of them...
Over the last few years we've seen an explosion of online music services. Pandora, iTunes, Spotify, Rhapsody, Soundcloud and dozens of other platforms are touted as groundbreaking ways to deliver music to listeners. But this success is on the...
The Smart Studios Story
Wendy Schneider, director
At this point, Butch Vig [Tape Op #11] and Smart Studios are the stuff of legend. From the album that destroyed music’s status quo (Nirvana’s Nevermind), to Smashing Pumpkin's Gish...
Thanks for this guest post by John Morand
I wasn’t surprised when I heard that Daniel Johnston had died. It was 9-11 and for me, there would always be a connection between Daniel and 9-11. In the days after the attack, when...
I.R.S. Actually, its an acronym for the Internal Revenue Service. And for our Non-U.S. readers, please enjoy the fun.
I recently spent December through April undergoing a multiple year audit or our studio’s financials. I want to share...