Artist/Recordists

I still remember my first experience hearing Taylor Deupree's Northern on a winter night back in 2007. Reaching into a stack of borrowed CDs in my apartment, I randomly selected a disc for some musical accompaniment while washing the dishes. The album began so stealthily...

It's the dream of many home recordists, but for Ruban Nielson it actually happened. He recorded some songs at home for fun, posted them online, and a buzz started around them — leading to record labels, tours, and albums. Unknown Mortal Orchestra's recent third album...

It was 1985. I was in a band called Vomit Launch. Our guitarist, Lindsey Thrasher, was DJ'ing at our college station (KCSC) in Chico, California. While there one day, she picked up the phone and a promoter said, "White Flag just dropped off the bill, opening for the...

Australia's Tame Impala, led by Kevin Parker, have taken the classic psychedelic sounds of Cream and "The White Album" era Beatles, combining them with elements that can only exist in the modern age. Their debut, 2010's Innerspeaker, was celebrated by...

"This is a good story to start a Tape Op interview," Chris Cohen of Deerhoof tells us as we press record on the tape recorder. "I just learned yesterday that you can use inserts in Pro Tools Free. Up until now, every time we'd do an edit or EQ something or...

Any one of Les Paul's amazing careers would make him remarkable. His wide-ranging excellence (and longevity) make him a legend and a living treasure. He is in the hall of fame for songwriting, invention and rock and roll — and has earned five Grammy awards. Les Paul...

The Shins debut album, Oh, Inverted World, is a testament to the power of home recording. A band with great songs captures those songs using the gear they can afford and manipulates the recording process to turn technical limitations to their advantage. For their second release...

Stephin Merritt is the mastermind behind the music of The Magnetic Fields, the 6ths, the Gothic Archies and Future Bible Heroes. He is also one of the most important and influential songwriters in recent history. His lyrical confidence is apparent, strolling with ease from pop...

I wonder how many different copies of this record I've bought over the years. I think three vinyl and three on CD now. This is a multi- layer CD, with a remastered regular CD version that sounds great, plus a SACD version and 5.1 SACD Surround Sound Mix. The 5.1 won't...

He's been a member of The Three O'Clock, Jellyfish and The Grays. His voice and instrumentation appear on albums by Beck, Susanna Hoffs, Eric Matthews, Aimee Mann, and Air. He co-wrote, produced, and performed on many of the songs on Brendan Benson's two CDs. And...

Since you read his interview a few issues back and were curious, here's an easy-to-find release of new songs. In my book? Great! (www.mergerecords.com)

Lozenge's music combines a powerful sonic density with carefully composed melodies. To capture this challenging mixture, they turned to Cheer-Accident guitarist Phil Bonnet, who until his untimely death worked with everything from experimental projects to straightforward...

Jon Brion is well known as a session musician, record producer, solo artist and now, with the work he did for Magnolia, a scorer of films. In his world, all of this is equally important and interrelated. He's worked with artists such as Aimee Mann, Fiona Apple, Robyn...

Ween gets away with murder. It is one of the few bands that writes, records, and releases exactly what it wants. The group's songs can be daring, funny, offensive, and tender. Composed of Mickey Melchiondo (aka Dean Ween) and Aaron Freeman (aka Gene Ween), Ween has released...

This album collects the past four years of Makeup singles, beautifully displaying their progression from raunchy garage revivalists to sophisticated soul-psychedlia tune-smiths. We hear the group learn its craft, but we also witness Guy Picciotto and Brendan Canty learn...

If you remember last months editorial, one of the things I was going on about was that you can do great sounding records on eight tracks. Here's an example of one. Eltro are a dreamy, spacey, electronic-y sounding pop band somewhere between Stereolab and a mellower Unrest...

It was, strangely, a sunny day in the middle of a Portland winter when I came by to pry Elliott out of a studio/office space (actually, it's a room off the side of the Undercover Inc. office) where he was working on "leftovers" from his 3rd solo album-in-progress....