Interviews | No. 172
By Sam Retzer and John Baccigaluppi
It’s Sunday night in Manhattan at Irving Plaza, and Dan “The Automator” Nakamura takes the stage behind a mouthwatering wall of synths, across from Kid Koala [Tape Op#159] and his three turntables. Deltron 3030 is back to rock the same stage where they made their New York debut 25 years...
The career of songwriter Greg Laswell may seem atypical, yet it fits in with how the music world works these days. From early on in his solo career songs seemed to magically get placed on popular television shows and films like True Blood, Grey's Anatomy, and Glee. For a guy who...
When I was an assistant engineer at a prominent studio – back when those two things existed – I worked a short stint with a well-known rock producer. After a long first day that featured band in-fighting, bruised egos, and a particularly shitty lunch, we were relaxing with a beer in the...
It's been one year since the passing of Hardy Fox, primary songwriter and co-founder of The Residents. This story is about one of his most important musical tools, the ARP Odyssey synthesizer. The Residents are a mysterious collective of sonic and visual experimenters whose albums...
When The Replacements released Don't Tell a Soul in 1989, many of their fans felt like the record was too polished and too pop. Producer Matt Wallace [Tape Op#128] took a good portion of the blame for the band's "selling out." But what a lot of people overlooked is...
I have a habit of getting low key obsessed with certain artists, especially producers and engineers. For months I just can't stop listening to records they've touched. Earlier this year I had a few months of being really deep in that fascination-hole with Shawn Everett [Tape...
Brian and I drove to Philly on Sunday, December 3, 2017, to attend the first of two world premier performances and recording sessions for Symphony for a Broken Orchestra by composer David Lang, a luminary in the "new music" genre of classical music. I preceded this with studio...
Drummer, producer, and engineer Darryl Moore (aka: JMD, Jamm Messenger D, Jamm Messenger Divine) has helped seminal hip-hop groups Freestyle Fellowship and The Pharcyde develop their sound. As a drummer, Moore has toured with legendary pianist Horace Tapscott, and continues to lead his...
The Ocean Blue have been making dreamy pop albums since the late '80s. Their new release, Kings and Queens / Knaves and Thieves, is a perfect example of a self-recorded album that works in the best ways. When they came to Portland to perform, main songwriter and singer David...
From a not-so-obvious career path that began by servicing early samplers, to engineering parts of a Michael Jackson's HIStory, to his current life in England and mixing in the box, Andrew Scheps has certainly carved out his own path. He's worked with artists as varied as...
A young intern fresh out of Full Sail University gets a big break (and a nickname) from Missy Elliott, works alongside producers and engineers like Timbaland, Jimmy Douglass [Tape Op#130], Demacio Castellon, and Polow da Don, and ends up mixing hits for Keri Hilson, Britney Spears...
Matt Rollings has been music's best-kept secret for some three plus decades, but that's slowly changing. A live and studio keyboard ace who has played on thousands of recordings and anchored the bands of artists like Lyle Lovett, Mark Knopfler [Tape Op#97], and Alison Krauss...
We first interviewed Eric Valentine in Tape Op#45 and discussed his production career and techniques. Eric is well known as a producer and engineer for working with Third Eye Blind, Smash Mouth, Good Charlotte, Queens of the Stone Age, and more recently Grace Potter. But in 2007 he took...