Interviews | No. 173
By Larry Crane and Matthew Coughlin
There are a few engineer/producers I've met along the way where I've meant to get an interview with them for ages, but for some reason it takes so much longer for us to find the time to do it. Trina Shoemaker has been one of these elusive folks ever since we first met in New...
Having played drums, piano, and guitar in various bands and orchestras, Sam Okell undertook the exalted Tonmeister degree course in music technology prior to serving a placement year at Abbey Road Studios. It was there that the much sought-after sound engineer and mixer made his name...
Paul McCartney lived in his house for two years. His mother was George Martin's music teacher. He is among a rarified group of five people (including Quincy Jones, Rick Rubin, and Greg Kurstin – Tape Op#135) that have won the "Producer of the Year" Grammy two or more...
Larry Klein began playing bass at a young age, touring with famed jazz musician Freddie Hubbard, and has since gone on to produce records for Joni Mitchell, Herbie Hancock, Tracy Chapman, Shawn Colvin, Melody Gardot, Thomas Dybdahl, and Madeleine Peyroux. I crossed paths with Larry over...
This story begins many years ago, in Portland, Oregon. It was 1996, and the first issue of Tape Op had just been released. In a quest to learn more, I had been devouring as many books and magazines about recording as I could get my hands on. I was spending my days in the Multnomah...
Youthful and energetic at 76, Bob Langford is active in local politics and community affairs in his small town an hour north of St. Petersburg, Florida. But in the late-1960s he was part of the bustling Atlanta recording scene, and a participant in the birth of southern rock. Bob is...
When I first purchased an iPhone I was less than excited about most of the "extra" applications available. Games and other time-passing tools had no appeal to me. But when Peter Chilvers and Brian Eno [Tape Op#85] released their collaborative app, Bloom, in 2008 I immediately...
For years Pea Hicks has carried a torch for the Optigan, a unique optical disc-powered keyboard from the '70s. His band with Rob Crow, Optiganally Yours, has released three albums. He's produced and sold sample sets of Optigan loops and keyboard sounds, and has even introduced...
I'm a big fan of the last two Bon Iver albums, 22, A Million and i,i, so when I was in Los Angeles recently and the opportunity came up for a last minute interview with co-producer and collaborator BJ Burton, I jumped at the chance. BJ has worked with many artists besides Bon...
Jamaican electronics whiz kid Hopeton Overton Brown got his moniker "Scientist" from none other than one of dub music production's founding fathers, King Tubby (Osbourne Ruddock). As a teenager he began engineering and mixing out of Tubby's, later moving to Channel...
I remember the first time I heard the Dub Syndicate album, Tunesfrom the Missing Channel, in 1984. I was used to reggae being somethingearthy and warm, but here was a record that sizzled and popped with weirdsounds, synths, cut up spoken parts, and musical juxtapositions. I was hooked....
Co-founded by Emch in 1999, Subatomic Sound System is a collective of musicians and others with a focus on combining the new and old technologies of music, as inspired by Jamaican dub studio work and sound system culture. Collaborations with Lee "Scratch" Perry began over 12...
