Interviews
By Darron Burke
A couple of things inspired me to pursue this interview. First, I was looking for something to compare my own mixes against in the studio. I started popping CDs in the player. When I got around to the Beastie Boys, I thought I had found the sound I was looking for, but it was a little too deep, rich...
Interviews
BS2000 recently released their new album, Simply Mortified, of lo-fi dance hits and keyboard jams. The band consists of Adam Horovitz (of the B...
Interviews
The Crystal Ballroom, in Portland, OR, suddenly fell silent as J Mascis, shuffled on stage in a parka and a purple scarf. After an ...
Interviews
Spoon are a great band from Austin, Texas. When I heard their first record, Telephono, in...
Interviews
I met John Collins just before the New Pornographers took the stage at Lee's Palace...
A Half-Dozen Dirty Dozen Brass Band Facts: 1) Style: New Orleans jazz warped with be-bop, funk, reggae and much more 2) Founded: April 1977 3) Releases: Nine full-length 4) Recorded with: Elvis Costello, Widespread Panic, The Black Crowes, The Neville Brothers and more 5) Shared stages with: Miles Davis, Al Green, Los Lobos, The Grateful Dead, Ray Charles, The Squirrel Nut Zippers and more 6) Tours: 30 different countries; including Brazil, Japan, Israel, China, all through Europe and Asia
On a typically miserable Prague spring day I hauled over to Jan Muchow's studio for an interview. The studio, Balance, is just off the notorious Wenceslas Square in Prague, just by the famed locus where not so many years back student Jan Palach set himself a flame for the sake of freedom. You won't be reminded much of Russian tanks while walking the streets of Prague, where the only real enemies now are the nagging beckonings of Dunkin Donuts and KFC. But keep in mind it was only 12 years ago when the Czech Republic became independent. Culturally, they've gone an awful long way in a very short time. Political-historical lines break down sharply between generations. There is a huge gap between the experiences had by those who were 10 in 1989 and those who were 16 — today's teens have no idea what it was like back then, whilst today's 20-somethings can look back and compare. Perhaps due to their tricky historical influences, when Czechs become stars, they really become stars. If you are really good at what you do, especially if you are known in the UK and in the USA, you are golden in the eyes of the Czech media. Jan Muchow holds a particular place heading up the small but accomplished Czech experimental electronic music scene. He starred in the movie Whispers, an award-winning Czech independent film for which he also wrote and produced music. Because of his success with his musical project Ecstasy of St Theresa, and also in the film and theater industries, Jan is always dodging TV cameras at concerts and events. Yet he's not a pop-star in the 'N Sync sense but rather as a really good experimental producer and songwriter. Yes, in a country where the President's favorite artists include the Velvet Underground and Frank Zappa, you can have experimental artists who are big pop-stars. Go figure.
This 2-channel tube mic pre is built by the Putnam Bros. [see Tape Op # 24] and is based on the Universal Audio 610 Console their father, Bill Putnam Sr., designed and built. Those consoles (and by extension, this mic pre design) were used to record records for everyone from the Doors to Frank...
The AD2022 is two channels of discrete, class A, well-designed solid state mic pres. Big meters, DI inputs, variable impedance, 12 steps of gain, 3 dB of cut or boost at output, phantom power, variable low cut filter up to 180 Hz and a 20 dB pad round out the straight-ahead features present here....
This is one of the latest 16-track all-in-one recording devices, including its own on-board CD-R burner. When I first hooked up the unit, I was surprised about how easy it was to get started - everything was pretty straightforward. The internal pages I needed to get to were easy to find and made...
You've probably heard something already about all the inexpensive mics being manufactured in China, with the idea being that they capture the magic and essence of the classic German mics at a fraction of the cost. I am not here to debate the issue but I am going to tell you how the new C-1 and C-3...
Maybe Andy hasn't seen this one, but CaiLube MCL has saved my ass in recent years. It's a Moving Contact Lubricant for potentiometers, meaning faders, volume knobs and such. I picked it up hoping that the noisy faders on my used console would stop crackling during mixes, and a few shots of this...
After building a formidable reputation with their Model 801 and 201 (8 and 2-channel, respectively) preamps, Grace Design now offers their venerable design in a single- channel that's priced for the more modest budgets of home and project studios. It features balanced I/O, using both XLR and TRS...
About a year ago our studio (Chase Park Transduction, Athens, GA) changed consoles, from a Trident 65 to a Sony/MCI MXP3036. Attractive to us among other features, was the fact that there are a number of different mic pre, line amp and EQ modules available for the console, including both Sony...
From the moment you receive your Little Labs Multi-Z DI, you'll realize it's obvious designer Jonathan Little has spent his share of time in recording studios as it is easily the most versatile and thoughtful box I have ever tried. Impedance is the first and usually single most important factor in...
How often do you find yourself in the middle of a session, pulling cables in and out, wiggling connectors from side to side, or turning knobs back and forth, hoping to get rid of that intermittent but ever-returning crackle? The first incarnation of my home studio was wired around a 1/4'' patchbay....
Reslo ribbon mics were really popular in the U.K. during the mid '60s. In some of the famous photos of the Beatles in their early years, you can see John and Paul singing through Reslo mics. Even though they're considered commonplace in England, they're relatively rare in the U.S. Through the magic...