Interviews
By Larry Crane
Years ago I met Pall and his band Black Heart Procession and ended up recording a few single and compilation tracks for them as they came through Portland on tour. I really enjoyed their music and the flow of creative ideas while recording. Pall has been a member of other noted bands, like Three Mile...
Interviews
Tony Dekker is the man behind the Toronto-based folk/ambient/atmospheric rock of Great Lake Swimmers, which Mojo Magazine has aptly du...
Interviews
You've seen the spikes and corpse paint, Satanic or ancient themes, or maybe even the blood and guts album covers. Maybe you a...
Article
Interviews
Sometimes you get to meet people who were your heroes back when you were a teen. The first time a 16-year-old me heard Gang of Four, a "post punk" band from Leeds, England, the directness of the vocals, the taut rhythm section and slashing, stuttering guitars of Andy Gill made a huge and lasting impression. To be sitting in Andy Gill's personal recording studio (in the Beauchamp Building, London) nearly 30 years later and finding him to be an engaging and interesting person was a treat. Not only is Andy an inspiring guitarist, but along the way he became a producer — not only with Gang of Four, but also on albums with The Jesus Lizard, The Futureheads, Michael Hutchence, Killing Joke, Red Hot Chili Peppers, We Are Standard, Asyl, Detlef Zoo, The Stranglers and The Young Knives.
Switching between in-the-box mixing, external summing, and console mixing has been a project-by-project reality in my personal world for a long time now. There are merits to all of these different approaches; my personal preference is to mix on a console, but it's not always an option. I've had...
The C720 Anniversary Special commemorates Josephson's twenty years in business. Like many other large-diaphragm condenser mics employing a two-sided capsule, the C720 has multiple, user-selectable pickup patterns, including cardioid, hypercardioid, subcardioid, omni, and figure-8. But what's unique...
It used to be that you couldn't get a large-diaphragm condenser mic for under two grand, and there weren't that many choices anyway. Then some less expensive mics started appearing, and it seemed like every day, the price for an LDC dropped some more. Unfortunately, many of these less expensive...
If you work in a purpose-built, acoustically-treated studio in which room anomalies are at a minimum, then the acclaimed Focal SM6 series of monitors (Tape Op #60, #61) is a first-class choice. However, if you work in a tiny bedroom, a vast loft, a low-slung basement, an oddly-shaped attic, an...
FutzBox is a brand-new distortion and noise generator plug-in for mashing, destroying, and making low-fidelity versions of your tracks. The main interface offers configurable "futz" effects, including filters, EQ, distortion, noise generation, and gating. Along with these tools, McDSP has included...
JZ Microphones is a new Latvian company started by mic designer Juris Zarins, who at one time worked closely with the company BLUE. JZ's promotional literature touts its old world, no-compromise manufacturing methods, and it's easy to see why. The Black Hole is meticulously crafted, with a...
Most of us at one time or another have owned or thought about buying an ART product. In my opinion, they offer one of the best price-versus-performance product lines on the market. At the January NAMM show, ART introduced their new M-Series line of microphones, including three FET large-diaphragm...
We have a Daking console here at The Hangar and a pair of his FET compressors that see near constant use, so when Geoff Daking and Brad Lunde at TransAudio Group offered to send us a pair of Mic Pre One preamps to try out, we jumped at the opportunity to use and hear them. We were in the middle of...
I recently sold my beloved solid-state Pultec EQP-1A3 equalizers, so I was in the market for a new unit to fill the empty void left in my mastering rig. Unlike my old Pultec program equalizers, this time I wanted something with more surgical precision to it. If at all possible, I wanted something...
Recently, I have come across many references to the balance of art and science in the creation and production of music. The most inspiring and insightful Tape Op interviews in the last few issues have some of the most well-regarded studio engineers insisting that only a small percentage of their...
Since November, I've been working on a huge shootout of small-diaphragm condenser mics; I might have mentioned this in my last review. Frankly, I might mention this in every review forever, since it appears the SDC test will never end. Frankly, there's a part of me that wants to keep it going,...
Since November, I've been working on a huge shootout of small-diaphragm condenser mics; I might have mentioned this in my last review. Frankly, I might mention this in every review forever, since it appears the SDC test will never end. Frankly, there's a part of me that wants to keep it going,...