For those who are into absorbing sparse modern folk with a cerebral poetic twist a la Wilco or Sparklehorse, then the sparse and etched sounds of Royal City will carry you through another joyfully unbalanced day. This is urban home recording at its honest best. Almost everything has that...
A few years back a lot of people were talking about electronic music. It was being hyped as though rock would disappear and only digital bleeps would be left. Fortunately, what actually happened broadened the rock palette. Hi and lo tech electronica now play an equal role to the guitar without...
Norway's Midnight Choir create dramatic - sometimes melodramatic - tension through simplicity and subtlety. To capture their pretty and often quiet songs, they turned to engineer Phill Brown and producer Chris Eckman, with whom they worked on their previous album, Amsterdam Stranded....
These two records capture the raw and trashy sound of two powerful rock bands playing. They resemble the sound of Spot's Husker Du recordings or Chris Burgess's work with My Dad is Dead more than records made today. Craig Bowen, who plays in Ink and recorded both records, describes his...
"These recordings are outtakes from our first two U.S. albums," states the inner sleeve of this 15- minute CD. I don't know this band, so it's impossible for me to tell if these are simply songs that wouldn't fit on their earlier CDs or if they are songs that weren't...
Drums, tuba and... oh yeah, guitar mix together to create a very interesting and enjoyable instrumental sound. Overdubs of other horns, percussion and electronics fill out the arrangements. Produced and mixed by Ani Difranco and Goat Boy (Andrew Gilchrest, see Tape Op #12) this release is Drums and...
Pretty much everyone reading this magazine should already know their way around Fun House - it's the quintessential Stooges album - The one recorded live in the studio in LA with the band surrounded by brick walls instead of all that soundproofing shit. The one which was produced by one of the...
This is one of those albums where the material and the production compliment each other so well it's hard to believe that anyone could dream it up, much less actually get it on tape. Here you get dark songs matched by dark production. Even the peppiest tune, "Chemical", is about...
No, there's no goat on here. Instead, we're treated to Danny Barnes (Bad Livers, plus solo) and Pete Krebs (Hazel, Golden Delicious, solo stuff) hanging out at Danny's home studio doing some wacky recording. Mr. Barnes has been upsetting many by playing banjo to drum machine beats...
Alejandro has been around, many bands and many heartbreaks later we get a new album. Basic tracks were done with Mitch Easter at his Fidelitorium in Kernersville, NC. The rest was recorded and produced by Chris Stamey at his Modern Recording in Chapel Hill, NC. Members of Superchunk, Mitch, Chris...
Steve Fisk is a Northwest producer of note, a sometimes member of Pell Mell, one half of Pigeonhed and a procrastinator. We've been waiting 14 years to hear a new record and this is it. Keyboards, electronics, samples, some "singers" and a bit of guitar from Kim Thayil (Soundgarden)...
It's not often that we think of the people who design gear as recording engineers. This CD features a bunch of artists from Duluth, Minnesota, doing Bob Dylan covers - which guarantees that the songwriting is top-notch even though I've never heard of any of the players besides Low. The...