Justin Gray’s new album, Immersed, was created specifically for immersive surround formats, such as Dolby Atmos, with considerations beginning from the initial writing and production stages. Although I consider this an “engineer’s album” in many respects, that title alone wouldn’t be doing it justice. Aside from being an engineer...

When we published issue #167, we, of course, credited Hazel Morishige for the cover art, but I forgot to credit the individual pieces of art that Hazel had cut out of previous issues of Tape Op for her collage, so I thought it would be fun to explore Hazel’s collage a bit more in-depth and show the entire piece of art since...

The first time I saw Deftones live was at the Cattle Club, a small 250 person capacity club in Sacramento, CA, in the early 1990s. The Cattle Club was a total dive that sounded pretty bad, but promoters Jerry Perry and Brian McKenna, with sound engineer Eric Bianchi, made the best out of what they had to work with. Besides...

Larry interviewed Jeff Tweedy of Wilco back in Tape Op#132 along with his son, Spencer Tweedy, and engineer Tom Schick at the band’s The Loft Studio in Chicago, IL. 
Jeff has released a new song and video (directed by Lance Bangs) from his upcoming album, Twilight Overide, due out September 26, and it’s a beautiful seven...

The new Superchunk album is here, and – no surprise – it rocks. I interviewed singer/guitarist/songwriter Mac MacCaughan way back in 2009 [Tape Op#76], in Seattle as they prepared to play the Bumbershoot festival. It was great to meet Mac and Laura Ballance (bass), as they are also the founders of my fave label, indie stalwarts...

Raymond Antrobus and Evelyn Glennie [Tape Op#154] return with a new album, Aloud, part two of their spoken word poetry collaboration. Produced again by Grammy-winner and regular Tape Op contributor Ian Brennan [#116] (Tinariwen, Parchman Prison Project, The Good Ones [Rwanda]), the album was recorded 100% live in a single...

There was some good music released this past week from Tape Op interviewees!

John Cale
MiXology (volume 1)
John Cale [Tape Op#156] released MiXology (volume 1), a collection of unreleased tracks and alternate versions of songs from his POPtical Illusion and Mercy albums. Fans of Cale will enjoy this look at his process and...

For the outboard rack in my personal studio, I drew up plans and tasked my cabinetmaker to custom manufacture the equivalent of a kitchen island, with a countertop that’s cantilevered above the backside of a cabinet, except that the cabinet has three 19-inch equipment bays on each side instead of doors and shelves. I ordered...

The most popular sound absorbing materials for home studio acoustic treatment are rigid fiberglass (e.g., Owens Corning 703) and open-cell polyurethane foam (e.g., Auralex Studiofoam). Foam is much easier to apply as it's easily reshaped with common cutting tools and it sticks to walls and ceilings with spray or tube...

Following their debut album Talking Heads: 77, More Songs About Buildings and Food found the band working with producer Brian Eno [Tape Op#85], which brought a more focused sound, and expanded sonic palette. There seemed to be an emphasis put on the rhythm section and grooves, which provided frontman David Byrne [Tape Op#79...

We recently had a chance to meet up with Johannes Russ, Ableton's Head of ABL Products Unit (Move, Note, and Core Technology), to talk about their new portable music-making tool. Our conversation was held at Different Fur Studios in the Mission in San Francisco a few days in advance of the official announcement of Move...

I was recently opening a session to do some edits, and as Pro Tools fired up it paused and warned me that my interface was at the wrong sample rate. It’s my personal home studio system, so no one else ever has to use it and wonder what to do when this happens. But the slight pause and the 30 seconds it took to fix made me...