This new five-episode video series focuses on using affordable gear to record a full-band performance in the kitchen, living room, and bedrooms of a typical single-family house. The series is hosted by Tape Op’s Gear Geek, Andy Hong, and Nashville-based engineer, Shay Obray, and is produced in conjunction with the folks at Inside Blackbird and Universal Audio. Using only eight mics and affordable gear, the rock band Jeer turns Andy’s house into a...

We interviewed Sasami Ashworth back in Tape Op#157 and she’s also featured in our new book, Making Music: Conversations With Record Producers. Now, we’re excited to announce a new podcast series that Sasami, or SASAMI as she’s known professionally, has produced and brought to us, called Overdubbed with SASAMI. 

The first two episodes, with Jack Antonoff and hemlocke springs, are out now!

Sasami has been playing music for a long time and is a...

We have an interview with Sylvan Esso coming up in our November issue [Tape Op #176], but in the meantime check out this new live session, Live at Sid the Cat Auditorium, June 2026, exclusively on Qobuz, our favorite music streaming service. It’s a really fun, energetic five-song set. Besides the principals – Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn – the band is joined by Ben Lumsdaine on drums, Michael Libramento on bass, Dev Gupta on keyboards, and...

The "new" Car Seat Headrest album, Teen of Denial (Joe’s Story), has been out since May 20th, 2026, and (as usual) the web is filled with paranoia, misinformation, and assumptions. I get the idea many people don’t understand the difference between remixing, remastering, or re-recording, but for what it’s worth (aside from the lyrics and the new mix) this is almost exactly the same record as the original. Will rewrote  lyrics to a...

The Grateful Dead show at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland on June 30th, 1985 has a star next to it on many Deadheads' lists. The 14,000 capacity venue, designed by Frank Gehry, was a favorite for both the band and the fans. 

This particular show has some real gems, and although it certainly has some loose groove and shaky vocal moments at times, it remains a classic. The 15 minute version of "Shakedown Street" that...

The sunshine memories of a long-lost Laurel Canyon have continued to seep into Beck Hansen's bones and reflect back through a reverb-soaked pool, morphing into the shape of song forms and sheets of orchestral tone poems.
There is a slow-motion quality to Ride Lonesome, that comes from its down tempos, and incredible restraint from Beck's longtime collaborators; Jason Falkner (guitar/keys)[Tape Op #35], Smokey Hormel (guitar), Justin...

A sound pressure level meter is a great tool for promoting safe monitoring volumes, but it's also handy for making mix decisions. We all hear relative volumes between instruments, vocals, and other sound sources differently as we adjust the overall volume. If a background vocal is too quiet in one song versus another song that was mixed differently, a meter allows me to compare the two at matched volumes. Making these kinds of decisions for...

This new release from Adrian Younge [Tape Op#119] is a modern day Afrobeat offering that has some modern sensibilities, but a foot firmly planted in the era of the genre's classics from Fela Kuti [#173] and Tony Allen. Afro-Disco Makossa was conceived by Younge from the question, "What would a Ghanaian producer in '76 have made if he set out to create an American disco record for his hometown?" The result is an up-tempo, trancey...

Our new book, Making Music: Conversations With Record Producers, is out now and you can find it at your favorite book store and online!

If you want to buy a copy online, we’d appreciate it if you buy it directly from our publisher, the fine folks at Akashic Books:
https://www.akashicbooks.com/catalog/making-music/

It’s also available at these online retailers:

Powell's Books
Bookshop.org
Barnes and Noble
Amazon

Here’s more info on the book from Larry’s...

We did an article on Daniele Luppi back in Tape Op#40, and since then he’s released quite a bit of music including the very cool 2011 Rome collaboration with Danger Mouse, Jack White [Tape Op#82], and Norah Jones. 

He has a new LP, Wilma, being released October 8th, and you can hear the first single, “To Some Degree,” a collaboration with Michael Kiwanuka [#140].  The tracks on Wilma are built on archived library...

In April of this year, Sam Shepherd, aka Floating Points, was in San Francisco for 11 performances of his piece for the San Francisco Ballet, Mere Mortals. I caught one of the shows and it was amazing, both musically and visually. Sam was in the pit with his Buchla modular synthesizer, joining a 70-piece orchestra playing live as 40 dancers performed on stage with additional visuals and staging. It was a huge production in every sense of the word...

Boy from Ohio goes to Guinea to study djembe drumming, boy meets girl in Chicago who studied in Mali, couple moves to New York for boy to follow Sxip Shirey in the Bindlestiff Family Circus, and couple builds a beautiful, world-class studio in a Hasidic neighborhood next door to a shul. We’ve all been there, right? Regardless of the path that got them here, Amon Drum and Mona Kayhan have created a stunning space for recording in Brooklyn in the...