Mömoku just released their humongous LP “Not To Say Goodbye, Just to Say Hello” which I mixed last summer.
It was such a treat working with them - I’ve never worked with an artist from Japan before and we made it happen over such a vast distance. Couldn’t be happier for them, especially to collaborate with Friend of Mine Records for the release!
Congrats to my buds in Forgivers for dropping their first song, “Some Future,” which I had the absolute pleasure of mixing.
I’ve known Trevor and Alex for quite some time now, and even shared the stage with them in Dead Swords, and I’m so excited for this new endeavor showcasing some of their biggest influences. Can’t wait for more!
À Clef have released “Prologue” which I had the pleasure of mixing!
Check it out here.
Ross Newhouse has released his first single, “Answers,” which was produced by Jake Fine and mixed by myself.
Give it a listen here.
Very excited that “Pale Soft Light” by Owel has been featured in the new trailer for the Showtime series Penny Dreadful: City of Angels!
The song appears on their 2016 release “Dear Me” that I co-produced and mixed. It’s so cool to hear a song we worked so hard on appear in a trailer like this, and I think it works perfectly. Hopefully it exposes a lot more people to how amazing Owel is!
Fun fact - this song crashed my old computer so many times that I basically had to cross my fingers and hope the final mix would bounce! Luckily I was able to upgrade my entire studio after this record.
Vasudeva have released their third full length album, Generator, today!
You can listen and order the record here.
I co-produced this album with the band (in their basement!) and mixed it at my home studio. I’m really proud to call these guys my friends and so happy they enlisted me to help with this album. I really think it’s their best work to date, that they’ve managed to carve a path all their own. It’s been a treat to watch them grow, and to grow alongside them and figure new things out as we go.
Hopefully this album brings you some peace in these trying times. I recommend giving it a spin and letting it take you to another place for 37 minutes.
I was enlisted as a guest producer for the Buzzfeed News/iHeart Radio podcast “Impeachment Today,” for the Feb. 6th episode which can be heard here.
Had a great time working with this team and look forward to whatever they come up with next!
The Making Of chronicles the history of the band Gates, contextualized through their releases. The band discusses the events surrounding each of their records, and showcases unreleased demos, rehearsal recordings, and album stems to help detail their creative process.
This podcast was produced, edited, mixed and scored by myself. The hours spent sifting through stems, demos, and interviews was well worth it! Compiling a story through the use of audio and interviews in tandem was a blast, and I can’t wait to do it again with another installment.
You can also find the episode on Apple Podcasts.
Cover art by Dan King
Listen to Russ Daniels’ new album, Adagio, which I mixed and mastered here.
Narco Debut have announced their first full length, “Strange & Ever Changing Depths,” which will be released on May 17th. You can listen to the first single, “Yukon,” below.
We started tracking this album way back in September 2017, so it’s so great to see it finally peeking it’s head out into the world and I’m excited for everyone to hear it in it’s entirety!
The album was tracked at Barbershop Studios in Hopatcong, New Jersey, mastered by Mike Kalajian, and produced, engineered and mixed by myself, with the exception of the vocals which were engineered by Mick Maslowski at Zoinga Recording.
Dead Swords have announced their debut LP “Enders” and dropped the pseudo-title finale track over at Revolver here.
I engineered and produced the album last winter at North End Recording and mixed it in my home studio. The album is due out March 8th on Human Blood, super excited for everyone to hear it!
OWEL have released the first video in their “Making of” series on their upcoming full length “Paris,” due out March 29th of next year.
The first video covers drums (performed beautifully by their incredible drummer Ryan) and is not only a great look at Audio Pilot Studios, but a nice insight into what the process was like making the album. I’m looking forward to posting and watching the rest of the videos!
EDIT: Updated to include all of the videos, enjoy!
Actor | Observer is gearing up to release Pareidolia on August 24th, an album we recorded in February 2017 at the original Audio Pilot Studios location.
Recently they released the song "In Your Ways," and it seems like a perfect patient zero for a series of blog posts I'd like to start going more in depth on certain projects I've worked on, either to recount them for myself or to offer up more detail to those who are interested.
Some of the pedals and rack gear used on Pareidolia, exploded on the floor just how I like it.
When the band sent me the original demos for Pareidolia, I was absolutely blown away; I knew we had something special on our hands. That being said, after many repeat listens, I had some structural ideas that I felt would not only make the album more cohesive, but give each song it's own unique stamp. To their credit, the guys were very open to hearing suggestions, and after a lot of phone conversations and emails, we spent two days together in their practice space in Boston doing "pre-production." This was essentially them playing the songs for me, and us discussing the changes that were made or not made.
One of the songs they had written was called "Cynics," and it was in the vein of most of their other material: it was turned up to 10. Although the song was already great in it's own right, I really felt the record needed a moment to breathe and reflect; it needed a centerpiece song that allowed Greg to really showcase his incredible voice, and something to work as a dynamic counterpart to the album's brilliant title track.
So I suggested to the group that we take "Cynics" and make it that song. It had a lot of the pieces already in place, it just needed some serious alterations to make it work in the context I was looking for. At first the band was understandably apprehensive about completely changing a song, as well as the direction I was urging them to go in. They play by the best rule in the book in my opinion - try every idea at least once, give anything at all a shot, and exhaust every possibility. They weren't about to back down from at least trying the change, and so we went at it.
Besides cutting a few sections of the song, most of the changes were dynamic. The beautiful guitar work in the intro stayed, but instead of a strained yell, Greg wrote a beautiful melody. Instead of erupting into a chorus, they glided into it. The parts were identical lyrically, melodically - just given a different vibe. It really speaks to the talent of the band to be able to adapt to the idea so quickly, and within minutes it was as if the song was always written that way. I left them to work on it further on their own, and we met up again in a week, this time at the studio to start tracking.
The wall of amps. I wish I took more photos during recording, but we did the entire record in two weeks and it never crossed my mind. I slept on the control room floor most of the time!
With the band (and possibly myself) still slightly doubtful, we started laying down drums. Even on an abridged timeline, we were able to work out the kinks in the song even more under the microscope. As it started to take it's new shape, it was so rewarding seeing the band adapt to the idea, give it life, and make it their own. My ideas were replaced with new ones grown by each member's talent and insight. As it moved toward it's final shape, all of our doubts faded into the background. Luckily, the gamble was paying off. Greg delivered a truly heartfelt and beautiful vocal performance, the final home run that brought the song into full realization.
As icing on the cake, we brought my friend Jane Park, formerly of the band Owel, in to compose a string arrangement for the track. At this point, we had gone this far - why not add strings and make it even more beautiful? We wanted a string quartet feel to add to the album's raw feel, not something too overdone and glossy. She did an amazing job filling in that space and creating an arrangement that really led the song on toward it's climactic end. Greg kindly asked me to write the harmonies for the song and I gladly did so as well. Fittingly, the band changed the title as a final goodbye to the original version, and thus "In Your Ways" was born.
Pareidolia will be available in full on August 24th through No Sleep Records. I can't express enough how much I loved working on this album, and I can't wait for people to hear it in full. The band and I worked tirelessly to make a complete piece of art divided into unique, individual statements - not an easy task - but I'm so proud of them for achieving that. From the head-banging breakdown in "Tyranny" to the emotionally paralyzing finale "Pareidolia," I love every second of this album, and every second of it reminds me of how lucky I am to have worked with such an amazing group of musicians.
So excited for this one!
First Actor | Observer track off of the upcoming LP "Pareidolia" has premiered over at New Noise:
https://newnoisemagazine.com/premiere-actorobserver-laurels/
Huge congrats to the band for signing to No Sleep Records. The full length drops 8/24 and I couldn't be more excited for everyone to hear it in it's entirety. Props to Rich for the amazing album art and congrats to the band, it's been a long road waiting for this album to see the light of day, and we're almost at the end!
The ultimate homies in Vasudeva have released "3 Acoustics" which I had the absolute pleasure of mixing. It was really fun collaborating with Corey again on a recording project and he did a stellar job producing and engineering these tracks, mixing was a breeze and a lot of fun.
Information on the release from the band:
"3 songs off No Clearance that we rerecorded with a different vibe in mind. Recorded in November of 2017, the songs feature acoustic guitars, toned down drums, percussion, ambient guitar & synth layers. We hope this is something we can keep doing in the future, it was fun to reimagine these songs and we’re really into the results. It was mixed by our longtime friend Kevin Dye of Gates & mastered by Jack Shirley.
Alongside it, we’re super happy to release a photo book titled ‘Re-Cap’. We collaborated with our good friend Colin Czerwinski, who travels with us and runs Noice Magazine to make a book of photos that he took while on tour with us throughout all of last year."
You can listen to and order the album here.
The OWEL song "Paper Hands" which I engineered and mixed will be featured on Teen Mom: Young and Pregnant tonight!
The song is off their full-length album "Dear Me" which we recorded at AudioPilot Studio in 2016.
Narco Debut is featured in AltPress this month as one of ten artists you need to know from Detroit! Check it out:
https://www.altpress.com/features/entry/new_artists_detroit_music
Excited for everyone to hear the full length we've been working on!
