Sunday morning comes and I get a phone call from Joe Boyd. If you don't know him by name you certainly know some of the little bands he has worked with over the years like Pink Floyd, REM and Nick Drake to just scratch the surface. Joe is my mentor as a record producer and he is also a great friend. Joe has ties to this area that are wide and deep as you will discover when you read his astounding memoir "White Bicycles". Anytime he is around we try and grab a meal together and share a few thoughts... Continue reading

On Tuesday I spent an afternoon with my good friend Phil Nicolo at Studio 4 in Conshohocken. We have worked on many projects together over the years and he is one of my favorite people in the music community. We share a love of audio gear, musicality and the Beatles among many other things. Tuesday I woke up made coffee and read the NYT online which is pretty much my daily routine. I was interested to see that the so-called Genius awards aka The MacArthur grants were made public and I was, as always, curious to see who made the... Continue reading

I have been friends with Tom for many years now and we have spent literally countless hours sharing music, ideas, food, wine and sundry items during that span of time. He has always been a loyal friend and a brilliant observer of the sounds that surround us. I developed a grand passion for Brazilian music as a result of my friendship with him and our mutual homeboy David Gold. For those of you out there that don't actually know me I participate in a long running and highly guarded music club (now all the rage if you read the London... Continue reading

I am pretty happy to report that the tracks I mixed this Spring at Range Recording Studios in bucolic Ardmore, PA are now available to the public. Well at least two of them are. The two that are available have appeared in what might be my favorite format of all time the 7" 45 rpm vinyl record. I suppose that nostalgia has something to do with that sentiment but also as a DJ myself I love carrying a few boxes of 45's to a gig and watching people bug out when I start spinning them. The great thing about the... Continue reading

I go to a lot of concerts. It's partially work-related and it's partially the fact that nothing is like live music. Last night it was Devotchka and Gogol Bordello. These two bands are fairly dissimilar on a variety of levels but they are united in compositional excellence, musicianship and a large dose of Balkan goodness. I have been watching fairly carefully over the past few years and I am seeing a surprising and rewarding lurch towards a battery of instruments that have been largely ignored or at best under-represented in popular music. The tuba, the solo violin, the accordion and... Continue reading

I spent last Thursday and Friday at Range with super-engineer Brian "Retro" Ritrovato in mixdown mode. It was a great time because we got to work with my old pals Bioritmo the kings (and queen) of Alternative Salsa. I've known these folks for about 15 years and we have always had a great time sharing our passion as amantes de la musica latina. They have changed various players over the years but the core of the band has been and will always be on of my favorites. They are not afraid to "go out on a skinny little branch" as... Continue reading

Last night was a transcendent evening of Avant Garde music. While all the original members of this illustrious aggregation are no longer with us in a corporeal sense their spirit of invention and excellence is very much present. Reedman Roscoe Mitchell and drummer Famoudou Don Moye are still major forces in creative Black music. They no longer paint their faces and the vocal aspect of the band was absent but the music itself was as brilliant as Obsidian. Ably assisted by William Parker on bass and Gimbre (a North African log plectrum) as well as Hugh Ragin on Trumpet and... Continue reading

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http://www.phillymag.com/articles/pulse_how_we_spend_trends_getting_the_spins0310/ Continue reading

The guitar probably has more practitioners than any other instrument in recent history. By the law of averages therefore you stand a better chance of finding a guitar maverick than you do finding one playing the French Horn. This is not a slight it is just a fact. On the other hand, you will also find many more people that are doing something pretty similar as well. That's the law of Large Numbers for you. And then you have Jack Rose. I have no idea whether being from Virginia had any direct bearing on what Jack did but I find... Continue reading

There can be no doubt that straight 4/4 is the dominant time signature for American popular music. Virtually everything you hear on the radio stays within these familiar confines. But whether it be "Take Five" by Dave Brubeck in 5/4 or the tricky compound rhythm of Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" where the Bonham is playing in 4/4 but guitarist Jimmy Page is playing in 3/4 against it, the world is full of many roads. Thinking about your music with all these possibilities in mind is a very powerful tool to expand the horizons of your approach. One of my favorite bands... Continue reading

I genuinely enjoy challenging music. It's not for everyone but there are times when music freed from stricture and convention has a rare beauty all its own. This was not one of those moments. From the way it began which was gestural and spacious I thought we might be in for a special evening. It was special alright. In all the wrong ways. The band has an interesting instrumentation, three drummers, two bassists, two reed and wind players and a cat on vibes alongside them are a tuba player and a guy playing electronics. On paper it could be okay... Continue reading

I am a big fan of high resolution digital audio files (24/96) and good old fashioned analog tape, they are my dear friends. But I need to say that sometimes lo-fi is better. Sometimes a lower fidelity recording simply fits the intentions of the music in a more powerful way. Sometimes the grit and grime just makes you groove harder. I don't think it works for a piano concerto but for a sweaty garage band or a nasty funk outfit the lo-fi thing can REALLY set the stage in a beautiful way. I was listening to the MC5 recently and... Continue reading

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Perhaps no issue has been quite as heated in recent years as the so-called Loudness Wars. For those unfamiliar with this battle it involves the use of compression in the mastering process. For quite some time now a struggle has taken place in the mastering studio. Usually the mastering process is a quiet domain as compared to the recording studio where most of the fighting, physical and mental, takes place. But as of late the field of combat has shifted to this heretofore placid outpost of audio alchemy. The mastering engineer is the guy that takes your finished mixes and... Continue reading