I typically wouldn’t review one of my own gigs, but in the case of the recent The Four Corners Songwriter’s Round (December 28th, 2009) at Googie’s Upstairs, I felt I had to share the experience with someone – most notably you. If you haven’t been to The Living Room in Read more...
While Quantum Leap Silk is not the newest sample-based virtual instrument (VI) out there, you can take this as a kind of year-end shout to one of my favorite tools of the year. Silk encompasses traditional acoustic instruments from the Silk Road trade route first established during the time of Read more...
Rope, an up-and-coming psychedelic roots-rock band from Brooklyn, began as producer/engineer Josh Clark’s studio side project. The co-owner of Seaside Lounge Recording in Park Slope, Clark began recording some of his own songs in between sessions with bands like Beirut, The National, Dark Horse & the Carousels, Antietam and Hopewell. Read more...
BRIDGEPORT, CT: Producer/engineer Peter Katis has a gift for distilling a band’s sound, using instinct, technology and personal invention to help bring out the sonic temperament of a song in all its complexity. For example, The National, Interpol, The Twilight Sad and Frightened Rabbit … all bands whose distinctly weighty Read more...
EAST VILLAGE, MANHATTAN: Why did The Strokes album Is This It change the world? Raw aggravations and melodic mastery were set free by five wizened Manhattan youths whose instincts were apparently dead on about…everything that had anything to do with music.
Rough rough rough when so much else in 2001 Read more...
Kerry “Krucial” Brothers is Alicia Keys’ right-hand man — her longtime production and business partner in KrucialKeys Enterprises and The Oven Studios, and one of the Executive Producers on The Element on Freedom. As with As I Am, Brothers and Chief Engineer Ann Mincieli form the start-to-finish production nucleus that Read more...
Manny Marroquin came out from sunny Cali to mix Alicia Keys’ new record in-house at The Oven. This was his second such Long Island residency, having mixed Keys’ As I Am in similar fashion in the summer of ’07.
Just in the last year and change, Marroquin’s mixed Kanye West’s Read more...
Tony Maserati swooped down to Long Island from his upstate, NY studio to lend a hand in mixing some of the 20 songs produced as part of Alicia Keys’ The Element of Freedom. As deadlines approached, Keys’ chief engineer and album coordinator Ann Mincieli made the game-time decision to get Read more...
Ann Mincieli is Alicia Keys’ recording engineer, album coordinator, studio designer and sonic adventure guide. She is the master facilitator — the Oven is Keys’ studio and Mincieli is its pilot light.
In her 10 years engineering records with Keys, Mincieli has spanned the sonic universe with the artist. When Read more...
Dave Kutch, the intrepid mastering engineer who setup a temporary mastering suite in the live room at The Oven to master Alicia Keys’ As I Am, has done it all again for her new record, The Element of Freedom.
Since As I Am, Kutch has opened his own NYC facility, Read more...
