Shane Mehling, Great Falls bass lunatic and one of the least gifted self-promoters I know, texted me yesterday to say that I never update my website. He’s right. I’ve been planning to replace this creaky site for years and haven’t come up with an idea I like yet. For now Instagram is the best way to keep up with me regularly. I do think it’s important for creatives to avoid depending on algorithm-based social media and I really am working on that, at my own special pace.

I’ve spent Hellscape: 2020 parenting, mixing some great records, catching up with deferred maintenance and gear changes, shooting film, and studying circuits and PCB layout. A few months ago I did a production run of KWB+ pedals, my take on the unobtanium KWB. Those sold out quickly but I’m planning another run this summer. (Email me to get on the list.) I’ve been working on a few other circuits too, analog and digital. We’ll see where that goes.

Here’s some records I’ve worked on over the last while.

• Yautja – Test Subject Two rippers on this 7″. Recorded last year while we camped out at Electrical Audio to track an LP. (out soon on Relapse)
• Wren – Groundswells We recorded this massive LP at Middle Farm in England. Great band, beautiful studio. Session pics.
• Kowloon Walled City & Town Portal – Rise / Jessica Filmed before a show in Brighton. This was awesome.
• No Lights – Cassette, Stay Awake, June Bug Weird hooks, hot rockin. Ian and Dan from KWC + Matt from Early Graves.
• Tvivler – Ego Frantic Danish hardcore. Rules. I mixed.
• Cell Press – s/t Dudes from Great Sabatini, Swarm of Spheres, The Chariot, and Canada the country. RIYL gnarly riffs, gnarly drum fills, gnarl. Recorded by the legend Sean Pearson at Boxcar, mixed by me.
• Life Savings – The Remote Dutch noise rock. Aluminum guitars, Hiwatts, angular riffs, floor mics. I mixed.
• Wolves Like Us Brittle Bones Epic anthems from Oslo. I mixed. Also please see the incredible “100% Part Time” shirt.
• Harsh R The Burden Loud, stripped down industro-punk. Rules. Working on guitarless records is a delight.
• Rise And Fall Alive In Sin Belgium 2012. RAF’s final release show. I mixed this years ago and I’m stoked that it finally got released.
• Slow Mass Music For Ears 3 Beautiful reimaginings of two Slow Mass songs. I love this band. We ate bagels and tracked side A in Oakland one morning while they were here on tour, and tracked most of side B when Dave was back in town for romance. Dave and Josh recorded the rest at home in Chicago, and I mixed.
• Knucklebunder s/t Walker from Fell To Low doing incredible, stretched out through-composed weird rock. Harvey Milk meets Barkmarket. With his mom killing it on backing vox! I really love this record.
• Granite Hands Void Casual shred from southern Texas. Awesome record, awesome cover photo. I mixed.
• Pinto Slunk Fuzzed out pop nuggets from the Mojave Desert. Tracked live and headphone-free at Sharkbite.
• Kowloon Walled City w/The New Trust The Way It Will Be Gillian Welch cover. Recorded new year’s day 2018, released 18 months later.
• Strangelight Adult Themes Downstrokes, hooks, short killer songs, three fast hilarious days in Sharkbite with friends I’m glad to have. Also the last thing I recorded before plague descended.

That’s it for now. Next update by 2023!

This fall I’m leaving my day job and turning into a full-time recording engineer. Holy shit!

Finally, scheduling studio time with me will be easier, including long (days/weeks) tracking sessions. My mix calendar will get much more predictable. I’ll do more Tape Op writing, write here more than once a decade, and try to bike to the studio every day.

This is a big deal for me and my family and I am very, very grateful for their support and for taking this on with me. Thanks also to the bands I’m lucky enough to work with and get to know, and the friends who have encouraged me to do this ridiculous thing.

Let’s make records!

While I’m at it, here’s some recent (“recent”) work…

• Town Portal Of Violence
• Sleep – Live at Regency Ballroom
• Great Falls A Sense of Rest
• Kowloon Walled City w/The New Trust “The Way It Will Be”
• The Great Sabatini Goodbye Audio
• Yowie Synchromysticism
• East of the Wall NP-Complete
• Fred Frith Trio Closer to the Ground
• Ghoul “Thrash Damage” split, Macabre comp
  
• Glose The Second Best of Glose
• Harsh R Physical World
• War Bison Acre
• American Steel State of Grace
• Cite Tangelo
• Loyalists Ride the Trashheap of Sound
  
• Difficult To Heal
• Horseneck Heavy Trip

Kowloon Walled City Grievances Our third LP came out in October. We put a lot into it and we’re all proud of the results. (listen | session pics)

Ghoul Dungeon Bastards “The mosh parts have mosh parts.” I recorded and mixed. We tracked drums in two days in my tiny room at Antisleep. No grids, no samples. This record rules and, holy shit, it debuted at #13 on the Billboard hard rock charts. (listen)

Roger Waters and My Morning Jacket Live at the Newport Folk Festival, playing a Dylan song. I mixed the last song in this video. More than once, I looked at the labels on my faders in disbelief.

Fred Frith Trio Another Day in Fucking Paradise My friend Jason Hoopes plays bass in Fred’s new trio, and asked if I was interested in recording an LP for them. Sure, I guess. In January we spent three very focused days tracking at Sharkbite. I did my best to make this session smooth and painless, so the group’s inspiration and improvisation were in charge. And even though really I was running to keep up, I survived and it was great to be a part of this. Myles Boisen mixed and mastered. (listen)

Mouth Deathroll. A 12 minute LP of gnarly drum/bass hardcore. These guys came in to Sharkbite super dialed, which gave us enough time to stretch and find some cool sounds. Mixed on the Neotek at Antisleep. Great record. (listen | session pics)

Doralice Rusted Pieces Doralice is Yates and Rima from Ventid, playing acoustic chamber… jazz? While we were tracking an LP last year, we realized that the three of us all love Megadeth Rust In Peace. I started talking them into covering a song, and somehow a few months later Yates had arranged acoustic versions of the entire record. That’s insane, but anyway, we booked a day in Sharkbite to shoot a live video with my friend Colin Frangos, then track as many songs as we could manage. That turned into a 5-song EP. (listen)

Mercy Ties Proper Corruption Total ripper. Tracked (at Sharkbite) and mixed (at Antisleep) in seven days. Amazingly I think this is the first record I’ve done start to finish in one consecutive block of time. (listen | session pics)

Throes To Dust Also a ripper. Andy Patterson tracked at The Boar’s Nest, and I mixed. (listen)

Solip Dissociation Heavy, washy pedalboard doom from Oakland. Tracked in a weekend at Sharkbite, mixed on the console at Antisleep. (listen | session pics)

More recent releases:

• Ghoul Wall of Death Decibel flexi
• Fórn Weltschmerz
• Them Teeth The Knuckledragger
• The Canyon Observer FVCK
• Defending The Kingdom Black Mountain Days
• Thou Floyd the Barber
• Lysine Demonstration
• Bye Bye Blackbirds Let Your Hair Fall Down

Some Tape Op gear reviews: TK Audio BC501, AKG D12VR, xqp 535 EQ and 545 Optical Disrupter.

In the works: Less Art, NY in 64, Loyalists, Horseneck, Aberrant Phase, Bye Bye Blackbirds, can’t even remember what else.

Whew. If you read this far, thanks. Next update: fall 2019.

Greg Wilkinson I interviewed Greg for Tape Op and it turned out great. (read)

Baby Boy 2015 Going-away record for this Thou side project. They tracked in Baton Rouge and I mixed & mastered. Songs about friends and dogs. (listen)

Minsk The Crash and the Draw I spent a couple of days with Timothy Mead tracking vocals for some of this epic Minsk LP. Produced by Sanford Parker. (listen)

Old Earth Until They’re Called Todd recorded the underpinnings of this EP at Antisleep in March. He had one guitar and two pedals – a looper/delay and a slapback delay. He builds little loops as he goes, then plays along. We plugged him into my Fender Twin and set up a few mics, then Todd played all three songs in one pass, first try, including the transitions between songs. Pretty rad. (listen)

Thou Whatever Nevermind I tracked Andy’s guitars for two Nirvana covers. (listen)

Roman Cities The Sharksleep Sessions Old school, Cars-inspired pop by my homie Ian Miller and some other friends. Clean guitars, noise gates, chorus pedals, songs with choruses. We tracked at Sharkbite and Antisleep, and The Greg Thompson mixed. (listen / session pics)

Mauler New York D-beats and HM-2’s. I mixed. (listen)

Mercy Ties We spent five days tracking at Sharkbite, then two days mixing at Antisleep. Great band, great session, and only one thing blew up. LP out on Glory Kid in a few months.

Kowloon Walled City We tracked a full-length a few months ago and finished it as time allowed. During that time I think I almost saw the light a few times. Out this fall on Neurot Recordings, with vinyl on Gilead Media.

Some Tape Op gear reviews: TB Audio TBDD chorus, DIYRE Colour saturator.

Also in progress: Throes, Them Teeth, Lysine, Defending the Kingdom, a bunch of other good stuff. Also some studio upgrades, adding more outboard gear. The Neotek console has been perfect so far and I’m reconfiguring a bit so I can mix on it more.

(photos: old earth sam lee; greg, minsk, thou, roman cities, mercy ties gse)

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Bog Oak A Treatise On Resurrection And The Afterlife I did side A of this huge downtuned EP. The band was so dialed that it was almost easy. We tracked at Sharkbite and mixed at Antisleep. This was an interesting mix–after I spent a lot of time making it bigger, meaner, whatever, I referred back to my rough tracking mix and realized that the rough was better! We got it right the first time. So I scrapped my mix and started again with a lighter hand, and I’m really happy with the results. (listen / session pics)

Power-Take-Off Unhinged I’ve known Gus since his days in GRIDS, and I’ve wanted to work with PTO since I heard their first released song. The band tracked this EP in a North Carolina practice space and I mixed. It’s gnaaaaaarly. (listen)

Sie Lieben Maschinen June Gloom Josh Newton (Shiner, Every Time I Die, most other bands) and Steve Tulipana (Season to Risk) with great contributions from Chris Bolig (Cartographer, Replicator), Shannon Corr (Minot, Greenlight the Bombers), and 41 distortion pedals. This record’s story is a post unto itself, but I tracked a lot of it and mixed, and directed traffic. Should be out early next year. (listen)

Puig Destroyer The baseball band got signed and did a full-length. Riley did the drums in LA, Mike tracked vocals in Chicago with Andrew Ragin, we tracked guitars and mixed at Antisleep. Fun as hell, as usual. (listen)

Tartufi Canyon We recorded “Sick of the Sirens” at Sharkbite and mixed at Antisleep. There’s also a second song from this session, which will hopefully end up somewhere. I really like this band–another one that I wanted to record since I first heard them. So many layers. (listen)

A few more recent releases: Hellbeard Dark/Light, Disastroid Missiles. And some works in progress: Drunk Dad, Minsk, Baby Boy, Roman Cities, The Sunset Shipwrecks.

Some Tape Op gear reviews: sE X1R ribbon mic, Traynor DarkHorse 15H, Minifooger pedals.

And last month I installed this small but beautiful Neotek Elan II console. Handmade in Chicago, 16 mic inputs, 36 inputs at mix, sounds great. It’s already been awesome to use the console for tracking and I’m figuring out ways to fit it into real-world mixing workflows. Everybody likes the idea of keeping it real by mixing on a console–ride faders as the mix goes down, commit and call it done–but in reality I do lots of recalls and jump between sessions over the course of weeks or months. But if you want to do an attended mix session and call it done when we’re done, I’m down.

November makes a year since I opened Antisleep Oakland. To all the bands I’ve been lucky enough to work with during that year, new friends and old: Thanks. I love making music with you.

(photos: BO Kevin Brown; PTO Andrew Christian; PD Ian Miller; SLM, Tartufi, Neotek me)

In November, A Minor Forest played their first show in 15 years. It was fantastic. Ken Thomas filmed and edited, and I recorded and mixed.

Kowloon Walled City / Batillus split KWC covered Godflesh’s “Anthem” and our friends in Batillus covered Ministry’s “Lava”. Batillus stopped by Sharkbite for a day of tracking while they were on tour last year. I’ve wanted to record them for a long time, and I love how their track came out. (listen / session pics)

Hush Unexist Slow, enormous doom from Albany NY. This LP was a cool collaboration – Ryan Slowey and I planned out tracking together, then he tracked at Black Dog Studios in upstate NY, then I mixed. I’m really happy with the result. The record comes out in June. (listen)

Pins of Light “Lie Detector” 7″ Another band I’ve wanted to record for a while – we did a 7″ split (with Weedeater) for Scion AV. We tracked at Sharkbite and overdubbed and mixed at Antisleep. (listen)

The Loyalists First of the Mohicans Busted noise rock with electric cello, played by friends from a stack of previous bands. Tracked at Sharkbite, the band did vocals and other overdubs on their own, then mixed at Antisleep. (listen / session pics)

Vulgar Trade Gross Century After we finished the Loyalists record, their drummer Chad casually said “I play guitar and sing in another band and we want to record too.” Turns out Chad’s other band is rad! Fast, dirty hardcore with a mathy DC twist. We did drums at Sharkbite, and everything else at Antisleep. (listen)

A few more recent releases:

• Glose The Very Best of Glose
• The Atomic Bomb Audition Infinite Fires
• Puig Destroyer Wait for Spring
• Imperils Imperils

In progress: Tartufi, Power Take Off, Sie Lieben Maschinen, Doralice, Disastroid, Hellbeard, probably others.

Neurosis – On New Year’s Eve, I recorded Neurosis at the Oakland Metro, working again with Kenneth Thomas and his film crew, along with Sal and Paige at the Metro. Exhausting, amazing session.

Old Man Gloom – The new OMG reissues include a bunch of live material, which I tracked last year in San Francisco and Chico, and James Plotkin mixed. I don’t think it’s online, but here’s the one video I mixed.

Rise and Fall – I just finished mixes for a gnarly live LP. It’s off to mastering now.

Command Control – We did 4 songs at Sharkbite in January. This was super fun. No bass guitar! Combo amps! Rhodes! (listen)

Ejaculoid – Wuvable Oaf #4 is out and includes an EJACLULOID flexi that we recorded at TTJ a while back. I love this session photo.

Glose – In January, we did three long-ass tracking days at Tad Doyle’s Witch Ape Studio in Seattle. Tad was the friendliest, most accomodating host I could imagine. Great session. I’m mixing this now.

There’s more, but that’s enough for now.

Meanwhile, construction continues on my rooms in the Sharkbite building. So much drywall and green glue.

(photos: OMG – Aaron Turner, RAF – Mathieu Vandekerckhove, CC & Oaf – me, construction – Ryan Massey)

Kowloon Walled City – We just released our third record, Container Ships. Here are a few studio journals: part 1, part 2. Writing and recording this record was an intense, exhausting experience, but it was worth it. Listen.

Old Man Gloom – In September, I recorded OMG at a sweaty warehouse show in Chico, while Kenneth Thomas and crew filmed it. This came out awesome. Here’s video.

Satya Sena – We just finished a 3-song 7″ that’s due out soon. We tracked in one long day at Sharkbite, with a few vocals the next day at TTJ.

I mentioned a few records-in-progress last update, and they’re out:

• Tigon Infinite Teeth (listen)
• Ladder Devils Nowhere Plans (listen)
• Yowie Damning With Faint Praise (listen

Garris Shipon – My interview with Garris was in the August issue of Tape Op. Brutal Truth! CoC!

Andrew Schneider – My interview with Andrew was in the June issue of Tape Op. Since then, Andrew moved Translator Audio to a fantastic new spot, only to see it completely decimated by Hurricane Sandy. Awful news. Last I heard they’re recovering and rebuilding, and I wish them the best.

Some Tape Op gear reviews – Cubase 6.5 review; nerdy review of two computer keyboards.

(photos: Satya Sena – Shannon Corr; Garris & Andrew: me)

Ventid – Remember Your Audience was released last fall on vinyl. I love this record. RIYL Slint, Cursive, prog (the good kind). They have a few copies left. Listen.

Kowloon Walled City – Last spring we recorded a song for a split with Thou, as part of the Hell Comes Home singles series. Thou covered “4th Of July” by Soundgarden. We covered “July” by Low, with guest vocals by the amazing Lisa Papineau. I recorded our side at TTJ (our classy practice space). Anyway — the record is finally out and it looks great. The label is sold out of individual copies, but has some subscriptions left. We’ll have a few individual copies for sale pretty soon. Listen.

Generalissimo – Iron Heart is a 7″ with two songs from our session last fall. It contains the bass tone of a thousand forgotten proles. Listen. (this is neat: there’s another version of “Silver Skin”, recorded the following week by Tim Green at Louder, on their new LP.)

Sanford Parker – My interview with Sanford was in the Nov/Dec Tape Op. There’s some bonus content online.

Yowie – I just finished mixing a record for these guys, and it’s being mastered now. Crazy atonal prog-noise. This should be required listening for every tech metal band that talks about how their music is too weird for most people.

Ladder Devils – I just finished mixing four songs for a vinyl release that’s happening Really Soon.

Tigon – And right now, I’m working on a full-length for Tigon. We tracked at Sharkbite, with some overdubs at TTJ. These guys have been my favorite heavy Bay Area band for years. Weird, heavy, really good. I’m stoked on this record.

(photos: Ventid – me, Gmo – Shannon Corr, Sanford – me, Yowie – Dustin Winter/KDHX, LDevils – Ashley Campbell, Tigon – Bryan Proteau)

I’ve recorded a lot of very loud bands — including my own — in cramped practice spaces, using a mobile rig that I bring in for tracking. It’s a challenge, but it’s kind of cool. And laptops have gotten powerful enough that even older ones can loaf through a 16- or 24-input session.

But a few years ago I started getting bit by a nasty problem: intermittently, my DAW (Cubase) wouldn’t stay in record for more than a few minutes. A few minutes into a take, Cubase’s hard drive performance meter would freak out, then I’d see a “Too many tracks recording” dialog as recording stopped. This is the Nuendo version of the same dialog, but you get the point:

This really rattled me — how can you focus on what matters if you’re always worried about your recorder failing? — and it was hard to track down the cause. I had upgraded some hardware and software on my laptop, and the problem was very intermittent. But it always seemed to happen during real takes (ugh).

Steinberg support said it was probably the 5400 rpm drive in my old Thinkpad. I know you’re all saying “Of course! You can’t record with a slow HD!” but I had used a 5400 rpm internal drive for many sessions prior and never once seen a glitch.

But one or two fucked up sessions later, I gave in and upgraded my 7-year-old Thinkpad to a fairly recent Macbook Pro. You can’t have something like this threatening to ruin sessions.

And during my first session with the new machine, I got The Dialog. I felt sick. What the fuck?

I borrowed another Macbook Pro for a session and saw it there too. Three computers?!? Maybe Cubase 4.5 was a dog, or RME’s drivers had somehow regressed. My gut, based on 20 years as a professional computer nerd, told me it was neither, but you never know.

Here are some suggestions I got from friends, the internet, Steinberg support, etc: Never record to the OS partition. Never record to an internal drive. That’s what you get for using Cubase. Try trashing your preferences. Try adjusting the pre-record time in Cubase. I was sure that none of these was my problem. Three computers and two OS’s? Something was just wrong.

I couldn’t repro the problem at home, ever. I was usually recording 18 inputs, which should be a piece of cake, but I also saw it with 2-3 tracks sometimes. In certain sessions it never happened. In fact it sure seemed like recording only crapped out while really loud things were going on nearby. Wait a minute…

I started googling with the “loud sounds” thing in mind, and found a few forum threads mentioning the same problem. Eventually I found this Apple support page: Apple Portables: Advanced tips for Sudden Motion Sensor. Here’s the money excerpt:

In some environments, such as live concert halls, recording studios, or dance clubs, external vibrations may be major enough to cause the module to unexpectedly park the hard drive heads, resulting in interrupted sound or video playback.

Bam. That would explain everything. The SMS is there to prevent your hard drive heads from bouncing on the drive platter if you drop your computer. High SPLs can trick the accelerometer into thinking that the machine is being dropped. The protection system parks the hard drive heads, and recording is in trouble.

It turns out that Thinkpads had a similar feature, though not all hard drives supported it. That would explain why I didn’t have any issues with my Thinkpad’s stock HD, but did after upgrading it.

Now, learn from my pain.

I let Steinberg support know about this; they hadn’t heard of it before. Avid’s optimization guide covers it: “If you’re recording in a loud environment, this optimization will prevent the Sudden Motion Sensor from kicking in and throwing a -9073 error in Pro Tools.”

It’s interesting, the “common sense” problems were not the problem. Recording to an external drive probably would have masked this problem, but also probably would have led me to wrongly conclude “yep, internal drives / OS partitions are no good for recording”. My personal feeling is that a lot of these well-known tweaks are folklore left over from the early days of digital recording. They may still matter if you’re trying to get 2ms latency with 80 inputs, but not for tracking 18 inputs of 44.1/24 with no plugins or latency concerns.

Anyways — if you always record in a control room, or if you use a desktop machine, this shouldn’t affect you. But if regularly have 500 watts of pissed-off tube amps pointed at your laptop, this may save your session. I’m still testing, to feel 100% sure that I have a fix, so please report back.

Here’s the last time it hit me. My laptop was three feet in front of the Marshall cab.

Bonus trivia: when the drums abruptly cut off at the end of “Yowie”… yeah. We said fuck it and left it.