USA Today report on Saving Abel and SKIDD MILLS

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Classic Rock Magazine features The Answer's new record, Produced by JOHN TRAVIS and Mixed by TIM PALMER

The Black Ghosts named this week's buzz band by FMQB

FMQB's national SubModern specialty show chart has chosen The Black Ghosts as their featured "Buzz" release of the week.



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PR Web reports that FRANK FITZPATRICK scores title track to 'Soul Men'

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DAVID KOSTEN produced the debut album for Josiah Leming of "American Idol" fame

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TIM PALMER at '62 Studios

LARRY KLEIN and HELIK HADAR featured in Sound on Sound magazine

Children Collide's new album "The Long Now" reviewed on Beat

Yahoo News highlights the musical FAME remake, featuring songs from THE MATRIX

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KEVIN BARNES and Of Montreal featured in Spin Magazine in October

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KEVIN BARNES and Of Montreal featured in Rolling Stone Magazine in October

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MARK HOWARD interviewed by Uncut Magazine for the BOB DYLAN SPECIAL: The Complete Tell Tale Signs

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MALCOLM BURN interviewed by Uncut Magazine for the BOB DYLAN SPECIAL: The Complete Tell Tale Signs

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Oasis Announce UK Tour

Oasis have announced today (August 15) that they will make their UK live comeback by touring Britain this autumn.

The band will hit the road immediately after releasing seventh studio album 'Dig Out Your Soul' which was produced by DAVE SARDY.

The band kick of the dates on October 7, the day after the record is released, with the first of two shows at the Liverpool Echo Arena.

The tour - the set for which Oasis previewed last night (August 14) at an invite only show - will then call at Sheffield, Birmingham, London, Bournemouth, Cardiff, Belfast and Aberdeen, before ending at the Glasgow SECC on November 5.

Oasis will play:

Liverpool Echo Arena (October 7, 8)
Sheffield Arena (10, 11)
Birmingham NIA (13, 14)
London Wembley Arena (16, 17)
Bournemouth BIC (20, 21)
Cardiff International Arena (23, 24)
Belfast Odyssey Arena (29, 30)
Aberdeen Exhibition Centre (November 1, 2)
Glasgow SECC (4, 5)

Tickets for the tour go on sale at 9am (BST) on Wednesday (August 20). To check the availability of Oasis tickets and get all the latest listings, go to NME.COM/GIGS now, or call 0871 230 1094.

The band release their new album, 'Dig Out Your Soul', on October 6.

It will be preceded by the single, 'The Shock Of The Lightning', which will be backed with the band's first ever remix, on September 29.

Melody Gardot Review on Guardian.com

Melody Gardot at Bloomsbury Theatre

From The Times
July 23, 2008
Melody Gardot at Bloomsbury Theatre, WC1
Clive Davis
It's easy to appreciate why some people are so cynical about the number of jazz or jazz-inflected singers competing for attention at the moment. Is it just a marketing craze? Well, yes, it can be, but if the instrumentalists are once again being pushed into the background it is partly because the muscle-bound technocrats among them have done all too thorough a job of scaring off listeners.

The truth is that there is a growing audience for sophisticated music with a strong emotional content, and Melody Gardot, the newcomer from Philadelphia, is ideally placed to cater to it. Reserved she may be, but she already possesses more stage presence than Norah Jones or Madeleine Peyroux, while her compact band boasts stronger jazz credentials than either of her rivals.

While this was a shortish set, lasting only just over an hour, it was a measure of Gardot's confidence that she felt able to play her two strongest cards - the lilting Sweet Memory and her debut album's title tune, Worrisome Blues - so early in the evening. By the time she reached her encore, a lithe version of the Ellington-Tizol standard, Caravan, she had turned the auditorium into the most intimate of jazz clubs.

The voice doesn't span a particularly wide range and the tempos rarely venture beyond slow-to-medium, but she has a thoroughly distinctive taste in material. Her opening number, an audacious a cappella treatment of one of the blues chants unearthed by that tireless musicologist Alan Lomax, was propelled with nothing but fingersnaps and soul. Everyone else is revisiting Tom Waits, but she reminded us that it's still possible to find emotional depths in Bill Withers's Ain't No Sunshine.

Her trio could not be more skeletal, Ken Prendergast's supple bass lines supported by Chuck Patierno's admirably controlled brushwork. Patrick Hughes's unhurried trumpet playing adds the sparest of punctuation. Halfway through, Gardot briefly left the stage while the musicians paid homage to Chet Baker on My Funny Valentine, although she returned in time to supply some suitably bitter-sweet vocals at the end.

The addition of one or two more musicians would bring a few more shades to Gardot's palette. But her own occasional contributions on piano and guitar were beguiling, and when she embarked on Somewhere Over the Rainbow (shades of Eva Cassidy) a hint of bossa nova blended effortlessly with a soupçon of calypso. She already seems an old hand.

NICK LAUNAY In Sound on Sound

Click here to read NICK LAUNAY's recent interview in Sound On Sound.

Melody Gardot In The London Sunday Times

From The Sunday Times
July 20, 2008
Melody Gardot in Italy
From a near-fatal accident to her discovery of jazz, Melody Gardot’s story
is well worth listening to ‹ and so are her songs


On a sultry evening on Bologna’s Piazza Verdi, the audience is waiting for Melody Gardot and her band to make their appearance on the open-air stage. Amy Winehouse’s songs are roaring from the speakers ‹ an ironic touch, really, because Gardot’s intimate ballads are a million miles from the English girl’s brash showmanship. Winehouse grabs you by the throat; Gardot invites you to pull up a chair, bend your head forward and listen closely. Her songs are as soft and delicate as a whisper.

This is her first visit to Italy, and, though she scarcely ventures further than an occasional “grazie”, she slowly draws her listeners into the heart of the music as she switches between acoustic guitar and piano. We soon pay no heed to the noise of buses or scooters. Passers-by who had been chattering on the edge of the crowd gradually allow their eyes to wander towards the bandstand. Gardot’s voice tends to have that effect on people, which is why the dreamy young singer-songwriter from Philadelphia is already being spoken of as a rival to Norah Jones.

The difference is that Gardot’s work, for all its stylish veneer of Joni Mitchell-ish pop and occasional twang of country-and-western romance, contains a deeper strain of jazz. Like the footloose Madeleine Peyroux, she is winning over the kind of listeners who probably never thought they liked jazz. In reality, Gardot is almost as much of a beginner as many of her admirers. When I arrive at her tiny hotel room the next morning, her laptop is playing Charles Mingus.

She listens hard to part of a saxophone line, enraptured by the slow bending of the note. Yet it turns out that she is not an old Mingus hand at all. She had first encountered the great bassist-composer’s volcanic recordings only a month earlier, courtesy of the musicians in her band.

She is absorbing new names all the time. One day it is Bessie Smith, the next Anita O’Day. Her tastes wander far across the blues, pop and world-music spectrum, from plantation songs recorded by the musicologist Alan Lomax to a slab of material by her favourite artist, the chameleon-like Brazilian master Caetano Veloso. She keeps the music playing during our conversation, pointing out snippets she admires and at one point echoing Veloso’s keening phrases.

Gardot, you see, is at that happy stage of her career when she soaks up influences almost effortlessly. “With a band that knows so much, and me knowing so little, I’m always in a position to learn more,” she says. “That’s a good place to be. I feel that none of us truly masters one thing in a lifetime, but it helps to have beautiful people surrounding you. I’m like a sailboat surrounded by beautiful breezes.”

What makes her achievement all the more impressive is that she is living with the consequences of a near-fatal traffic accident that left her with serious physical and neurological disabilities. She wears tinted glasses because of her extreme sensitivity to light, and uses a walking cane to move around on stage. Strapped to her waist, much of the time, is a small device ‹ a Tens machine ‹ that emits electronic impulses to curb the pain. Touring can be an ordeal. The curtains are drawn when I arrive in mid-afternoon; incense is burning. Gardot, who seems immune to self-pity, jokingly explains how one of her first priorities on arriving at a hotel is checking that her room has a good bathtub. Long soaks in epsom salts and healing oils are among her ways of dealing with life on the road.

The accident happened when she was 19. Cycling near a junction, she was struck by a 4WD that had jumped the lights. Her pelvis was shattered and head injuries erased her short-term memory. Bedridden for a year, she consulted a string of doctors before one of them, who took a special interest in the effect of music on theneural pathways, suggested that she take up the guitar and songwriting. Gardot had already been making some money by playing in piano bars. During her convalescence, she embarked on the long and painful journey to the recording of what was to become her first album, Worrisome Heart.

Her long hair half hidden beneath a beret, Gardot rests on her bed as we talk. She seems particularly frail today, but is clearly reluctant to go into too much detail. Music is what matters most of all ‹ she laughs at the memory of how, when she first wore the Tens machine for a concert, it caused a buzzing sound on her guitar pick-up. It took her a good 20 minutes to realise what was causing the problem.

The night before, in her show, there was a sense that her energy levels were dipping. The urban setting, for all its allure, had its drawbacks in terms of distractions. “It was difficult,” Gardot admits. “Our music is at times so intimate, you sometimes think you almost need the stillness of a field for people to be able get it.” Her penchant for ballads can also make excessive demands on an audience’s concentration. By and large, however, the approach pays dividends. “I kind of see music in two ways,” she explains. “It’s just like in speech. If you hear someone who talks loud and fast, you’re going to back away. If you’ve got someone who talks slowly and softly, you might get annoyed, because you have to strain to listen. But there’s that middle ground that can be inviting.”

This is music that is full of silences. The instrumentation is unusually stark ‹ just bass, drums and trumpet for the most part, with Gardot adding subtle textures on keyboard and guitar. As she observes: “It’s more challenging to play less. They’ve all come to me and said that. It’s fun to play a lot of notes, because they can goof off, but they love the challenge of having to underplay.

To tell a drummer to go slowly, I think that’s harder than going fast. He has to play delicately and consciously. You have to play the notes that aren’t there, as it were.”

Music is worthless, Gardot believes, unless it comes from the heart. Before every concert, she and her musicians hold hands and join in a prayer in which everyone asks the spirits of great players of the past to watch over the performance. On stage, there is a hint of the mysterious vamp about her. The clothes and hairstyle have an unmistakeable touch of bohemian chic, as befits a former art and fashion student. Face to face, though, she looks much younger, much more endearingly girlish. If she can seem cool and distant when she is performing, it is her all-embracing enthusiasm that makes the biggest impression in conversation.

When I notice a copy of Tchaikovsky’s diaries on the table, Gardot talks about her love of Dostoevsky, Tom Stoppard and the theatre of the absurd. (“It’s funny: one of the themes of my tours is waiting around for me. You know, Waiting for Gardot.”) She discovered the diaries in her local library. The copy was so old that the librarian would not allow it to be taken out of the building, so Gardot used to visit every day simply to read a few more pages. In another life, she says, she might have been a teacher.

Her art training constantly comes into play. “I see all my music in colours,” she says. “When things feel good, they blend together, like watercolours. If it’s not right, they stay linear ‹ the reds, the blues and the rest are completely separate. I always draw analogies to painting, which drives my musicians insane. In fact, at one point I kept saying Œframe’ instead of Œbar’. They said, ŒWhat are you talking about?’ ”

Gardot did learn music theory when she was much younger, but most of it has been forgotten now. She pauses and stares into space. “Perhaps it is an advantage in some ways,” she says. “I feel freer not thinking in circles of fifths.” Yes indeed, the heart has its own reasons.

Melody Gardot performs at the Bloomsbury Theatre, WC1, tomorrow

Sunny Levine On TrendCentral

Latest Albums Produced by JOE BLANEY Reviewed In Rolling Stone and Billboard

Sky Bombers are A&R Worldwide's "Artist Of The Week"

A&R WORLDWIDE’S "ARTIST OF THE WEEK" – SKYBOMBERS

Melbourne, Australia’s Skybombers are one of the strongest and most consistent new rock bands to emerge from Down Under (or anywhere else in the world, for that matter) in the past decade. They’ve been an A&R Worldwide favorite since they came to our attention back in the summer of 2006 (when the band had barely formed) and have been featured several times over the past two years. The four-piece possesses enormous global potential, which makes it no surprise as to why Alberts--home to AC/DCŠone of the biggest-selling rock bands in the world--inked these talented lads immediately. Skybombers have recorded a brand-new album, Take Me To Town, which is already garnering critical acclaim from journalists, tastemakers and fans alike. The album was recorded in Los Angeles with respected produced RICK PARKER and is full of numerous potential hit singles, including “Eleanor’s Lullaby,” which could be a multi-format smash across the globe – it’s a perfect anthem for all seasons and all demographics that love great songs. Skybombers have racked up hundreds of plays on US commercial radio with no label support and have also been added to Australia’s national youth radio network station Triple J amongst many others (including early support on Xfm in the UK and Motor FM in Germany). To listen to the single “Eleanor’s Lullaby,” click HERE. For additional details, check out www.myspace.com/skybombers.



A&R Worldwide 6/08 www.anrworldwide.com

Uncut Magazine Awards Walter Becker's New Album 4 Stars

RENAUD LETANG in GQ and Sound On Sound

Check Out RENAUD LETANG'S interviews in Sound on Sound and GQ magazine.

SUNNY LEVINE on KCRW's New Ground

SUNNY LEVINE joined Chris Douridas on KCRW's New Ground on Saturday for an in studio interview and performance. Sunny spoke to Chris about his work producing tracks for Happy Mondays and Mickey Avalon, as well as producing Pete Yorn's forthcoming project, "Pete and Scarlett Break Up" due out in the fall. Sunny also preformed live tracks from his debut solo album Love Rhino. To watch or listen click here.

PETER KATIS talks with E.Q. magazine

Peter Katis chats with E.Q magazine about producing the latest Mates Of State Album.
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Herbie Hancock and Joni Mitchell perform on Nissan Live Sets On Yahoo!

Herbie Hancock and Joni Mitchell perform tracks from Herbie's Grammy Award Album Of The Year "River: The Joni Letters" on Nissan Live Sets On Yahoo! "River: The Joni Letters" was produced by LARRY KLEIN and engineered by HELIK HADAR. Click here to watch!.

IAMSOUND in 944 magazine

Our sister label IAMSOUND Records makes it into 944 Magazine!.

DAVE SARDY interviewed by The LA Times

Click here to read DAVE SARDY's interview on The Envelope website of the Los Angeles Times. Dave discusses producing and composing the soundtrack for the Sony Pictures feature "21".

KEVIN BARNES in Rolling Stone!

KEVIN BARNES talks about his work on the forthcoming Of Montreal album in the April issue of Rolling Stone.

NIN, Music Ripe To Remix

Music Ripe to Remix
By Jon Pareles
New Yokr Times, March 10, 2008
"Ghosts I-IV"
(The Null Corporation)

Anything Radiohead can do, Trent Reznor can do his way. Nine Inch Nails, his recording project, has joined Radiohead among the million-sellers who are now free agents in the digital era, and his first move is radical: "Ghosts I-IV," an album made to be shared and altered freely. "Ghosts I-IV" is 36 instrumental tracks (or near-instrumental, since human voices are among the sounds) and a coordinated set of elegantly eerie photographs. It's available as a high-fidelity, easily copied download for $5, a two-CD set for $16.99 (including shipping) and in deluxe versions from ghosts.nin.com; in April there will be a retail four-LP vinyl version for $39. The opening nine tracks are also available free, from ghosts.nin.com. Instead of a standard copyright, Mr. Reznor gave the music a Creative Commons license; it can be shared and reworked as long as music built on "Ghosts" is noncommercial and attributed to Nine Inch Nails. Mr. Reznor's collaborator on "Ghosts" is Atticus Ross, his programmer and co-producer; a few guest musicians like Adrian Belew add guitar and other noises. Even without verbal cues — the track titles are numbers — much of the music is still unmistakably Nine Inch Nails: overloaded electronic dance beats (3, 7, 16, 19, 24, 29), isolated piano notes and elegies (1, 9, 12, 36), pounding rock (4, 26, 27, 31, 35) or all of them together (10), usually in minor keys in the bleak, open soundscapes that Mr. Reznor has perfected. "Ghosts" also shows his pattern-building side, with plinking Steve Reich percussion in tracks 10 and 21, and tries some uncharacteristic sounds like thumb piano in 21, orchestral samples in 11 and banjo in 28. Most tracks can stand on their own, but they could also be heard as incomplete or anticipatory, potential soundtrack music or backing tracks for songs. Unlike Radiohead, which labors to make every song definitive and complete, Mr. Reznor has fully embraced a user-generated era. He has encouraged listeners to remix, "mutilate or destroy" the Nine Inch Nails catalog, even providing some separate instrumental parts. Now, with "Ghosts," he's virtually inviting other people's voices. It's Nine Inch Nails karaoke - add your own angst.

LCD Soundsystems's "Big Idea" produced by DAVE SARDY

Check out the review in Rolling Stone for LCD Soundsystem's "Big Ideas" from the 21 Soundtrack which was produced by DAVE SARDY.

Herbie Hancock Rides On The River by Todd Leopold/CNN.com

Herbie Hancock has been here before.
Herbie Hancock has won 10 Grammys -- and could add more to his take this year. The famed jazz pianist has 10 Grammy Awards to his credit -- for such works as "Rockit," "A Tribute to Miles" and "Gershwin's World" -- not to mention nominations for several more. He's no stranger to other honors, having won tributes from organizations ranging from MTV to the National Endowment for the Arts. But, he says, it was still a shock to hear his name announced among the nominations for Grammy's 2007 album of the year for his album "River: The Joni Letters" (Verve). "I was blown away by the nomination," he says in a phone interview from Los Angeles. But, he adds, in a way it's appropriate. "It's so timely. It's the 50th anniversary of the Grammy Awards, and the Recording Academy and the Grammys were designed in order to expose a variety of music to the public. In a way [this year's nominations] are a way to get back to the purpose of what the Academy is about in the first place," he observes, noting that the five album of the year nominees -- "River," Amy Winehouse's "Back to Black," Vince Gill's "These Days," the Foo Fighters' "Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace" and Kanye West's "Graduation" -- are from five different genres. "I'm just fortunate that one of them happens to be for my record," he says. The awards are scheduled for Sunday. On the one hand, "River" would seem to be a natural for a Grammy nod, based on the Recording Academy's politics. Hancock, 67, is a musical eminence with decades of professional experience, including stints with Miles Davis and his own V.S.O.P. quintet. His use of electronic keyboards in jazz was groundbreaking, and he's even had a couple of hit singles. The Recording Academy likes to honor longtime veterans almost as much as it does newcomers, as it has with Ray Charles, Tony Bennett and Eric Clapton -- all of whom won album of the year in the last 15 years -- so Hancock would seem to have an edge over his fellow nominees for the big honor. On the other hand, "River" is an unapologetic straight jazz album, with unusual harmonies and expansive running times -- not exactly a radio-friendly multiplatinum smash. In fact, in the history of the Grammys, only one pure jazz album -- Stan Getz and Joao Gilberto's 1964 "Getz/Gilberto" -- has won the big prize, one less than the number of comedy albums that has done so. Hancock says "River: The Joni Letters" came about because of a suggestion from Verve executive Dahlia Ambach Caplin, who asked what Hancock was going to do for his next jazz record following 2006's somewhat pop recording, "Possibilities." Knowing about Hancock's friendship with Mitchell, the idea came up of doing an album of Mitchell songs, many of which have jazz underpinnings. Hancock worked with producer LARRY KLEIN, Mitchell's ex-husband, on the record. "I knew he'd have an excellent understanding of Joni and her music," Hancock says. The pianist was also accompanied by a crack band -- saxophonist Wayne Shorter, bassist Dave Holland, guitarist Lionel Loueke and drummer Vinnie Colaiuta -- and, on some cuts, joined by a spectrum of vocalists that included Norah Jones (singing "Court and Spark"), Corinne Bailey Rae ("River"), Leonard Cohen ("The Jungle Line") and Mitchell herself ("Tea Leaf Prophecy"). Hancock says the choice of songs -- some well-known, others well-hidden -- was deliberate. "We didn't want to look for things that were the most popular," he says. "We wanted some obscure songs." Though the famous vocalists' names have created interest in the album, on a number of songs, the instrumental arrangements tell the story. On the much-covered "Both Sides Now," which Judy Collins took to the top 10 in 1968, Hancock and his group create a wintry soundscape highlighted by piano and drum brushes, giving a wisdom to the song's (unheard) lyrics, written when Mitchell was in her mid-20s. "I didn't start out thinking of the lyrics at all," Hancock says. "I started off with the melody ... and ended up with something kind of interesting." But that's not to say he wasn't aware of the words and their tale of changing perspective ("I've looked at love from both sides now/ From give and take and still somehow/ It's love's illusions I recall/I really don't know love at all"). "I know Joni and how her songs come from the lyrics," he says. "Whatever I do has to relate directly to the lyrics." For Hancock, "River: The Joni Letters" is another step in his growth as an artist. He resists stereotyping and says that, even at 67, there's plenty left to learn. "I don't pay attention to pigeonholes," he says. "The more I can expand myself, the more I can find a common ground between myself as a human being and other human beings, the more material there is and the more ideas there are -- the more ways of expression there are available to me."

from http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Music/02/04/herbie.hancock/index.html

Herbie Handcock on CBS Morning Show

Check out this story about Herbie Handcock's Grammy Award wining album "River: The Joni Letters" on The CBS Sunday Morning Show. The album was produced by Worlds End client LARRY KLEIN and engineered and mixed by HELIK HADAR.

TIM PALMER Interviewed For The New H.I.M Album

HIM
Jan 1, 2008 12:00 PM
By Bryan Reesman

COURTING VENUS DOOM

You may not yet be familiar with HIM's music, but you've probably seen their symbol: the Heartagram, a pentagram with its top two corners rounded off. It symbolizes the group's symbiotic marriage of darkness and light, menace and melody in their self-described "love metal" Ñ a combination of infectious hooks, driving rhythms and passionate, crooning vocals that wax poetic about the melancholy side of love. The music is Goth in spirit, metal in attitude and pop in accessibility, without losing its rough edges. The Finnish band has amassed a loyal following on both sides of the Atlantic during the past several years. Having a new song in the soundtrack for the movie Transformers movie certainly hasn't hurt their visibility. HIM albums are like Star Trek movies: The odd numbered ones are good, the even numbered ones are great. The quintet's sixth album, Venus Doom, is their heaviest and darkest work yet, contrasting with the 2005 more radio-friendly Dark Light. It's an album rife with emotional turmoil, which is not surprising given that during the past two years, frontman/songwriter Ville Valo went through a tumultuous long-distance relationship, was victimized in a drugging and mugging incident after a show, and lost a friend to suicide. It was heavy stuff, but luckily he and his bandmates had a familiar friend, producer Tim Palmer, to guide them through the creative catharsis. Palmer previously mixed their 2003 Love Metal album and produced Dark Light, plus two songs on the band's greatest-hits compilation, And Love Said No. "We reached the comfort zone, where everyone is relaxed, faster," reports Palmer, who has also worked with Ozzy Osbourne, Tin Machine, Robert Plant and many others. "Trust is something that has to be earned and does not come automatically, but as we had all worked together in the past, we just got straight into it. [Co-producer] Hilli Hiilesmaa is a great engineer, and he and I work together well as a team, so it all made sense. We got a lot achieved in quite a short time." HIM's brooding Venus Doom Ñ which charges through head-banging numbers like "Passion's Killing Floor" and melodic anthems like "Bleed Well" and closes with the psychedelic ballad "Cyanide Sun" Ñ was recorded at Finnvox in Helsinki, Finland, during February and March 2007 and mixed at Paramount Studios in Hollywood in April. The album follows in the footsteps of its heavier cousin, Love Metal. The group Ñ Valo, guitarist Lily (Linde) Lazer, keyboardist Emerson Burton, bassist Mige Amour and drummer Gas Lipstick Ñ was up to the challenge. They combined crunching, speaker-rumbling guitars with delicate melodies and fast-paced passages with slower breaks, balancing emotional agony with contemplative serenity. One wonders if the harsh Scandinavian winter and the area's history of moody art played any role in the album's contrasts. "I was reading a lot of Scandinavian poetry, but it doesn't directly influence me; maybe the mood a bit," explains Valo, who has the faces of Charles Baudelaire, Charles Bukowski and Finnish poet Timo K. Mukka tattooed on his forearms, and the eyes of Edgar Allen Poe on his back. "We recorded the album in Finland during the winter, so it was cold and dark. It's not necessarily depressing, but I've gotten used it to because I've lived there for some years. There are some heavy riffs that maybe needed some heavy subject matter, as well." Los Angeles transplant Palmer set off for Finland during the winter. He expected cold and darkness and was not disappointed. He went skiing at Mammoth Lakes, Calif., near Yosemite National Park, for two days prior to traveling to acclimatize himself to Finland's freezing conditions. "Personally, I find being dropped into a new city to make an album is an exciting prospect," he says. "It's hard to be away from family, but in return you can totally commit yourself to the music. The time lag was a bit of a problem. I was waking up at 5 a.m., and the band didn't like to start until 3 p.m. At the beginning, that was too much free time, but once music was recorded I used that time to edit and compile on my laptop [with Pro Tools LE] in the hotel. In Helsinki, I worked with Hilli, and this was great as he works a lot at Finnvox and knew the studio well." The producer reports that there were strong vibes in the studio when the group set out to record Venus Doom. "We were all excited about the new material and the band are all great players, so we were just having fun with it," he says. "We decorated the studio, drank a lot of coffee, smashed violins, ate reindeer and even had time to drink a few beers." Smashed violins? "For stress, some people have a drink, some pop a pill, some take Yoga and some get a massage," he quips. "I smash up classical instruments." Whatever works. At Finnvox, the group recorded in a large live room using an SSL AWS 900 console and DAW controller with a sidecar of Neve 1081 preamps. They monitored on Genelec 1031A speakers. When it comes to mics, Palmer says he's no snob. While he is extremely fussy about what he wants to hear, "I couldn't give a damn how I get to it!" he declares. "If it sounds good to me, it's all good." Palmer says that he likes "a lot of the classics," and that the Shure SM57 is probably his all-time favorite microphone. "I use it on guitar amps, snare drums and many times on a lead vocal," he says. "I [once] tracked David Bowie's vocals on an SM58. For overheads and room mics, I generally use Neumann 87s and maybe Neumann valve [tube] U47s for the room mics. For Ville's lead vocal, we used a Neumann valve 67, a really nice one that the studio had. We tried many mics on Ville's vocal while we were tracking the acoustic B-sides, so when we came to do the album vocals we knew which mics we liked." Lipstick pounded on a Tama Starclassic kit, while Amour played a '76 Fender Precision bass through a Mesa Boogie amp and an old Prince combo. He also used a Hamer 12-string bass. In the control room at Finnvox are, from left, engineer Hiili Hiilesmaa, producer Palmer, keyboardist Burton, Valo, drummer Gas Lipstick, bassist Mige Amour and guitarist Linde Lazer. "Linde mainly used his Gibson SG guitar, but as we added overdubs, new parts and textures, we tried a variety of other guitars," Palmer notes. "We often used an old semi-acoustic guitar that Ville owns. It is from the '40s and is called a Levin, and it sounded great through an amp. It has a really special sound. For the low parts, we used a Danelectro baritone guitar. We also used a Telecaster for some solos and an ESP Baritone. Burton had a nice old Wurlitzer, and the Roland V-Synth and Fantom synths. I think he had a Clavia Nord Modular, also." The distortion that's prevalent throughout much of the album came from a combination of amps. Palmer says that some songs "featured the Laney with a little Marshall and vice versa. I had it set so I could adjust the balance as the track began to take shape. Obviously, we could go for a different sound also by choice of guitar. For a lot of the clean parts and the textured overdubs, I often used a plug-in to create a distortion. I like the Ôclassic' [Line 6] Amp Farm plug-in, and I am a big fan of the Sound Tools bundle. It's wonderful to be able to fine-tune your plug-ins right up until the point of printing!" Venus Doom includes some intriguing sounds beyond the regular rock instruments. Some screams from Valo are placed in background spots, while on the title track, a sample of a child screaming on a rollercoaster that Palmer recorded was used behind the main riff. Music box samples are also incorporated, notably on the ambient break of the 10-minute-plus epic "Sleepwalking Past Hope." "I think one sample was taken from an old music box my father found in Germany in the '40s," recollects Palmer. "It has an eerie quality." The other sample was created by Burton and used in the ambient middle section of the title track. One track was not recorded in Finland, but at a famous Los Angeles hotel on the spur of the moment. Valo got some inspiration and picked up his acoustic guitar, and the producer captured him recording the minute-long "Song or Suicide," the shortest track in the band's history. The tune was inspired by a folk song from the '70s: "It's a quote from a folksy singer who died from a heroin overdose, Judee Sill," explains Valo. "She had a relationship that was really bad, and in an interview she just said it was either a song or a suicide, so she wrote a song about it." "At this point, Ville was in a pretty dark place, and we were spending quite a few evenings at the Chateau Marmont just chatting and listening to music," recalls Palmer. "I had my laptop with Pro Tools LE and an Mbox around, so after a few too many drinks we decided to try and record in the bungalow. It was really fun, and it was just an acoustic and vocal. It catches the mood well, and you can hear the cars moving along Sunset Boulevard at the end." The album was mixed at Studio C at Paramount Studios in Hollywood, which Palmer says has been his studio of choice for a while. "I love the huge control room," he says. "I leave the room at the end of the evening without feeling like I have been closed-in all day. They have a very large J Series SSL and as much outboard equipment as you could wish for. The room is very true, so when it sounds good in there you are not in for any surprises later. The staff is very efficient and the room is very private." Venus Doom certainly marks an important step in HIM's evolution. The sonic contrasts are more striking and the songwriting more mature. "Many albums are a reaction to the band's last work," offers Palmer. "Dark Light's more textured and warmer sound, I guess, are a reaction to the more edgy Love Metal. Venus Doom and its Black Sabbath riffs and complex arrangements are a reaction to Dark Light. I prefer Venus Doom because it is a step forward in songwriting and sonics. It is the sound of a band firing on all cylinders, not afraid to bring back the rock."

Billboard Reviews Neil Young's New Album Co-Produced and Engineered by NIKO BOLAS

Chrome Dreams II
NEIL YOUNG
Producer(s): Neil Young, Niko Bolas
Label: Reprise

If Neil Young has been consistently inconsistent throughout his career, he is rarely as all over the map on the same album as he is on "Chrome Dreams II," named akin to a 1976 album that never materialized. The humble, sweet strummer "Beautiful Bluebird" conjures the mid-'70s acoustic classic "Comes a Time"; the steel guitar-soaked "Ever After" recalls the pure country of "Old Ways"; and "Ordinary People" and "No Hidden Path"Ñwhich together clock in at nearly 33 minutesÑoffer an electric swirl of "Greendale," "Broken Arrow" and "After the Gold Rush." It's a hodge-podge that presents Neil the fighter, Neil the philosophizer, Neil the husband, Neil the softie and Neil the hippie. "Ordinary People" is the dividing line: a rambling, piano- and horn-encrusted portrait of America sure to be loved and hated equally. Overall though, is the album better than "Prairie Wind" or "Living With War"? Yes.ÑWes Orshoski

The Sunday Times Reviews New Peter Grant Album Produced by CHRISTOPHER NEIL

4 Stars

Is there room for another Jamie Cullum? Absolutely, and it's to Peter Grant's enormous credit that he already seems on the way to becoming his own man. Okay, as with Cullum, echoes of Harry Connick Jr Ð a gifted musician with a knack for irritating the more puritanical critics Ð are hard to overlook. But there's a gritty quality to his singing and choice of material that grabs your attention. The title number is a convincing stab at the dancefloor, and Grant bares his soul convincingly on the soul ballad Until You Come Back to Me. Barely out of his teens, he has proved he can hold the stage at Ronnie Scott's. This is the next step in what promises to be a fascinating journey.

EMMY ROSSUM Debut "Inside Out" Debuts at #10 on iTunes.

LOS ANGELES, August 3, 2007

Four days into Emmy Rossum's recording career, the actreess best known for her acting roles in Phantom Of The Opera, Mystic River, and The Day After Tomorrow, has her diversity validated with her debut, Inside Out, landing at #10 on I Tunes' top album chart. Inside Out is a three song digital bundle exclusively sold on iTunes released through Geffen Records on July 31. Along with the songs each bundle comes with a free 18 minute documentary about the making of her full length album which is due out this fall. On top of the #10 ranking across all genres Inside Out was #2 on the iTunes Pop Charts, and is in the digital stores' "Best of The Stores" section, where the iTunes staff picks 13 songs into an eclectic mix tape. Despite her being known primary as an actress, music has always played a major role in Emmy Rossum's life. When she was seven years old, she was singing with the Metropolitan Opera, and by the time she was a teenager, she had auditioned, and won, the part of Christine in the film version of Phantom of the Opera, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination. Rossum recorded her new music with producer Stuart Brawley, with whom she co-wrote all of the songs, and it represents a showcase for her remarkable vocal range. "I feel a real emotional connection to these songs," she says. "It's a real expression of my innermost thoughts and feelings, hence the title Inside Out." "Slow Me Down," the first single and included on the iTunes bundle, incorporates more than 150 different vocal parts and harmonies, every one sung by Emmy herself. "It's about finding a respite from all the craziness," says theperformer about the song. "I wanted to create a kind of music that wouldallow me to use my voice as an instrument. I tried to discover the boundary of the human voice.

The World According to JACK ENDINO

The World According To Jack Endino
By Merrick Angle | August 2007

Since starting out ages ago, back in 1985, Jack Endino has managed to record literally hundreds of albums, helping define the grunge sound by working extensively with the likes of Nirvana, Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Screaming Trees, Tad, and heaps more. Legendary productions aside, Endino is also the consummate musician-recordist, having played in acts as diverse as Skin Yard and Kandi Coded, as well as his self-titled solo project (a new album Ñ Permanent Fatal Error Ñ is out now). Perhaps what Endino is best known for is the mammoth guitar sounds he consistently gets from the bands he works with and in. By adhering to a "less is more" ethos Ñ focusing more on capturing inspiring performances and translating the artist's true intent to tape instead of being too heavy-handed with production trickery Ñ Endino as a producer has become synonymous with pure rock. Catching up with Endino at his home in Seattle, we decided to pick his brain about the tried-and-true production techniques he's employed throughout the years to achieve some of the greatest guitar sounds for some of the most important rock albums of recent years. EQ: What is/has been your philosophy on recording, and how has it developed over the years? Jack Endino: When I was starting out, I tried really hard to make my records reach what this idea I thought "professional" sounded like. I went thru all the pitfalls you go through as an up-and-coming engineer Ñ I totally drank the Kool-Aid. Compressing the crap out of everything, click tracks, noise reduction, automation, renting tons of fancy gear, blah, blah, blah. I made some records in three months, some in three weeks, and some in three days. Finally it dawned on me that the "three month records" weren't really the best ones, and that began a long process of unlearning and rethinking. I guess you could call me an anti-perfectionist now. I believe you should make the best record you can, so I don't like lo-fi sloppiness for its own sake, but it comes down to what you really mean by "best." I realized that if records are too slick or too perfect, you just get tired of listening to them sooner. The "soul" lives in the little imperfections. Think of the albums made by the Led Zeppelin, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, James Brown Ñ even Motorhead for that matter; records that are slightly raw but still sound good are the ones we keep listening to decades later. The big Seattle grunge bands knew this instinctively. . . . EQ: The rough edges are what define many great recordings. JE: It's like I have a sterility meter in my head. I want to make rock records that are honest, sound good, and will stand the test of time. My position now is this: There's no compelling reason whatsoever to waste days and days in the studio putting a rock band on a grid with a click track, auto-tuning the vocals, and replacing all the live drums with samples. None of that has anything to do with music. EQ: So what sort of techniques, specifically, did you use in those early days but no longer bother with? JE: I used click tracks for rock bands a few times, and now I just refuse to. I might start the song with a click just to make sure the band is in the right ballpark, but then I take it out of their headphones. My feeling is that recording music to a perfect grid is a huge killer of soul. The natural variations contain the most emotion and expression; remove those and one entire dimension of the music is gone. And that push-pull thing drummers do against click tracks literally makes me cringe. Click tracks have one purpose and one purpose only, and that's to make it easier to use certain production techniques. It's changing the music to fit a production methodology instead of the other way around. But almost anything you once needed a click track for, you can do now without one, with only slightly more work involved. I recommend a little gadget called a Beat Bug [www.luglock.com] for drummers or producers who are worried about tempo. If the drummer's good enough to play convincingly to a click, he probably doesn't need the click. Another thing I avoid like the plague is console automation. Never liked it. It slows me down too much. I'm glad I held out because Pro Tools renders it 100% obsolete. The last record I mixed on an SSL, I never even turned the automation on, just the snapshot thing. Ninety-five percent of the records in my discography were recorded without click tracks or samples, and mixed without automation . . . and for the vast majority I used no compression on the stereo bus either. Mixing without bus compression forces you to work harder on getting your mixes right. EQ: You're known for the guitar sounds you manage to get on the records you produce. How do you recommend guitarists prepare for a session? JE: Change the strings the day before the session, so they have a chance to stretch and settle in. I tell drummers the same thing about drumheads: If you change them at the studio, you're wasting studio time, plus we will have to keep retuning them every five minutes until they stretch. EQ: Your recordings have been described as having the quintessential big rock guitar sound. What are some of your choice techniques for achieving enormous-sounding guitar tracks? JE: Well, less is more. When doubling rhythms, I like one left and one right Ñ that's it. If you start layering too much of the same performance, playing the same part, you get mush. The character of any performance, the humanity, is contained in all the tiny imperfections and timing differences. Too much layering averages all those little imperfections out. Instead of perfection, you end up with a sort of smeared statistical cloud of guitar with no personality or groove. And trying to make the performances "perfect" so they'll line up exactly when tripled or quadrupled is just a waste of studio time. One or two killer performances, recorded well and mixed loud, will always sound way more massive than ten almost identical performances layered together. Look, it may have been 20 years ago at the start of my career, but most of Nirvana's Bleach album has one guitar track, that's it. We had eight tracks and they had no money, but it worked because the performances were good. Classic AC/DC and Van Halen are other good examples. A much better way to get a thick sound is to "Y" the guitar out to two or more amps with completely different distortion characteristics, and use different mics, like a [Shure] Beta 58 on one and a [Sennheiser] 421 on another. For instance, a Fender Bassman with a ProCo RAT pedal, and a Marshall with only its internal distortion, can combine and get a huge sound. You can nudge one of 'em in Pro Tools until they are exactly phase aligned. Pan those and you can get an extremely stereo sound from a single performance . . . or combine them on one side, and then double it, maybe trying a different amp combo. You do have to watch for polarity issues, though, as often one amp's output will be 180¼ out from another, depending on how many tube stages the signal is going through in each amp. Now, if you just use two different speaker cabs with the same amp, the stereo difference is almost not worth bothering with. And using micro-delay tricks to "split" the sound left and right is a total waste of time unless you are doing it on purpose as a gimmick. It never combines to mono very well. EQ: Since you put more stock in the performance than the production technique, do you tend to push guitarists to do hundreds of takes? JE: Screw that! There's a bell curve to performing: It gets better for a while, and then it just gets sterile. I'm extremely sensitive to finding the top of that curve, which just might be the key to my whole career. Absolute perfection is boring. Sometimes I think you should get to the point where there is one tiny imperfection left that no one else can hear, and then stop. But often I lose that argument, we do 15 more takes, and pretty soon I'm ready to kill myself. My advice is: If you sense that the players are getting into a rut, move on to something else and come back to it fresh. EQ: What to you are the defining aspects of a great guitar sound? JE: The player. Amateur guitarists don't know when they are out of tune; they use too many effects Ñ too much reverb or distortion. Sometimes they'll want to put the mic too far away, or think a "room sound" is important when they haven't even gotten a decent close-up sound yet. Worst of all, amateurs may not realize when they have a crappy, shrill guitar tone with too much 2.5kHz (what I call the "pain" frequency). And I'm sorry; amp simulators are nice for not bothering the neighbors, but nothing beats actual air moving. EQ: So how do you deal with an amateur guitarist? JE: That's easy: Get them a great guitar sound and a great mix to play along with, and then start telling them stories about some of the other bad guitarists I've made great records for. Get them to play a few takes, whack together a quick composite track of the best bits, play it back and watch them smile as they realize it just doesn't have to be that hard. And remind them that it's just rock Ñ not rocket science.

From http://www.eqmag.com/story.asp?storycode=19120

Billboard Reviews New Korn Album Co-Produced by ATTICUS ROSS

BILLBOARD REVIEW
Untitled
KORN
Producer(s): ATTICUS ROSS, Korn
Label: Virgin

Korn's eighth studio album may lack a title, but there isn't much else that remains undefined about the band more than 10 years into its career. The act has evolved into a reliable source for efficiently brooding guitar riffs and lyrics heavy with antipathy, although it isn't afraid to still let loose its inner freak and experiment a bit. Check "Bitch We Got a Problem," an elegy to schizophrenia with a booming, fist-pumping chorus. Yet it's the delicate keyboard flourish and electro-buzzed verses that ultimately provide the hook. Here, Korn brings some of the adventurousness of 2002's "Untouchables" to 2005's radio-ready "See You on the Other Side," with angelic background vocals on "Starting Over," a bit of '60s psychedelia on "Kiss" and an epic-like build to a thrashy breakdown on "Ever Be." Indeed, Korn is one step closer to crafting an album built for arenas and headphones alike. ÑTodd Martens from http://www.billboard.com/

Billboard Reviews New Hanson Album Co-Produced by DANNY KORCHMAR

BILLBOARD REVIEW
The Walk
HANSON
Producer(s): DANNY KORTCHMAR, Hanson, Bleu
Label: 3CG

"The Walk" has an iconic American sound in the same way that, say, Michael Bay makes iconic American movies; this is music to play while speeding a convertible down country roads at sunset with a blonde in a sundress standing up in the passenger seat, arms outstretched. Such an approach will, of course, endear Hanson to about as many people as it horrifies, but there's no doubt that 10 years after it sprung "Mmmbop" on an unsuspecting populace waiting for that Prodigy album, Hanson remains as aggressively accessible as ever. "Been There Before" packs a na-na-na chorus, "60" is the group's shot at the "Grey's Anatomy" market looking for something cuter than the Fray, and "Georgia" is all heartland jangle and cheeseburger-and-a-beer production that could fit right into pop, AC or country playlists. ÑJeff Vrabel from http://www.billboard.com/

Los Angeles Times Reviews New Ozzy Osbourne Album Co-Produced by KEVIN CHURKO

Los Angeles Times Album Review
Ozzy Osbourne - "Black Rain" (Epic) Sobriety, injury and family headaches have not blunted the Ozzy edge. Aside from a pair of bloated ballads wherein lifelong basket case Osbourne unconvincingly proffers himself as a pillar of strength, "Black Rain" is largely worth the six-year wait for new originals. True, only two songs kill, and they're the only ones Ozzy and co-producer Kevin Churko wrote without guitarist Zakk Wylde: "God Bless the Almighty Dollar" stomps like a giant robot crashing through riff thickets, an eerie piano interlude and a sarcastic chorus melody; and the album pitches to a heart-pounding conclusion with the muscular effrontery, punching-bag rhythm shifts and ear-biting tunefulness of "Trap Door." But even if the rest lacks the same dynamism, it rocks ruthlessly thanks to Wylde's warhead guitar riffs and squirming-weasel solos, and the atmosphere slogs armpit-deep in sepulchral reverberations, sick-ax textures and nagging Bombay drones. Ozzy's doomy complaint of a voice, suspect in recent years, sounds supple, even gymnastic. The lyrics? Ozzy's been watching TV and fears we're spiraling down the sewer Ñ news it ain't. At 58, though he's felt he was dying for decades, he sings that he's still "not going away." "Black Rain" can't be compared with Ozzy's early-'80s work, falls just below the mark of 1991's "No More Tears," and floats close to the level of his other major statements over the last two decades Ñ all different, all unbalanced, all good. Ñ Greg Burk

from www.calendarlive.com/music/reviews/cl-et-ozzy22,0,4942741.story?coll=cl-albumreviews