Someday I will write a book about noise - the noise I contend with in my audio work, the noise of life, the noise I love. I went to see (hear) Swans at Great American Music Hall last weekend and was captivated by noise overtones that resonated from their intense drones. I wore my new custom molded earplugs; I am no fool.

Meanwhile, I will write a little update while I listen to some mixes for today’s mastering project. I’m getting a sense of the music, what it wants to be. Sometimes a song tells me right away where it’s going; sometimes I have to try a lot of paths before I land.

Here’s what I’ve been up to:

A deep deep dive into one of our nation’s greatest songwriters, Woody Guthrie, who recorded these demos to send to his publisher on a Revere T-100 Crescent tape recorder. For decades, these tapes were unplayed and considered unusable because of a great deal of 60 Hz hum and varying levels. Woody was not a recordist. I got to dig in and excavate these intimate gems that showcase his process for Woody At Home, Vols 1 & 2. I also spoke to Mix Magazine about my restoration process.

Once more into the restoration weeds with Sister Irene O’Connor. This record is remarkable - a collection of brilliant and deeply weird synth and drum machine spirituals, equal parts sincere and psychedelic, out on Freedom To Spend.

Kurt Vile is one of the most subtly genius guitarists and songwriters working today, and on his latest EP, Classic Love, he collaborates with Nashville songwriter Luke Roberts.

Blondie’s No Exit was released in 1999, and now they’re reissuing a Deluxe version, remastered by me, with a whole disc of banging bonus tracks and remixes.

Numero Group continues to wear the crown of reissue champions, and their 90s releases have been deeply nostalgic and super fun to work on. What a joy to help usher records by Tacoma Radar, The Album Leaf, American Analog Set, Loveliescrushing, Frail, Her Space Holiday, Tristeza, Duster and more back into the world.

I love my job.

I’m headed to Long Beach in October for the AES Convention, spearheading the archiving & restoration track and contributing to a panel on mentoring. I also convened the absolute A-Team of digitization engineers - Catherine Vericolli, Michael Graves, Dan Johnson and Kabir Hermon - for an AMA-style discussion about audio digitization that is sure to go deep, wide, and leave you spellbound. Hope to see you there!

Yes, it’s been awhile since I rapped at ya. (HT to The Onion’s Jim Anchower). What can I tell ya? This past year, I finished building my mastering studio, packed everything up from my temp space, moved every piece of gear by myself, Prius-load by Prius-load (*okay, except for the tape machine and monitors, can’t carry those), set it all up, tuned it, fine-tuned it, hung some art, digitized hundreds of analog tapes, cassettes, discs, DATs, mastered hundreds of songs, helped write a few grant proposals, served on the Board of Trustees for the Recording Academy, co-chaired the Historical & Archival track for the AES fall convention, learned to home brew kombucha, and adopted a second rescue dog. This is not an exaggeration. 2024 was my busiest and best year yet, and, no humblebrag here, I’m darn proud of it!

The new studio is a dream. It’s bright and airy, well-tuned, cozy, but perfect for me. I love my ATC monitors. I love having windows. I love listening to music here.

A few stupendously fun mastering and restoration projects:

I digitized hundreds of acetate tapes for the Louis & Bebe Barron Archive, in collaboration with Forgotten Futures and the Barron family. This is some of the earliest electronic music ever made! Imagine trying to figure out what speed and direction to play back at when the sound is swoops and bloops and beeps. I have never been more challenged nor had more fun in all my audio preservation days.

I mastered records for longtime clients Pachyman, Kurt Vile, Occurrence, Lollise, Numero Group, Awesome Tapes From Africa, Superior Viaduct, Kate Prascher, Davey Harris, PC Muñoz, and the folks at Women’s Audio Mission. I worked with and fell in love with music by Erika Levy, Ian St. George, Joycult, No Øverdubz (Daru Jones), pleeay, Joana Serrat, Oidopuaa Vladimir Oiun, Fantasticboom, Sarah Small, and so, so many more. I am truly grateful for this musical abundance.

Paying it forward, I said yes to (almost) every professional committee that asked me to contribute. I’m honored to serve as a Trustee for the Recording Academy. I’m already making plans for where I’ll volunteer for The Day That Music Cares (April 25, 2025). I’ll be teaching a mastering class at Women’s Audio Mission this summer. And, once again, I’m joining Brad McCoy (recently retired from the Library of Congress) in curating the archiving and restoration programming for this fall’s AES convention in Long Beach, CA.

I took my tween daughter to the GRAMMYs in February. We both wore black, naturally, and had matching manicures. She was especially thrilled to see all the ladies who were nominated this year - Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan, Doechii, Billie Eilish, Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Raye, Lady Gaga… Honestly, it was really grounding and humbling to view my industry through her young eyes.

Finally, say hello to our newest family member, Lenny, aka Leonard Steve Beans Thompson (per my daughter), adopted this winter from a local rescue. He pesters his dog-bro Rooster, but the two of them have quickly bonded and spend their days lying on our couch, going on leisurely walks, and trying to steal sticky notes from my studio.

Folks, I’ve been busy! Repairing and replacing thousands of splices on 60 year old analog tapes, mastering power pop and gospel and bluegrass and electronic and Ethiopian jazz and singer-songwriter records… and managing construction from the ground up of a purpose-built mastering studio in the back of my house… and managing the scope creep that crept in around all that.

The studio was designed by George Augspurger and is being built by Loren Moore Construction. The rest of our home renovation was designed by Robin Pennell of Jarvis Architects, who truly understood the challenges of adding onto a 100+ year old home and didn’t flinch when I requested special features for the studio, like vaulted ceilings and angled walls. This has been a long time coming, and as I’m writing this, the roofers are pounding shingles onto our new roof. I can’t quite say the end is in sight, but probably by the next time I manage to update my website, I’ll be doing so from my brand new mastering studio. Shoutout to foreman Rooster Thompson (my dog).

Over the past year, I have been working with a cracker jack team on preserving a once-in-a-lifetime collection of recordings. We’ll be presenting about our work at the Audio Engineering Society conference in NYC in October. I’m beside myself and truly honored to be getting my hands dirty with the Louis and Bebe Barron collection, hundreds of acetate tapes dating back to the 1950s of their experimental electronic tape-based recordings. So when I say repairing thousands of splices, I mean I am standing on front of my tape machine, painstakingly repairing thousands of splices, because the Barrons spliced with abandon, and that splicing tape has lost all adhesive and poofs into the air when I hit play. It’s a labor of love love love.

Some records I’ve mastered:

This totally sweet cover of a Charli XCX song by Kurt Vile and this cover of a Bob Dylan Christmas song, both featuring Kurt’s daughters.

Switched-On Pachyman, recorded and mixed by the wildly talented Pachy himself. Please check out his videos and catch him on tour!

Hailu Mergia Pioneer Works Swing (Live) - the seventh (!!) album I’ve worked on with this brilliant Ethiopian keyboardist, this one mixed by Ted Young.

Queer darkwave A.S. Valentino’s Dancing With Dysphoria which had me dancing in the studio and cheering every time he sent me a new song.

Hickory’s Batten Down The Hatches, which blew me away with its dreamy textures and melodies, this one written and performed by Gabriel Stern and Peter Mark Kendall and mixed and produced by Daniel Kluger.

Ch’Lu’s The Goddess Within, composed, performed, recorded, mixed and produced by Ch'Lu in her home studio, fusing binaural field-recordings, hypnotic guitar playing and her incredible voice.

Lis Addison’s Songs From The Mara, a gorgeous suite featuring her field recordings of birds, frogs, lions, and water from the Masaai Mara.

A pair of knock-out power pop gems from Reminder Records, painstakingly, meticulously, laboriously, lovingly restored from original tapes by me: Peach & Lee (the lovechild of the Beatles and Badfinger) and Wowii (who I desperately wish I could time travel to see live back in 1977).

Dru Cutlers’s Will To Mend, oh that baritone voice melding with those soundscapes!

Pot Valiant’s Never Return, mastered from original tapes and out on Numero Group, for all you Gilmangaze loving East Bay punk folks.

Amy Irving’s (yes, that Academy Award-winning Amy Irving from Carrie and more!) first album, Born In A Trunk, mixed by Joe Durniak.

And there’s so much more, but I have to get back to work!