ISSUE ARCHIVE
NO. 172 | Feb 2026
NO. 171 | Nov 2025
NO. 170 | Sep 2025
NO. 169 | Sep 2025
NO. 168 | Jul 2025
NO. 167 | May 2025
NO. 166 | Mar 2025
NO. 165 | Jan 2025
July/Aug 2017
Real "magic" is not in a vintage console. It is not imbued in the walls of a famous studio. It's not in the floor of an old, rented house. It's not in the crisp air high in the mountains, or in the thick atmosphere near the swamps. It's not in a tube circuit within a steel chassis. It's not in a blank reel of tape or an empty hard drive. It's certainly not in a microphone, sitting alone in an empty room.
It's in collaborations. It's in seeing the beauty in mistakes. It's in being open to all possibilities, yet finding a clear direction. It's in supporting emotional connections. It's in protecting pure beauty, or exaggerating ugliness.
Magic is in the music. It's in you.
— LARRY CRANE,EDITOR & FOUNDER
"What you can control are knobs, faders, and being a nice person." For ten years Richard Swift's been luring the hippest of indie rock bands to Cottage Grove, in the middle of Oregon, to work with him at his National Freedom Studio in his ba...
Mac DeMarco's persona precedes him. He's a bedroom auteur in the great tradition of R. Stevie Moore and Ariel Pink, and he's managed to cut some of the most fan-beloved records of the 2010s. Budgets?...
I've been a fan of Audiotree's video webcast for a couple of years now. It's by far my favorite live-music program available online and, in my opinion, it's the best sounding and best looking one too....
Battle Tapes Recording has been at the epicenter of left-of-Nashville rock and indie music since 2003. Tristen, PUJOL, Forget Cassettes, Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires, HeCTA, Turbo Fruits, and Lambc...
Mojave Audio makes some of the highest quality mics at a great value; I've used several of them since they debuted and am a big fan. Dusty Wakeman has been running the company for years. I wanted to k...