Rock

Sounding like MGMT has become a musical genre of its

If you’re ever lost in New York City, Matt

How the electronic pioneer made the best of metal, concrete, voices, and handheld recorders to create the dark theater of his latest album

Sean Lennon and Charlotte Kemp Muhl dig deeper into their psychedelic studio techniques

ON EL CAMINO, DAN AUERBACH AND PATRICK CARNEY TAKE A MINIMALIST RECORDING APPROACH FOR A BLUESY, '60S-STYLE "HI-FI" SOUND

Guitar, Grit and Gut Decisions

Engineer/producer Ryan Freeland (Bonnie Raitt, Ray LaMontagne, Carolina Chocolate Drops) is mixing an upcoming album for the Barr Brothers, an alt-rock band led by Brad and Andrew Barr.

Speak to any member of Scottish post-rock quintet Mogwai, or the band’s producer, Paul Savage, and they will admit that there were periods that were total horror shows while developing the band’s eighth studio album, Rave Tapes (Sub Pop).

MIDNIGHT SUN, the fourth album from Sean Lennon and Charlotte Kemp Muhl, aka The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger (GOASTT), is a psychedelic fun house of MagicalMystery Tour proportions.

It is the opinion of Laurent “Branco” Brancowitz that the best music kind of stinks.

THERE’S AN enduring tale that goes something like this: Seattle-based grunge rockers Alice in Chains

“It’s not a specific kind of sound that we’re creating; it’s something I think we’re still in the process of inventing,” says Zooey Deschanel’s producer, collaborator, and friend M. [Matt] Ward about their musical project, She & Him.

AFTER THE 2008 car accident that sidelined Deftones bassist

Since reinventing himself as a songwriter for hire, former Semisonic singer/guitarist Dan Wilson has been on quite a roll.

When planning his fourth solo album,Sunken Condos, Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen knew he wanted a warm, rich sound,

When Soundgarden disbanded in 1997 after millions of records sold

Now on their fourth album, Shields [Warp], Brooklyn psychedelic folk-rock quartet Grizzly Bear

The danish duo of Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo

The members of Gossip couldn't have predicted that they'd evolve from a lo-fi punk/garage band

Let’s say some arcane branch of alchemy made it possible to distill the surrealism of painters like Salvador Dalí, Frida Kahlo,and Remedios Varo through the acid-rock filter of Blue Cheer, King Crimson, and Can; the resulting brew might give you a decent approximation of what the Mars Volta’s music sounds like.

Nearly four years have passed between theoriginal U.K. release of the Ting Tings’ worldwidebreakthrough debut album We StartedNothing and the appearance of Sounds FromNowheresville, the duo’s wildly eclectic followup.

EQ Interview Extras …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of DeadBy Jack BrittonThe March 2011 issue of EQ magazine profiles …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead’s Tao of the Dead. Here, read interview outtakes

EQ Interview Extras Cage the ElephantBy Tony WareThe March 2011 issue of EQ profiles Cage the Elephant’s Thank You Happy Birthday. Here, read interview outtakes with Cage's Brad Schultz and producer Jay Joyce.Brad Schultz, on guitar interplay on “Always Something”…There

EQ Interview Extra Lucinda Williams The March issue of EQ profiles Lucinda Williams' Blessed, recorded at Capitol Studios with producer Don Was and engineer Eric Liljestrand. Here, read our extended interview with Lucinda Williams.    Lucinda WilliamsEQ Do you like

EQ Interview Extras Charles Bradley and Tommy Brenneck By Bill Murphy: The March 2011 issue of EQ profiles Daptone star Charles Bradley’s debut album, No Time For Dreaming. Here, read interview outtakes with Charles Bradley and producer Tommy Brenneck.  

Read interview outtakes with The Decemberists' Tucker Martine and Colin Meloy.

EQ Interview Extras: Iron and Wine-more wisdom from Iron & Wine (Sam Beam) and producer engineer Brian Deck

Cake Interview Extras: February 2011

“We wanted modern rock to move forward,” producer Rob Cavallo says, regarding his latest My Chemical Romance production.

The January 2011 issue of EQ profiles My Chemical Romance’s Danger Days. Here, bandmates Gerard Way and Ray Toro and producer Rob Cavallo expand on their recording sessions and their collaboration methods.Gerard WayWhat

“My first album [My Aim Is True] was made in 24 hours,” says Elvis Costello. “This Year’s Model was made in 11 days.

“We wanted to create something that’s challenging to us, not fall back on the things we’re used to doing. So we threw the rule book out the window, and when it felt we should go left, then we should probably go right instead.”

About 250 miles north of Las Vegas, U.S. Highway 50, nicknamed “The Loneliest Road in America,” winds its way across the desolate landscape of central Nevada like an ornery old rattlesnake of dust and asphalt.

 EQ.com Interview Extra Linkin Park's Mike Shinoda By Richard Thomas   The December issue of EQ profiles Linkin Park's A Thousand Suns. Here, singer Mike Shinoda elaborates on the writing and mixing process in these interview outtakes.   On choosing

Butch Vig, producer, drummer, and songwriter for Garbage.

EQ Exclusive Web Interview: Daniel Lanois discusses producing Brandon Flowers on His Solo Debut, Flamingo: His songwriting philosophy, black dub technique, and recording live on the floor.

Hailing from Cardiff, Wales, seven piece band Los Campesinos plays a punky, bratty, shouting, sarcastic, and emotionally manic depressive brand of indie rock music. Since forming at Cardiff University in 2006, they've been on the fast track, releasing two full

When San Francisco guitarist and singer Chuck Prophet set out to record ¡Let Freedom Ring! [Yep Roc] last spring, he assumed a change of environment, specifically Mexico City, would inspire him and add some manic energy to the album. He didn’t count on periodic power outages ruining takes at Estudio 19, the oldschool studio he picked to lay down tracks, nor a 6.4 earthquake shaking the building’s foundations. And nobody expects a pandemic.

There are few events more painful than the loss of a parent too soon. Lead vocalist and songwriter. Autry Fulbright, singer/songwriter for the New York band Midnight Masses, knows this all too well. He worked through the grief of his father's death by recording Rapture Ready, I Gazed at the Body [Team Love], Midnight Masses' debut EP, with the help of TV on the Radio's Gerard "Ghosthouse" Smith and producer/engineer David Tolomei (DNA Studios, Trail of Dead). 

Well before Wayne Coyne rhymed Vaseline with tangerines on “She Don’t Use Jelly” in ’93, The Flaming Lips were making music however they felt like doing it. From the weird to the superweird, they did it their way. And now, 26 years into their career, Oklahoma City’s biggest band has a huge fan base happy to follow The Lips into whichever bizarre rabbit hole they choose to throw themselves.

 New Orleans based singer Paul Meany and his band Mutemath have garnered comparisons to Radiohead and Muse, but the choppy rhythms and songwriting on “Backfire” indicate a touch of French band Phoenix. Here, Meany discusses the process of recording the

Nothing beats learning on the job. You make mistakes, learn from them, and make new mistakes. For Danish trio Mew, the process started at square one.

The music of sibling duo Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger has been described as quirky and playful, even annoying. So it’s no surprise that as The Fiery Furnaces, the Friedbergers draw on everyone from Harry Nilsson and Van Morrison to The Who and Karlheinz Stockhausen. On their eighth album, I’m Going Away [Thrill Jockey], the Friedbergers pursued a minimalist recording approach that depended as much on home studios and affordable equipment as engineer/producer/bass player Jason Loewenstein’s pet pig, Emmett.

“If you asked us, ���What chord is that?’ we would never be able to tell you,” says Lee Ranaldo. “When we first got Sonic Youth together, we’d just put our fingers down on the guitar strings, and it sounded cool. We’re not trained musicians, so if Thurston [Moore] comes up with a new tuning, I just tweak around until I find something that sounds good against it, rather than tuning to the same thing as he does. Then, we build weird chord shapes. On one level, we don’t know what the hell we’re doing.”

With their third studio full-length It's Blitz!, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs uncork a heady new brew of sonic delights with producers Nick Launay and Dave Sitek.

Buckingham’s carefree attitude toward the tools of his craft seems diametrically opposed to his painstakingly layered production approach. Despite his sometimes lo-fi applications, Buckingham consistently turns out musical projects of sonic richness and lyrical depth that reflect the clarity of the conceptual mastermind behind the console. With releases such as Fleetwood Mac’s left-of-center Tusk, the Fairlight-laden Tango in the Night, and his own Go Insane, Law and Order, Under the Skin, Out of the Cradle, and the recent Gift of Screws [Reprise], Buckingham has built a reputation as a studio experimentalist. He meticulously details every tune with multiple bluesy, folk-inspired, and slightly distorted guitar tracks that dart in and out of the stereo image; blossoming multi-part vocal sequences; and magical, yet almost unidentifiable sonic particles. Now, if only we could corner him on the specifics of how he does it...