Happy 100th Birthday, Les!
Today, Les Paul (born Lester William Polsfuss in 1915) would have turned 100 years old — but that’s certainly not to say that he didn’t leave a momentous legacy behind after his 94 years. Guitarists (and many non-guitarists) surely are familiar with his namesake guitar, first produced by Gibson in 1952. From those early “Goldtop” […]
Catalinbread Belle Epoch
Our hero faces his darkest moment yet. Haunting echoes bounce through the empty spaces in his mind. Time slips away with every passing moment, pulling him further and further into the void. A second wasted is gone forever…or so it seems. The power to hold onto these moments rests in his hands. A mysterious box […]
City of Ships – Ultraluminal
Ultraluminal is the new LP from Austin, TX / Brooklyn, NY based post-rock outfit City of Ships. I was lucky enough to jump on a portion of their 2012 summer tour and I thought they were on-point back then, but they’ve done nothing but grow in the past three years. In the album’s first single, “Alarm,” […]
Roots Music: The Berlin School of Electronic Music – Part 1
How Analog Sequencers Work By now, you’ve most likely heard how Moog has reintroduced some of their original analog synthesizers. What makes something like a System 55 so desirable? It has something digital synthesizers can be hard-pressed to match: user control. From the way you modify the frequency of an oscillator to the way you turn a […]
New Gear Report: Epiphone Tony Iommi SG Custom & Numark MixTrack3
Epiphone Tony Iommi SG Custom This isn’t the first signature model for Tony Iommi, the founding guitarist of doom metal pioneers Black Sabbath, but it may be the the most appealing. Iommi’s past signature SGs include a limited-run Gibson Custom Shop model, and a signature version of the Epiphone G-400. But where those models fell on opposite […]
How to Upgrade SampleTank 2.x to SampleTank 3
SampleTank 3, the long-awaited update to IK Multimedia’s well-established sample-based software instrument, was released in fall 2014 with much fanfare. IK’s version 3.5 update — free for ST3 owners — arrived in spring 2015, enticing even more new users with 11 new sound libraries plus reliability improvements. It’s easy to see why SampleTank 3 is […]
Lower Dens – Escape From Evil
On the surface, Lower Dens’ newest album, Escape From Evil, is the most pop album the group has put out to date. It rides the growing wave of modern bands adding subtle synth hooks over nostalgic, drawn-out lyrics of unrequited love, which makes sense when you consider the lead singer Jana Hunter wrote half the album […]
Episode 26 – Jack McCoy
Chris talks to longtime surf filmmaker, Jack McCoy, about all things surfing, stoke and aloha!
