SnowGhost Music

Check out a documentary from current about Death Cab for Cutie, featuring footage of the session that I got to engineer in Seattle a few weeks ago:

When Dan Keech and Bob Jones made the mid-tour, out-of-the-way trek from Missoula last fall to see the studio, I was intrigued. They had heard about us through mutual friends, Dan Deacon and Graham Hill (Roman Ruins), and wanted to come take a look for themselves. They came with CDs in hand to play on our control room setup and were not disappointed. After the back and forth comparing of notes on our music production styles, Height and Jones chopping up samples in Reason and using the hip hop standard issue Akai MPC, and me dealing mostly with rock music, we agreed that this project may be a unique meeting of the minds. We both had a mound of respect for each other’s craft, be it recording in the traditional sense, or gathering sample... read more >

I’m a recording junkie. Not a bad one. I don’t lie about being somewhere else, I never soundproofed my bedroom (at least not technically), and I don’t fall asleep with headphones on, though I do have a slight scar on my ear from using my old Grado headphones for hours on end. Not that being a junkie is bad, mind you. I’m just saying that I used to have a habit, and now I don’t really. A few years ago, maybe six, I would write and record a new song once a week. Fully-fleshed out songs. I would usually start with a guitar part and record it. I would then add layers of other guitars, keys, drums, or whatever else I could borrow from someone, always writing each part as I went. Lastly, I came up with some lyrics, found space for ... read more >

I got a phone message from Sean Moeller of Daytrotter: “Looks like we could be working together sooner than we thought”. We had been bumping into each other at festivals like Noise Pop and South By Southwest, and agreed that we were two kindred spirits that should hang out more often. Intrigued by his mysterious voicemail, I called him back and asked what he had in the works.

Death Cab for Cutie was set to release their new record with Atlantic and wanted to do something unique to drum up some hype. Daytrotter, the music media darling of la... read more >

In the previous post, there was talk of the shitty album. Closer inspection of said blog would reveal that ‘shitty’ referred to the overall quality of an album as a musical piece of work. Something that somehow didn’t occur to me at the time, despite the fact that we here at SnowGhost are complete wine snobs of audio quality, was the sonic production value of an album. Obviously, though this wasn’t so obvious to me very recently, the way an album is recorded and how it sounds is crucial to the level at which one can enjoy it. A shitty-sounding album, even if it is full of great songs, is still shitty, right? Or is it a great album that transcends sonic concerns because it is a marvel of songwriting, band cohesion, emotional captu... read more >