For many listeners, the best album sounds like a live performance, which sits perfectly well with Jacob Tippey of
Ramshackle Recordings.
Tippey believes a song sounds best when recorded with limited interference—spared from a gang of overdubbed and mutated parts that can bury its soul. His work hearkens back to recording's early days, when one-take tracks were necessities because of limited technology and materials.
“I believe in using the resources you have,” says Tippey, who views himself as a documentarian.
He works to ensure clients record in the best possible setting for their sound. That could mean adjusting sound-absorbent panels to soak up or reflect the music in the walls of the
Curtis, Inc., audio studio, or taking the client to the altar room of an 1800s church, the space he also calls home, to allow for a blooming natural reverb.
So far, Ramshackle Recordings has put down tracks with
SHADOWRAPTR,
The Happy Maladies and
Till Plains.
By foregoing the luxury of heavily altered and modified tracks, Tippey simplifies the recording process.
By Sean Peters
Enjoy this story?
Sign up for free solutions-based reporting in your inbox each week.