4 Producers You Don’t Even Know You Know (But, Trust Us, You Do)
A lot of records come out of Brooklyn. Some of them are recorded in bedrooms or in garages, but most of them come from the knob-twiddling, mic-adjusting, reverb-layering hands of one of these four producers. You may not recognize them by name (yet), but trust us: you’re familiar with their work. More, just after the jump.
Name: Jonathan Schenke
Where You Know Him From: Parquet Courts, Frankie Rose
Schenke has been in the business for about a decade, but he’s been a fan of music “since he can remember.” As both a partner and engineer at Doctor Wu’s Studio in Brooklyn, he’s had a hand in shaping some of the borough’s most famous sounds — from the punch-up, high tempo fun of the locally-based foursome, Parquet Courts, to the more gothic, electro-glimmer of infamous garage rocker Frankie Rose‘s solo efforts. He’s also worked with Girl Talk. (Um, cool.)
He says he got started recording music while playing in his own bands, cobbling together a sound studio from a laptop, a few mics, and a bunch of borrowed gear, but these days he can sometimes be found cruising around in a fully mobile digital mixing/editing recording suite. It was a set-up initially sprung from budgetary necessities, but it’s proven to work well with his preference for experimentation over tried-and-true recording methods. “I’m a very process oriented engineer, and I truly believe you learn the most through experimentation.” he explained to The Deli Magazine in an interview last year. “I made a decision early on to try something new on every session… whether it’s only 8 tracks on a tape or a mobile setup in a cabin, it will make you think differently about your sounds.”
In case that’s all not enough, he also plays in his own band, Eaters.
Name: Chris Coady
Where You Know Him From: Beach House, Smith Westerns, TV on the Radio
Chris Coady has been the meditative spirit behind some of the most lushly exotic (Beach House), loud (Smith Westerns, Yuck), and downright classic (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) soundscapes of the past decade. Basically, if there’s a record that came out of nowhere to cross the divide between “playing in Dad’s garage” to “selling out Bowery Ballroom five nights in a row,” you’d find his name somewhere in the credits. Originally from Baltimore, Coady got his start recording punk bands, before moving to New York City, where he began working on recording his then-roommate’s new band — a little group called TV on the Radio. It’s been a straight shot to the top from there. Coady has now produced over 50 albums and is frequently name-checked as a producer to watch.
He is also amazing on Twitter.
Name: Jarvis Taveniere
Where You Know Him From: Woods, The Babies
Nestled quietly in a corner of Brooklyn somewhere, Jarvis Taveniere’s Rear House recording studio has steadily churned out a sound that — for a hot minute, just a few years ago — came to wholly identify the city: sometimes psych-folky, often melancholy, and always totally beautiful. (At least one of them even bears the moniker of its place of origin: At Rear House, an early LP from Woods, of which Taveniere has been a longtime member.) In fact, if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll probably have seen “Recorded at Rear House” scrawled on the back of almost every record that came out of a very specific, lo-fi corner of the Brooklyn music scene — one whose tentpoles have included Todd P. shows, breakout bands like Vivian Girls, and then-fledgling labels Woodsist and Captured Tracks.
These days, although the Facebook page is not robust — “Genre: The Ramones, Record Label: don’t matter” — the sounds continue to speak for themselves.
Name: Shane Stoneback
Where You Know Him From: Sleigh Bells, Vampire Weekend
Shane Stoneback will frequently refer to himself as “just lucky,” but after having had a hand in some of the biggest sounding, fastest moving records of the last ten years (see above), we think it’s safe to say that he’s just plain “good.” Having cut his teeth working at Jive Records for major stars like Britney Spears and ‘Nsync, he’s been able to bring his smartly honed pop sensibility to everybody from shimmery noisemakers, like Cults, to straight up punk rockers like F*cked Up. His diverse array of recording accomplishments have also won him the (justified) title of Brooklyn’s go-to producer, a status that his robustly equipped recording spaces have surely helped him maintain.