SOUND ON SOUND
Tom Doyle has written for Sound On Sound since 2004 and is also a regular contributor to MOJO.
As an author, he’s written a series of books, including Man On The Run: Paul McCartney In The 1970s (Polygon/Ballantine, 2013). As a musician, he’s one half of White Label, a writing/production duo whose credits include Paul Weller.
Twitter @Tom_Doyle_
You've got four weeks left until your studio closes. How to make best use of that time? The Walkmen's answer was to recreate their favourite album, note for note, in all its drunken and shambolic glory.
When The Beatles' record company tempted their producer out of retirement for one last project, no-one had any idea how radical the resulting album would be.
The likes of Depeche Mode, Cocteau Twins and Nine Inch Nails all owe a sonic debt to engineer/producer John Fryer, who explains his approach to production.
The Go! Team's debut album, a glorious pile-up of mangled samples and lo-fi home recordings, is now attracting widespread acclaim — but its path to Mercury nomination and commercial success has been anything but smooth.
When DJs produce their own albums, the results can be mixed — but Laurent Garnier is not your average DJ, and his 'The Cloud Making Machine' is anything but a conventional house or techno record.
The craze for mashing up wildly different records to create illicit bootleg mixes has moved into the mainstream, and underground producers such as Richard X and Mark Vidler now find their services in hot demand from artists and record labels.
Fed up with being treated badly by spoilt divas, engineer Mark Nevers abandoned the country music establishment to start his own studio, and has made a name for himself on the 'other side' of Nashville.
Arif Mardin has engineered and produced an incredible array of classic records from artists such as Aretha Franklin, Dusty Springfield, Diana Ross, the Bee Gees and Barbra Streisand — yet the runaway success of his recent work with Norah Jones threatens to overshadow even these achievements.