Yep Rock is another current label releasing new LP’s "cut" from analogue tapes.
The label has a world-class artist roster, including Nick Lowe, Alejandro Escovedo, Amy Helm (Levon’s daughter), Dave Alvin, Fountains Of Wayne, Jim Lauderdale (great songwriter and singer, formerly Lucinda Williams’ band leader & harmony singer), John Doe (of X renown, of course), Robyn Hitchcock, The Fleshtones (Garage Rock), The Rubinoos (a fantastic Power Pop band), Tift Merritt, and many more.
Contrary to those just repeat what they’ve heard someone else say, lots of labels and artists/bands are recording in analogue, and mastering engineers such as Bernie Grundman, Kevin Gray, Robert Ludwig, Ryan Smith, and Steve Hoffman are busier than they’ve ever been, cutting lacquers for LP production, using analogue masters tapes as their source. Go ahead, do the research.
Yes, lots of Rap, Dance, "commercial" (fake) Country, Pop, and other popular-with-the-masses music is recorded on hard drives (with lots of electronic manipulation applied), but who here listens to that sh, uh, stuff?
Do you know how hard Ry Cooder works to get his recorded guitar sound? He heard about the new recording format---early digital---and recorded his Bop Til You Drop album in digital---the first non-Classical digital album. He hated it, and went back to analogue. He eventually heard an LP on Water Lily Acoustics Records and flipped! Water Lily owner/recording engineer Kav Alexander was recording with a tube analogue machine, it’s electronics designed and built by tube expert Tim de Paravicini (who also designed and made his fantastic EAR-Yoshino amps and pre-amps, which most of ya’ll continue to ignore. So did Art Dudley, until he heard the EAR 912 pre-amp.), fitted with tubes from another tube expert (Roger Modjeski, whom you also ignored during his lifetime)---RAM tubes. To hear the best recorded sound you’ve ever (or never) heard, listen to Ry’s album on Water Lily, with V.M Bhatt---A Meeting By The River.
By the way: The Ry Cooder albums that MoFi reissued are pure analogue, not amongst the MoFi’s that include a digital step. The originals sound good (I have all in original Reprise Records pressings), the MoFi’s even better. Ignore Tom Port; he can hold only one thought in his mind at a time.
