Event Alert: Tibet House US to Hold 22nd Annual Benefit Concert at Carnegie Hall, February 13th, 2012

Tibet House US announced recently that it will hold its 22nd Annual Benefit Concert at Carnegie Hall on Monday, February 13th, 2012.

Philip Glass, the concert’s Artistic Director, has curated a lineup that includes James Blake, Dechen Shak-Dagsay, Laurie Anderson, and Rahzel. Additional performers will be announced in the coming weeks.

Tickets are on sale now and available through the Carnegie Hall Box Office. Special packages that include tickets to the concert and a fundraising reception following the performance with the event’s Honorary Chairpersons and artists are available through Tibet House US.

For twenty one years, the consistently sold-out Tibet House US concert has assembled music’s greatest talents, offering a vibrant mix of new musical collaborations and solo offerings.  Past benefit concerts have included Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Paul Simon, Sheryl Crow, Moby, Sigur Ros, Bright Eyes, R.E.M., The National, Natalie Merchant, Regina Spektor, Rufus Wainwright, Vampire Weekend, Emmylou Harris, Ray Davies, Damien Rice, The Roots, Patti Smith, among many others.

The Tibet House US Benefit Concert commemorates the Monlam Prayer Festival traditionally held at the time of the Tibetan New Year. The festival drew vast numbers of monks, citizens and pilgrims from all over the country who gathered to pray for world peace and prosperity.

Tibet House US is a non-profit organization founded in 1987 at the behest of His Holiness the Dalai Lama that serves as a center for the preservation and presentation of the endangered Tibetan culture.

Studio Sweet Spot: EastSide Sound

Facility Name: EastSide Sound

Website: www.eastsidesound.com

Location: Lower East Side of New York, since 1972!

Neighborhood Advantages: The LES is the heart of live music; there are musicians everywhere, rehearsal spaces, venues etc so musicians are very familiar with the area and feel right at home… no uptown traffic hell and office scene…plus EastSide Sound is in on the ground floor and right in front of a park so you can avoid elevator gear load ins and you can go take a break surrounded by greenery, shoot some hoops, throw a football or kick a soccer ball in the nearby courts.

Date of Birth: We’ve been in business since 1972 when Lou Holtzman opened the original EastSide Sound on Allen St. In 2001 Lou Holtzman partnered up with Fran Cathcart and we moved to Forsyth St, just a few blocks away.

Facility Focus: We are primarily a tracking and mixing facility although we occasionally do mastering sessions and we do have a production suite often used as a writing room. We are also set up for audio post and to sync audio to video for film/TV work.

Mission Statement: EastSide Sound believes that your music and your vision come first and we are committed to working hard until you are satisfied with the results. Many Gold, Platinum and Grammy award winning records have come out of EastSide Sound which shows how many artists have made EastSide Sound their home.

Clients/Credits: Gold and Platinum records, 5 Grammy Awards; clients include Les Paul, Lou Reed, John Zorn, Santana, Sting, Joss Stone, Eric Clapton, Pat Metheny, Jeff Beck, Laurie Anderson, Luther Vandross, Sevendust, Mariah Carey, Cindy Lauper, John Leguizamo, ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, Buddy Guy, Keith Richards, Joe Perry, Goo Goo Dolls, Edgar Winter, Chico Freeman, Peter Frampton, Beyonce, Herbie Hancock, Toni Braxton, Hanson, MeShell Ndegeocello, Joe Claussel, Steve Torre, Robin Eubanks, Isaac Mizrahi, Randy Brecker, Frank London, Violent Femmes, Twisted Sister, Gravity Kills, System of a Down, Leela James, Lila Downs, Estelle, MTV, VH1, HBO, BBC, Comedy Central, Target, Grupo Latin Vibe and many, many more.

Key Personnel: Lou Holtzman (owner/engineer/the oracle), Grammy-winning Fran Cathcart (owner/producer/engineer), Grammy-winning Marc Urselli (producer/chief engineer/studio manager), Eric Elterman (producer/engineer/multi-instrumentalist)

System Highlights: EastSide Sound is the perfect hybrid between analog and digital. We believe in and offer the best of both worlds. We have a fantastic Harrison Series Ten B board, a warm and punchy sounding 96 channel true analog board with total digital recall and full automation (no converters, the sound stays analog but you can automate anything and everything: faders, EQs, sends, inserts etc). The Harrison is complemented by a 64 output Pro Tools HD system and by a vast amount of analog outboard gear (LA2, LA3, LA4, 1176, Altec’s etc) and pre-amps (API, Neve, Trident, Ampex, Universal Audio, TF Pro, Summit, Altec’s etc).

We have analog reverbs (Lexington 480′s, 300, MasterRoom II, Demeter, PCM60) and of course have loads of plug-ins for any need and any sound. Our mic collection spans from the early ’50es to today’s best microphones (Neumann, Coles, RCA, Sennheiser, Telefunken, Microtech Gefell, Shure, AKG, Rode, Oktava, JZ Microphones, Electro Voice, etc).

We also have a beautiful 1977 Steinway B grand piano, a Fender Rhodes electric piano, vintage Rogers drums, bass and guitar amps, guitars and basses available for anyone to use.

Distinguishing Characteristics: The single most distinguishing characteristics of EastSide Sound is the fact that we are the only studio in NYC and, to our knowledge, the only or one of very few studios in the world that has 6 isolation booths in addition to a good sized live room which means we can have up to 7 musicians (or just their amps) completely isolated, with good line of sight and headphone mixers in every booth. If the musicians want to all play live in the same room that is also possible. The studio is cozy and welcoming, with comfortable chairs, a lounge, a fridge and freshly brewed free coffee all day!

The building is on fire, you only have time to grab ONE thing to save, what is it?

Is this a trick question? Of course I will risk my life throwing water, milk, coffee and juices at the fire to save everything! …but if in the fire I were to spot a wild dragon running at me I guess I’ll grab the hard drives with all the sessions and get the hell out!

Rave Reviews: When people keep coming back, record after record, it must mean something, right? John Zorn has made hundreds of records and the last 30 or so were done at EastSide Sound. He also said that his records have never sounded so good, and others have said the same thing.

Everyone that comes by EastSide Sound always comments on what a cozy and relaxed vibe there is and everyone that records at EastSide comes back for more. They love the ability to choose between recording in the same space or being isolated in different booths so that they can later edit all the tracks without leakage. They love the ability to have total recall to instantly continue working on something unfinished a month later, with no downtime. They also love our professional, award-winning, cool and down to earth staff. And last but not least they LOVE the sound we get!

Most Memorable Session Ever: Too many… but one I recall is when Les Paul was over for some tracking and we were about to order in some pizza and he said something like “1947, Corona NY, First Pizza: I was there!”

Session You’d Like to Forget: The no-shows, the guys that think they own the world and arrive 4 hours late, the singers who can’t sing for the life of them but think that Autotune and capable audio engineers are an excuse for them to attempt a career in music anyway!

Dream Session (if you could host ANY session with any client, living or dead, what would it be?): Some of my personal favorite sessions are the ones with John Zorn, an incredible composer, genius and fantastic personality. Every session is always populated with incredible musicians.

Living or Dead? Would love to have worked with Hendrix, The Beatles and a… how about a Led Zeppelin reunion? But I guess we can’t complain considering many of the other giants have worked here (Les Paul, Eric Clapton, Sting, Lou Reed and many others). – Marc Urselli

Visit www.eastsidesound.com for more information and to get in touch!

NYC Studio Tour: North Brooklyn – Part 1

BROOKLYN, NYC: Brooklyn correspondent Justin Colletti visited with 30-some studio owners for our new neighborhood studio tour series. This first installment takes a closer look at a handful of North Brooklyn’s small to medium-size studios that are affordably-priced for indie artists, friendly to freelance engineers and operate without a traditional console.

Rough Magic
Greenpoint, Brooklyn
www.roughmagicstudios.com

Room Rate: $400/day (House engineer available)

The Pencil Factory is an epicenter of Greenpoint’s creative culture, and the home of the rehearsal and recording studio, Rough Magic.

This multipurpose facility set up shop alongside a cadre of mastering studios, record labels and artist’s workshops in 2003, and has gone on to play host to a diverse clientele featuring names like Soulive, Talib Kweli, MGMT, The Fiery Furnaces, and Beirut.

In addition to its regular practice spaces, a room-rate as low as $400/day secures a Pro Tools HD-equipped studio capable of capturing 16-tracks of live audio as well as a full suite of instruments and front-end gear from API, Focusrite, Amek/Neve, Neumann and AKG.

–

The Gallery Recording Studio
East Williamsburg Industrial Park, Brooklyn
www.thegalleryrecordingstudio.com

Rates: 
$40 per hour, $350 for 10 hours (including engineer)

In the fall of 2006, Brian Forbes and Keith Parker began building a suite of handsome, wood-floored live rooms in East Williamsburg’s industrial park. Parker tells us that their new home-base, Gallery Recording aims to create a “warm and relaxed atmosphere that offers amongst the best bang-for-your-buck in NYC.”

To complement its ample live rooms, the Gallery’s DAW-based control room runs an 18-channel Pro Tools system and houses a respectable cache of rack gear, microphones and instruments that might best be described as “contemporary classics.”

These two attentive producer/engineers have built up a promising demo reel that includes sound samples from indie and major label artists As Tall As Lions, Rae 6 and Emily King.

–

Grand Street Recording
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
www.grandstreetrecording.com

Contact for rates.

Grand Street Recording’s Ken Rich has had a long and varied career as producer, engineer, and bass player, working with artists like Joseph Arthur, Julia Darling, The Madison Square Gardeners, Ward White, The Compulsions, Morley, Lucinda Black, Tracy Bonham, and Laurie Anderson. Just as impressive is his studio’s wide variety of vintage instruments, amps and mics.

“We’re certainly affordable to most independent artists”, says Rich, “and the studio is very freelance engineer-friendly since the routing and patchbay are so thoughtfully set up. GSR is also a great mix room. We have a boutique collection of compressors and limiters, two classic spring reverbs, as well as Lexicon and Bricasti multi-effects, and the room itself provides a great and also accurate listening environment.”

More than housing a sizable collection of some of the industry’s most coveted microphones, preamps, and compressors, Grand Street Recording is a playground for musicians, and home to a startling assortment of vintage drums and boutique basses. Rich continues:

“Our mic collection is extensive and we feel that capturing acoustic instruments is one of the things we do best. We seldom record with EQ, but rather select the correct microphone and placement for the instrument. The studio is very musician-centric as we have a huge assortment of vintage instruments that are at the disposal of all of our clients. People often get very inspired when the come in to the studio to try different instrument and amp combinations in order to create new sounds, and it is our job to capture those moments.”

“There are also really good sight-lines between the rooms so that even if people want each instrument isolated, they still feel that everyone is in the same room. The staff at GSR is friendly, knowledgeable, quick, and musical. Usually we can have a band tracking within an hour or so of the time that they walk into the doors, so we can get a lot of recording done in a day.”

–

The Brewery Recording
East Williamsburg, Brooklyn
www.thebreweryrecordingstudio.com

Rates: 
Studio with Engineer: $70/hr (discounted blocks: $260/4hrs, $500/8hrs, $700/12hrs); 
Studio with Assistant Engineer:  $50/hr (discounted blocks: $180/4hrs, $330/8hrs, $450/12hrs)

The Brewery isn’t the first studio venture for Andrew Krivonos and Oladipo “Dot Da Genius” Omishore. These young producer/engineers outgrew their project studios quickly, with Krivonos   sharpening his skills in his private mix room, Southfall studios, and Dot making a name for himself in his home studio by collaborating with Kid Cudi on the breakthrough single “Day N’ Nite.”

Now in a new suite on the East Williamsburg/Bushwick border, everything about The Brewery’s design shows the mark of a 21st century studio. A Control 24 digital board and front-end racks from API, Avalon, Neve, Presonus and Vintech sit in the center of the room, ready to integrate with a Pro Tools HD system or Ampex MM1200 2” 16-track tape machine.

“We strive to set the future model for recording studios in New York,” Krivonos says. ”We understand the limited recording budgets of most and want to provide big-commercial studio service at a realistic price.”

To that end, The Brewery have supplemented their already competitive rates with creative pricing packages like the “Early Bird Special” and a unique “$949 Rock Block,” that promises a whole lot of tracking at a pre-set price.

Fortunately, Krivonos knows running a studio is more than a simple equation: “The most important factor of our studio is our staff engineers. People will come back to you no matter how shitty your studio is if you can give a great product. The product — our mixes — are what keeps our clients coming back, more than anything else.”

When asked if about their emerging specialties, Krivonos says: “We do a lot of pop, rock, R&B, and hip-hop. Producers love our space for the monitoring and freelance engineers love it because of the functionality and affordability.”

Justin Colletti is a Brooklyn-based audio engineer and music producer who’s worked with Hotels, DeLeon, Soundpool, Team Genius and Monocle, as well as clients such as Nintendo, JDub, Blue Note Records, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Visit him at www.justincolletti.com.

On The Record: Laurie Anderson, Mario J. McNulty On The Making Of “Homeland”

SOHO, MANHATTAN: Iconic NYC artist and sonic adventurer Laurie Anderson released her amazing new album, Homeland, earlier this week. Years in the making, Homeland emerged after a challenging and at-times vexing process in the studio, and very nearly never emerged at all.

“It’s this very, very weird hybrid,” says Anderson, struggling to pinpoint what ultimately makes up Homeland. “I’ve never worked on something this odd before: it was sort of a bunch of filters, a bunch of live [recordings] and a bunch of studio ideas. I’m not even sure what to call it because it’s such a bizarre collection of things.”

It started with sonic scaffolding. Anderson is credited as an engineer on Homeland, and would have to be for the way the songs are composed: they are, in effect, engineered.

“I start with many different rhythmic riffs — even though Homeland doesn’t sound particularly rhythm-driven, it really is,” she describes, when asked of her sonic palette. “By that I mean most of the songs are built on these scaffolds that get removed, and they are mostly violin filters that I’ve been building myself with a software designer named Konrad Kaczmarek. They were based originally on Eventide filters but we went further afield in building our own.”

These became the building blocks for Homeland — movements both ominous and euphoric built up underneath and around an epic narrative. And Anderson toured the work, developing it on the road, recording performances of her constantly evolving Homeland live show all over the world for three years. “That’s various versions of the show, in various tempos, in various keys,” she points out.

Along the way, she recorded with a variety of collaborators, including Tuvan throat singers and igil players of Chirgilchin, and captured improvisational sessions with NYC experimental jazz and rock musicians including Rob Burger (keyboards), Omar Hakim (drums), Kieran Hebden of Four Tet (keyboards), John Zorn (saxophone) and Antony Hegarty (vocals).

“I wanted to make a record that would really relate to the live shows,” Anderson shares. “My live rig incorporates so many tools now — soft synths, homemade pedals, vocal processing, different vocoders, the homemade software we call ‘Tide’ in homage to Eventide” — to where I can do almost anything in the live show. It’s really, really exciting and I wanted to get that feeling into the record.

“So it’s like I ‘wrote the record on the road,’ and then came back to the studio and tried to ‘record’ it, but all of those terms were sort of meaningless by that point. I thought, OK now I’ll take some of these live files and paste them together into these songs in the studio and get that live feel. And, that was beyond hard! We took some of those rhythmic elements, printed them and then tried to make a studio version and the air went out of the whole thing.

“And, I thought, No!! I really didn’t want to do something that pristinely goes from my box to your box. I [found myself] sitting there working with all these clean files thinking now what? I’m going to put fake air around them? No! That kind of air to me feels like air-conditioned air — stale air from a hotel in Tokyo that’s never been aired out. I wanted to use air that had been pumped through real places; waves that had been somewhere.

“At that point, the record budget was pretty much over and it was just me sitting with like 100,000 sound files. Here I’d been thinking I’m going to make this spontaneous live thing, and now I was digging through and labeling all these files. I truly would never recommend this to anyone. (laughs) Do not try this at home!”

HOMELAND EXCAVATION: DIGGING, COMPILING, MORE RECORDING

It’s somewhat unsurprising, for an artist who’s always so embraced technology, that the infinite possibilities of today’s methods of music production might tip the scales into the overwhelming. “I got super-depressed looking at all those files and I actually stopped working on it many times,” Anderson admits. “At that point, I was only working on it as a hobby, a couple days a month. I thought I would never finish it. And it was because of Lou [Reed] that I finished it and because of Mario [McNulty] too. Mario really hung in there, and he said it is possible to do this. He was really willing to dig into those bins, and he was really patient.”

A NYC-based engineer/producer, Mario J. McNulty had worked with Anderson before. He mixed sound for a short film she directed in ‘05. “The first time I ever spoke to Laurie, we had a really nice chat about mixing,” McNulty recalls.

“And it was so great because it was abstract and artistic — the ultimate way I like to approach things, in a totally non-conformist sense. It wasn’t ‘this is a rock mix’ where the kick drum does this, etc. It’s not of the mainstream world at all, it’s of this world that I really admire, of Laurie and Eno and Gabriel and Bowie and Talk Talk and all of these records that I’m really passionate about.”

“That’s maybe the only talk we’ve ever had about mixing, and we’ve worked on and off ever since,” he continues. “So, on Homeland, we never had to talk specifically about what the album should sound like, because I already have a good sense of what she wants: she wants beauty. And, her vocal needs to be in the right place and really only she knows where that is. I mixed the record, but she’s very, very involved in the process.”

McNulty went into Anderson’s studio in SoHo and began the process of compiling Homeland, with the expectation of beginning to mix it. “There had been a lot of different people working on it, so the material was all over the place, literally,” he describes. “On different hard drives, in different studios. Neither of us realized how spread out the project was. I consolidated it all into one location, so something could be played back that made sense to her. And by that point, she was realizing she had more work to do. It just wasn’t moving her the right way.”

Anderson put mixing on hold to do some more recording, editing, and arranging at her studio, which has been her workspace since the 80s. “She has a lot of equipment, but the main recording system there is a Pro Tools HD2 rig,” McNulty describes. “And she has a series of laptops with soft synths, vintage and modern keyboards and racks of time-based effects like her Eventide Harmonizers, which she uses in the recording process as well as in mixing.”

“Pretty much any time we would need an effect, we’d go to the Harmonizer,” says McNulty. “She’s one of the pioneers of the Harmonizer so she’s very familiar with it and even the software emulations of the Harmonizer, so we would get into all kinds of sounds with them. She’ll record violin through this really awesome stereo delay patch that she made — and she also has patches that Brian Eno made for her stored in her Harmonizer.”

As she has throughout her career, Anderson used filters to essentially create new instruments, new voices. Homeland’s “Another Day in America” uses one of her classic vocal filters to voice her male alter-ego, “Fenway Bergamot,” the darkly comic storyteller, the omniscient narrator of the Homeland live show.

“Mario’s the reason I added Fenway Bergamot to the record — we just put up a mic and improvised for awhile to see what would happen,” Anderson recalls. “And that became ‘Another Day in America.’ I’m very glad I included that because my music is about words and their rhythm, so to have that very stripped-down [piece] in the middle is kind of what I was going for as well.”

THE MIX OVERLAY: UPGRADING THE SIGNAL PATH

By the end of the summer of ’09, Anderson had finally finished recording and decided she wanted to mix the record in her own studio. “I proposed that we rent some equipment, basically do an upgrade to the studio,” says McNulty. “So I called Jim Flynn Rentals and explained how I wanted to mix analog but that I wanted to avoid all the old analog gear that I wasn’t liking in her space, like her Mackie consoles which she mainly uses for monitoring.

“We did what Jim called a “mix overlay,” McNulty relays.  “We upgraded to an HD3 system and added a Dangerous 2-BUS for analog summing, and a series of compressors — Urei, LA2As, 1176s. We also had some gear from Lou Reed. He brought over his LA2A, which is the best LA2A I’ve ever heard, and some Avalon compressors and EQs. We were able to basically bypass her patch bay and patch all of our analog compressors and EQs by hand. So it was a totally custom setup.”

McNulty also rented an A-Designs Hammer. “I used one side of this stereo EQ on Laurie’s voice, and it’s just a fantastic sound,” he adds.

They also rented an arsenal of plug-ins. “Laurie had a good collection of plug-ins but I also needed some other tools that I find really useful when mixing, like the McDSP Emerald bundle, the Crane Song tape saturation plug-ins and the Sound Toys bundle — TimeBlender, PitchBlender, and Echoboy is my favorite. They’re really useful and really fast — sometimes you need to just pull things up quickly, especially in a mix scenario. I also used the Waves SSL plug-ins and EQs, which Laurie owns, and the Sonnox EQs. For effects, I’ll use ReVibe, Waves and the Eventide Harmonizer plug-ins as well.

“We also used her hardware Harmonizers on the mix — she has special reverbs, cave reverbs, all kinds of de-tuned stuff that won’t be found in any other H3000 because they are patches that were designed either by Laurie or by Brian Eno. So that was a real treat!”

HOME-STRETCH: LOU REED, HI-FI- MONITORING, KILLER BASS!

Though Homeland had involved many people’s contributions along the way, including Roma Baran who’s credited with Reed as a producer, by the end, it was Anderson, Lou Reed and McNulty finishing the project in the mixing stage.

“That was, in a way, the hardest stage,” says Anderson. “In the beginning of a project, it’s all experimentation and great and at the end, you realize ‘oh, but we do have to eventually make something and present it to someone.’ Lou said he was going to come in and sit here in the studio with me until I was done. And I thought, ‘oh, that’s a bad idea for a couple!” (laughs) but I would truly, literally be working on it today, without that.’

“Lou is a great producer,” Anderson continues. “I’d play something and he’d say that’s done, let’s move on. And I’d say ‘No, no! It needs horns, background vocals, etc…I can’t leave that vocal on there.’ Lou is a really fascinating blend of perfectionist and purist and somebody who’s just really loose. He’d say, ‘Leave that raggy stuff in! Why would you take that out?’ And ‘This doesn’t need 17 more parts. Air can be part of it. Air can be rhythmic.’

“Every writer I know is indebted to their editor if they have a good one and same with a musician to their producer. And Mario in a lot of ways worked as a kind of producer. He wasn’t just the engineer — he would definitely express himself in a way that was so well-timed, he understood the process so well that he was never intruding but he had this way of putting his opinion in.’

They monitored Homeland on a few systems. “Laurie has her ProAc speakers that she’s used to listening on in the control room and then I added NS10s, which Lou and I would listen on,” says McNulty. “We also wanted a really hi-fi monitoring setup we could listen on, so Lou brought these huge ATC monitors over from his studio. We set them up in the live room — on foam on the floor — and there was a couch and blankets, and people would sit in there and listen on these huge 3-way monitors, which have this incredible frequency response.

“That was great — to be in the control room with the nearfield monitors and then be able to clear our minds, take two minutes and go in the other room and crank it on the big guys — see where the bass is sitting, see where the vocal is sitting.”

What was Anderson listening for? “We conceived it with a very wide sonic range,” she describes. “And I wanted scary bass. I wanted the bass to jump out and kill you! I’m so sick of hearing MP3s coming through people’s laptop speakers and you hear this tinny thing…and you think, ‘That’s the song?’ Why did I spend more than two minutes on the song if it was going to sound like that? So, I wanted to make something where if you wanted to crank it up on a huge system, you’d hear tons of colorful details and all these little things.”

Nonesuch Records released Homeland on June 22. Buy it HERE! The album is available as audio-only and as a CD+MP3+DVD (which includes the 40-minute documentary “Homeland: The Story of the Lark.” Anderson will perform “Another Day in America: Songs from Homeland & other stories” at Le Poisson Rouge, July 13. Tickets here!

Mario J. McNulty is represented by Joe D’Ambrosio Management.

Remix Laurie Anderson’s “Only an Expert” Via Indaba Music

Laurie Anderson, Nonesuch Records and Indaba Music have created an opportunity for collaborators to remix Anderson’s song “Only an Expert” from her upcoming album Homeland.

The remix will be featured on iTunes Edition of her new album, set for release on June 22.

Anderson developed many of Homeland’s songs while on the road, constantly re-working them and creating or improvising new and different versions. Instead of hiring a producer to remix the song, a remix from Indaba Music’s community seemed fitting of Anderson’s innovative album process.

Through May 13, Indaba has provided a special link for those who wish to craft and remix their own version of “Only an Expert.”

The remix submissions will be reviewed by a jury of experts, including Anderson and Lou Reed, from May 13 to May 27. Afterwards, Indaba will announce the jury’s choices of Grand Prize Winner, two Runners-Up, and the public’s choice of ten Honorable Mentions.

Those chosen will receive prizes:

(1) Grand Prize: $1,000 / Remix will be included on iTunes edition of Homeland / One year free Platinum membership to Indaba Music

(2) Runners-Up: One year free Platinum membership to Indaba Music

(10) Honorable Mentions:
One year free Pro memberships to Indaba Music / Remix streamed on Anderson’s official site / Signed deluxe package: 12-inch “Only an Expert” single and Homeland CD

Homeland is Anderson’s first studio album in ten years. She produced the album with Lou Reed and Roma Baran, working alongside engineers Mario McNulty, Pat Dillett and Marc Urselli.

Homeland features Anderson on vocals, playing the keyboard and percussion, as well as performing newly fashioned violin sounds. Her vocals can be heard through one of her many musical device inventions; this one is called “audio drag” where she reveals her male alter ego, Fenway Bergamot. He appears on the album’s cover and narrates the song “Another Day in America.”

The album also includes Tuvan throat singers and igil players of Chirgilchin; New York experimental jazz and rock players including Rob Burger (keys), Omar Hakim (drums), Kieran Hebden of Four Tet (keys), Shahzad Ismaily (percussion) Eyvind Kang (viola), Peter Scherer (keyboards), Skúli Sverrisson (bass), Ben Wittman (percussion/drums) and founder of Tzadik, John Zorn (saxophone). Antony Hegarty sings additional vocals on the album.

Indaba Music offers online tools for artists around the globe to collaborate together as a community through the web. The site offers memberships where musicians and artists can record, edit and mix tracks online while in various parts of the world through its digital audio workstation. Featured contests can be found here.