Happy September! Here’s what we’ve been up to at Coast Mastering all summer:
We threw a party! We celebrated our grand opening in July with an afternoon of food (taco truck!), music (street side jam!), trivia (with prizes!) and an all-around good hang with our fellow engineers, musicians and friends. Thanks again to our friends who donated equipment for giveaways: Brian Loudenslager of Lauten Audio, Joshua Thomas of Rupert Neve Designs, Simon Cote from Audio Plus Services, Erica McDaniel and Lev Perrey from Universal Audio, Jon Reichbach at Sonic Studio, Matt Strickland of Snareweight and Zane Howard of Second Line Vinyl. Special thanks to Damon Gramont from Bricasti Design for making the trip from Southern California, and to Allen Perkins of Spiral Groove turntables.
Michael Romanowski was joined in the studio by GRAMMY Award-winning producer and engineer Leslie Ann Jones to master the newest release from soprano Ann Moss, Love Life. He also mastered the Alexander String Quartet's Apotheosis - Mozart: the Four Final Quartets, a 2-CD set of Mozart's late works, beautifully recorded right around the corner at Fantasy Studios and available as high resolution download via Naxos this fall. Michael did the vinyl mastering for Pentatonix's 3-LP set, PTX Vols. I, II and III, mastered 2 CDs by the SF Jazz High School All-Stars (both the big band and the combo), and Diego's Umbrella's EP Songs For The Juerga.
Michael continues to serve as a Trustee of the Recording Academy, SF Chapter, and is co-chairing the recording and production track for the upcoming AES conference.
In a marathon weekend, Piper Payne mastered 40-something tracks for David Earl's synth-tastic soundtrack to Doublefine’s new video game, Headlander. This one’s coming out on vinyl soon! She also worked with Beautiful Machines on their newest release, Bridges, mastered a hot new single from newly named Van Goat (formerly known as Bear Lincoln), and this utterly amazing song/video from Mr. Linen. (Truly, check out the video!) The awesome video for "Do What You Want" by Kendra McKinley was directed by teenagers through non-profit OMG Everywhere. Piper mastered Kendra's new album Treat.
Piper is also the newly elected President of the Recording Academy, SF Chapter and, because she doesn’t have enough to do, she has joined the board of our local AES Chapter as well.
Jessica Thompson finished digitizing a huge stack of analog tapes from the archive of jazz and blues singer and political activist Barbara Dane just in time to start working on huge and very exciting archive (details TBD!). She mastered Eric Sommer’s new album Brooklyn Bolero, Tory Hanna and the Pondsider’s well-received Americana record Learning to Share, Thee Shambles’s heartbreaker Lonely à la Mode and, from nostalgiacore electro-indie-masters Occurrence, The Past Will Last Forever.
Since Coast engineers are always seeking ways to be involved in the greater music community, Jessica also joined the board of the SF Chapter of the Audio Engineering Society.
The AES Convention in Los Angeles is coming up September 29 - October 2, and the Coast team will be there and will be busy. (Drop us a line if you want to hang in LA!)
Thursday 9/29/16 - Jessica Thompson moderates a panel on collaboration between archives and record labels with Michael Graves, Cheryl Pawelski, Steve Rosenthal and Jamie Howarth.
Thursday 9/29/16 - Piper Payne joins Terri Winston, Laura Sisk and Marcella Araica to talk about All Star Album Production.
Friday 9/30/16 - Michael Romanowski helps us figure out the age old questions: When Can I Call This Song Finished?
Saturday 10/1/16 - Michael moderates the Platinum Engineering panel.
Saturday 10/1/16 - Michael joins fellow mastering engineers Adam Ayan, Emily Lazar, Gavin Lursen and Andrew Mendelson on the Platinum Mastering panel, moderated by Mix Magazine's Tom Kenny.
Other upcoming events:
10/17/16 - SF MusicTech Summit
10/26/16 - GRAMMYs in my district. Find out how you can get involved at http://grammypro.com/advocacy.
11/12/16 - Music Expo SF