What We've Been Up To: Winter Edition

NAMM, Grammy parties, mastering Q&A's, working on records... it's been a jam-packed start to 2016 at Coast Mastering! 

Piper Payne, Michael Romanowski

In January, Michael, Piper and Drew traveled to Anaheim to hang out with lots of music industry friends at NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants). Michael and Piper gave a talk on "Five Things You Need To Know About Mastering" (uh, we covered way more than five!) at the Focal / Lauten / SPL booth. 

We had a great time hanging out with Damon Gramont from Bricasti, Bill Cheney from Spectra Sonics, all the fine folks at Universal Audio and Focal, Barry Henderson from RADAR, Josh Thomas, Chris Dauray and Jonathan Pines from Rupert Neve Designs and Fingerprint Audio and Colin Liebich from BAE Audio - always fun to hang with these people and so many other great music industry friends! 

Drew Zercoe, Jessica Thompson, Michael Romanowski, Piper Payne

On January 26th, the Coast team dressed up in their finest rock-n-roll formal attire to celebrate all of the GRAMMY nominees from the San Francisco Chapter of the Recording Academy, including Coast's own Jessica Thompson, nominated for Best Historic Album GRAMMY for her work on Erroll Garner's The Complete Concert By The Sea. Jessica spoke with Kitty Margolis about her work as a "sonic archaeologist" on the historic recording. Check out this month's Tape Op for a wonderful review of the box set along with more of Jessica's thoughts on the remastering process. The GRAMMYs are on February 15th. Watch for the Coast Mastering crew on the red carpet!

Michael, Jessica and Piper joined our Zaentz Media Center neighbors, mastering legend George Horn and his assistant Anne-Marie Suenram, for a Q&A with an enthusiastic group of musicians and engineers about How To Get the Most Out of Mastering. (Want to know more? Drop us a line!) Big thanks to Fantasy Studio's Director of Outreach Lyz Luke for putting together this event. 

Here are just a few of the records we've been working on lately:

Michael Romanowski had a blast mastering the newest album by Angelo Moore and the Brand New Step, Centuries Of Heat. Get an exclusive pre-order of the album on clear blue vinyl here. Michael is still working on historic America releases. Archives, Vol. 1 came out last month with more classic America expected later this spring. Michael also mastered Monica Rizzio's Washashore Cowgirl, out March 4 and produced by Jon Evans; Lucia Lilikoi's Vessel, produced by Julie Wolf; and Silvia Nakkach's newest release Liminal.

The epic Undercover Presents tribute to Green Day's Dookie drops soon. Mastered by Piper Payne, produced by Lyz Luke and featuring Martin Luther, Fuxedos, MC Rai, MoeTar and many more, this album is massive! Check out the live tribute show, a fundraiser for 924 Gilman on February 19 at the Fox Theater in Oakland. Piper also recently mastered new albums for Emily Afton and Conspiracy of Venus.

Michael Daves' Orchids and Violence comes out February 26 on Nonesuch Records. Mastered by Jessica Thompson, this double album features identical track listings recorded in the traditional bluegrass style (Disc 1) and as raw, experimental electric versions (Disc 2). Jessica also mastered DJ Katapila's Trotro for Awesome Tapes From Africa, The Tins new EP Love On Strike and Ghosts On the Radio for End of Love.

Happy New Year from Coast!

All of us at Coast Mastering would like to wish you a very happy, prosperous and creative new year!!

2015 was a great year for us, full of changes and growth. We are very thankful for the new opportunity to serve our musical community in our new Berkeley location. Thanks to Matt Gallagher and Tom Kenny from Mix Magazine for a great article about our new facility.
Thank you to all of our clients for having us be a part of the great music you have been creating all year. And thanks to everyone who is working so hard to push the boundaries of better sounding audio, those that are trying to ensure that musicians get proper payments and credits and all the fans of music who support the creative community by going to shows and by buying the music they listen to.

All the very best for 2016!

Michael Romanowski, Piper Payne, Jessica Thompson, Jonny Rego and Drew Zercoe