How Peter Gabriel Brought the Avant-Garde to Top 40 on “So”
How Peter Gabriel Brought the Avant-Garde to Top 40 on “So”
I wrote Peter Gabriel off for decades, and the album he is perhaps most-known for, “So,” was deep in my blindspots. As someone who grew up loving punk, alternative, metal... Read more...
The Very Friendly Pride Mix
The Very Friendly Pride Mix
Today we're keeping things short and sweet — it's Pride Month, after all, and there's lots of activities happening this month to keep us busy. (Not the least of which... Read more...
You got me love dancing: Loose Joints' "Is It All Over My Face"
You got me love dancing: Loose Joints' "Is It All Over My Face"
A double-entendre? Or just a testament to the rapturous joy blooming on Manhattan dancefloors? To my ears, it’s both at once, inseparable from each other. Read more...
A Layperson's Guide to Trance, Vol. 1
A Layperson's Guide to Trance, Vol. 1
We have a lot of trance for sale. I don’t know a damn thing about trance, its origins, its current state, how to talk about it, etc. Let’s get into... Read more...
Essentials: Sharon Redd's "Redd Hot"
Essentials: Sharon Redd's "Redd Hot"
Sharon Redd is the biggest “what if” pop diva that never was. An incredible vocalist, from a distinguished pedigree, who, due to a truncated solo career (and succumbing to America’s... Read more...
Steve Albini and the making of Surfer Rosa
Steve Albini and the making of Surfer Rosa
The production of Steve Albini is inseparable from (if not better than) the songwriting itself. Here's how it got made. Read more...
What We're Spinning 5/15
What We're Spinning 5/15
Today, in what will be the first of a regular series, we’re keeping things straightforward and no-nonsense by letting you know what we’ve been listening to lately. One of my... Read more...
Weirdo black metal roundup
Weirdo black metal roundup
Today, we’re recommending five albums that are not just a little off the beaten path — they’re in a different forest altogether. Read more...
VIDEO: Grim Discipline 'Dragon Bitch' live mix
VIDEO: Grim Discipline 'Dragon Bitch' live mix
The artist's goal was to capture a mix of Kill 'Em All-esque guitars and Scorpions-style late 70s bombast. Dave shows you how to do it all with just plug-ins. Read more...
A power metal starter kit
A power metal starter kit
It was a daunting winter for Very Friendly. We trudged through the insane slate of snowstorms. We suffered setbacks. We gave ourselves caffeine poisoning on many occasions. But spring is... Read more...
Slayer Reign in Blood album cover, released October 20, 1986 on Def Jam Recordings
Reign in Blood at 40: Slayer and Rick Rubin's 1986 Masterpiece
Slayer's Reign in Blood turns 40 on October 20, 2026. Inside Rick Rubin's subtractive production, Hit City West sessions, and the album that invented extreme metal. Read more...
Recreating the Kill 'Em All guitar tone in the box
Recreating the Kill 'Em All guitar tone in the box
Puppets was engineered. Kill 'Em All was captured. Read more...
Essentials: Larry Willis' "Inner Crisis"
Essentials: Larry Willis' "Inner Crisis"
Inner Crisis plays like an independent film studio making a grimier and grittier version of a Hollywood blockbuster. Read more...
How to make vocals sit in any mix perfectly
How to make vocals sit in any mix perfectly
Getting vocals to sit in a mix is one of the hardest things in production. Not because the tools are complicated, but because most people apply them in the wrong... Read more...
Review: Ineffable Slime's ‘Deep and Desperate Fictions’
Review: Ineffable Slime's ‘Deep and Desperate Fictions’
I first heard this afternoon during a bout of (somewhat frustrated) cleaning and organizing. My CD player has a particularly annoying quirk whereby I am forced to close the disc... Read more...
How to mix lead vocals for pop music
How to mix lead vocals for pop music
Whether you're mixing pop, rock, R&B, or metal, the core problems are the same — and so are the solutions. Read more...
Achieving huge guitar tone with amp sims
Achieving huge guitar tone with amp sims
The secret to massive recorded guitar tone isn't one perfect amp sim; it’s about creating symmetry and balancing. Read more...
Fixing a muddy mix, fast
Fixing a muddy mix, fast
The most common challenge self-producing musicians face is muddiness. It can take a little experimentation to truly hear muddiness, but it the most glaring culprit separating professional mixes from amateur... Read more...
Labels we love: Hosianna Mantra
Labels we love: Hosianna Mantra
Today we’re talking about the two most recent offerings from the label, along with our favorite Kirkwood album. Read more...
Video: Mixing a metal song from start to finish
Video: Mixing a metal song from start to finish
As we prepare for the studio to open in the coming weeks, we’re ramping up by doing some remote mixing sessions. We thought it would be cool to show off... Read more...
How to make MIDI drums sound real
How to make MIDI drums sound real
Most bedroom producers are one workflow change away from drums that sound like they were recorded live. Read more...
You should start a CD-R label
You should start a CD-R label
CD replication tech has improved enough that disc rot is less of a concern than when it was still nascent, and options for creatively getting art on a disc have... Read more...
My single favorite plugin: tape saturation
My single favorite plugin: tape saturation
Tape saturation adds harmonic content, softens transients, and glues frequencies together in a way that EQ and compression simply cannot replicate. It's not a subtle effect when you know what... Read more...
Spoken word albums of note
Spoken word albums of note
Spoken word records are hard to pull off, but when they’re great they often number among my favorite musical expressions. Read more...
Gruesome 7-inch roundup
Gruesome 7-inch roundup
We tend to think of the format as the domain of pop singles and hardcore EPs. But in the 1990s and 2000s, 7-inch production was significantly cheaper, allowing more experimentally... Read more...
How to play a Benjolin in 2026
How to play a Benjolin in 2026
While subtractive synthesis is a fountain of possibilities, it’s easy to let the mind wander toward synthesis’ stranger frontiers when you’ve been tinkering long enough. Read more...
A Cheap Heat primer
A Cheap Heat primer
“Cheap Heat” is a series of videos all about high quality records that can consistently be found for under $10. Read more...
Labels we love: Hospital Productions
Labels we love: Hospital Productions
In the annals of American experimental music, few labels could claim to be anywhere close to as prolific as Hospital Productions. Read more...
How to actually use compression (without killing your mix)
How to actually use compression (without killing your mix)
Compression doesn't just make things louder. It makes loud things quieter, which gives you more headroom to turn the whole thing up. The "loudness" you hear is makeup gain after... Read more...
5 totally fried guitar albums
5 totally fried guitar albums
This list focuses on albums that have a sound that I’m referring to as “fried”, meaning psychedelic, dissonant, avant-garde, or otherwise just kind of fucked up. Read more...
In defense of the digital multitracker
In defense of the digital multitracker
Perhaps predictably, they haven’t really taken hold of the nostalgic mind quite the same way that tape has. I would argue, however, that they have just as much utility as... Read more...
BASICS: How to dial in overdrive
BASICS: How to dial in overdrive
The sound of an overdrive pedal into a high-gain amp is behind most of my favorite metal albums, but it’s actually quite easy to get it wrong.  Read more...
5 ambient records for winter
5 ambient records for winter
These recommendations are a little off the beaten path, but should satisfy a variety of moods, whether you’re trying to warm up or embrace the chill.  Read more...
Mix Bus Processing: Make your demos sound professional
Mix Bus Processing: Make your demos sound professional
You’ll realize pretty quick into your audio engineering journey that, as much as we wish there was, there is no magic plugin that fixes issues in your mix. Read more...
5 offbeat pieces of gear for experimental music
5 offbeat pieces of gear for experimental music
The word “experimental” is broad enough to be almost useless. But for our purposes, we’re embracing the wide breadth of the term and recommending a few pieces of gear that... Read more...
DI guitars that sound like they were recorded live
DI guitars that sound like they were recorded live
It’s really remarkable how far amp sims and impulse responses have come in terms of their ability to recreate a live recording studio sound on a laptop. But the trained... Read more...
Mixing Metal Vocals with ONLY PLUGINS
Mixing Metal Vocals with ONLY PLUGINS
Screamed metal vocals are tough to nail because they occupy the same frequency range as your guitars, bass, snare, cymbals, pads, and pretty much everything else.  Read more...
How to make Serum sound analog: Minimoog bass & Juno pads from scratch
How to make Serum sound analog: Minimoog bass & Juno pads from scratch
Software can't perfectly replicate a real Minimoog or Juno-106. Analog circuits have quirks — thermal drift, component tolerances, happy accidents — that algorithms can approximate but not duplicate. Read more...
8 classic analog synths for a range of budgets
8 classic analog synths for a range of budgets
Just getting into the world of synthesis? Our condolences to your wallet in advance. Read more...
Achieving crystal-clear drums without triggers
Achieving crystal-clear drums without triggers
Let’s be clear from the outset: we are not inherently anti-trigger. They’re excellent tools with a wide range of applications, particularly on recordings that embrace digital timbres. Read more...
Mix bass like a pro with perfect separation
Mix bass like a pro with perfect separation
The challenge is to balance clarity and separation with cohesion, without creating a muddy mess. Here are four techniques that fix it. Read more...