I just finished mixing the new record by Forest Fire for Fat Cat Records this weekend.  We started the initial recording two months ago in mid-September at Tree Time Studio, which was awesome.  Since then, we’ve been doing overdubs and mixing at Doctor Wu’s, with some preliminary editing and mixing at my place.  I’m really excited about this record, my first proper producer credit!  It’s a good batch of catchy songs with inventive arrangements, with some krautrock and glam flair… I really tried to channel my Inner Eno on this one.  I can’t wait for people to hear this.

A couple weeks ago, I did sound design and mixing for a short film called The Apocalypse.  It stars Martin Starr (from Party Down and Freaks and Geeks) and Ella Rae Peck (of Gossip Girl fame), and was written and directed by Andrew Zuchero.  It’s about the end of the world (duh), and was so much fun to work on.  I don’t want to spoil things, but some of the sounds I was doing Foley for were pretty unbelievable   The Apocalypse will hopefully be making the rounds on the festival circuit this spring.

I also worked with Andrew last month on a series of Intel spots, which you can view at the Intel Ultrabook site.  It’s really hard and fun to do sound design with no music!!

The new Fort Lean EP Change Your Name is out tomorrow.  I co-engineered some of the sessions (the initial drum/bass sessions and some guitar overdubs) along with Jake Aron from the band (and Doctor Wu’s).  It was produced by Patrick Wimberly from Chairlift, and mixed by Michael Brauer – pretty fucking hi-fi!  Check out a couple songs on Stereogum and MTV.

I recently had the opportunity to do another recording upstate, this time with the band Wild Leaves.  We borrowed my friend Austin’s Tascam 388 to record an EP in a quonset hut, and spent a long weekend recording and hanging out by the campfire.  It was a great camp-out style adventure, until Hurricane Sandy came and I ran back to Brooklyn!

Before that, I worked with Jeffrey Gray Somers on an EP of solo material.  We did the basic tracking at Seaside Lounge, and are wrapping up vocals and mixing at Doctor Wu’s in the next few weeks.  It was awesome to be back at Seaside Lounge (were we did Funky Was the State of Affairs), and it’ll be cool to work some Wu magic to the tracks.   You can hear some of his stuff as Jung Bulls on Last.FM

I also recently mastered the new I Ching Quartet record Birdsongs at Doctor Wu’s.  I worked on a few of their records back in Chicago, and I can say with certainty it’s their best yet.

If you haven’t heard the new Parquet Courts LP Light Up Gold yet, do it now.  We tracked it back in February on a Tascam 388 (3 days), mixed it at my place (2 days), and I mastered it after the first one got messed up (1/2 day).  I’ve been a total fan of the LP since we started working on it – it’s one of the best punk records I’ve heard in a long time – and it’s awesome to see all the attention its been getting since it came out in August.  Check out all the kind words from Pitchfork, Stereogum (it’s in their Heavy Rotation), eMusic and Aquarium Drunkard that I’ve seen recently.

Another record that’s been getting some (well-deserved) love is Field II by Wiccans.  I mixed it at Doctor Wu’s this summer, and it’s just an awesome, heavy, brainy beast of a hardcore record.  The AV Club just nominated it the second best Loud album of the month and called it “one of the most intriguing, ambitious, ass-kicking hardcore records of the year”.  They’re almost sold out of the first pressing (which will hopefully be repressed, because they’re beautiful objects), which you can buy (or download for free) here.

I’ve got lots of cool stuff on the calendar, which I’m really looking forward to.  If you ever want to check out Doctor Wu’s or just talk about sound stuff, hit me up: jonathan [dot] schenke [at] gmail [dot] com.  And thanks, as always, for taking the time to read this.