Mike Mettler

Mike Mettler  |  Oct 17, 2024
Detroit-bred rap superstar Tee Grizzley has joined forces with a number of powerhouse flow partners on his new 24-track LP Post Traumatic, which was released in full on October 4 after being teased with a number of hardcharging singles drops throughout the balance of 2024.

A-level guests on Tee’s fifth studio album include the likes of Future, 42 Dugg, Mariah The Scientist, and even his brother, Baby Grizzley. Synth loops and loping 808s permeate some of its backing tracks—cool choices due in no small part to one of the album’s key producers, Pi’erre Bourne (Drake, Playboi Carti).

Mike Mettler  |  Oct 11, 2024
Copenhagen-based indie/electronic mixmaster Anders Trentemøller recently served up a cool breeze of synthesized fresh air for the fall season on September 13 with his new album Dreamweaver—which arrived via his own label, the perfectly named (and no doubt Brian Wilson-inspired) In My Room.
Mike Mettler  |  Oct 08, 2024

These Are the Eyes of Disarray: S&V music editor Mike Mettler evaluates multiple versions of Stone Temple Pilots’ September 1992 debut album Core, which laid the foundation for a hard-rocking rollercoaster ride steeped in the three G’s—garage, glam, and groove. . .

Mike Mettler  |  Oct 02, 2024
And the beat keeps on keepin’ on for East Atlanta rapper Hunxho, who just dropped a sonically seductive two-track single, “Part of the Plan + Hold Me Down”, on September 27.
Mike Mettler  |  Sep 24, 2024
Sadly lost to us in his prime at only age 21 in 2019, Chicago-bred emo rapper Juice WRLD at least left behind a wealth of unreleased material—and his estate’s latest official offering is a two-track stunner, The Pre-Party EP, now available as a Lossless option on Apple Music and via other digital platforms.
Mike Mettler  |  Sep 13, 2024
LIL TECCA: “BAD TIME” IN ATMOS ON APPLE MUSIC

Queens rapper/producer Lil Tecca is back in a bad way with his upcoming fourth LP Plan A (which drops in full on September 20)—and one of its lead tracks, “Bad Time,” clearly sets the table for what’s to come, especially in its Atmos mix on Apple Music.

Mike Mettler  |  Aug 30, 2024

Alan Parsons has long been acknowledged as a pioneering surround-sound mixer/producer all the way back to the early days of quad, and now he’s finally triangulated his sights on the kind of project we’ve all been waiting for—namely, by taking the maiden Dolby Atmos remixing voyage into his own deep catalog as the co-mastermind behind The Alan Parsons Project. Parsons’ initial APP-in-Atmos foray appears on the Blu-ray that’s included in the new 4CD/1BD/2LP Super Deluxe Edition box set for their May 1978 release, Pyramid, via the ironically named Cooking Vinyl label. During a recent Zoom interview, Parsons and music editor Mike Mettler discussed his overall Atmos goals for Pyramid, what he was able to “correct” in Atmos, and his dream Atmos mixes for other artists. . .

Mike Mettler  |  Aug 20, 2024
Def Leppard was an ’80s anomaly. The band wasn’t exactly part of the decade-opening NWOBHM (a.k.a. New Wave Of British Heavy Metal) scene, nor was it entirely aligned with the androgynous, hair-sprayed looks and vibes of metal-adjacent contemporaries like Mötley Crüe and Poison. Instead, Def Leppard took inspiration from their own ’70s heroes, fusing glam-slam and pub-rock roots with power-pop harmonies and arena-rock guitar riffage. Stir it all together, and you get one of that decade’s biggest albums, January 1983’s Pyromania.
Mike Mettler  |  Aug 14, 2024
Fifty-five years ago on August 15, 1969, 500,000 people gathered in upstate New York for the Woodstock Music & Art Fair — a long, heady weekend that lives on as a landmark soundtrack and film that deftly capture the counterculture zeitgeist.
Mike Mettler  |  Jul 31, 2024

British mixing engineer Ben Wiseman has a C.V. that more than mirrors the sagacity implied by his given surname. Among his many mix/remix and master/remastering production-related projects of the past two decades include albums from the likes of Soft Machine, Hawkwind, Barclay James Harvest, and Tangerine Dream. One of his latest projects includes the ever-intriguing 5.1 mix he did for inclusion in the recent 50th anniversary multidisc box set for Nektar’s November 1973 masterstroke concept album, Remember the Future. Here, music editor Mike Mettler and Wiseman discuss how he initially attuned himself to Nektar’s music, the process of finding and incorporating discarded tracks when it was appropriate to do so, and how he tried to honor the album’s lyrical content with his remixes. . .

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