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While digital music has been with us for over 30 years, analog has had a big resurgence in recent times with the success of vinyl records.
But as it turns out most of todays LP's aren't all analog.
They're made from digital recordings.
However one music label has gone back to basics with an old analogue studio and a sound that harks back to the 60s and labels like Motown and Stacks.
Daptone Records, located in a converted house in Bushwick, Brooklyn is home to such artists as Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings and Charles Bradley Daptone has also recorded artists such as Amy Winehouse and and Australia's King Gizzard and Lizard Wizard.
Every note on a Daptone recording was played by the band in the studio, not fabricated Later in the mix.
In other words, it's an auto-tune free zone.>> There's no undo, there's no save.>> Engineer and producer Wayne Gordan showed me around the small studio.
It's packed with vintage gear which includes a massive Hammond B-3 organ and an old school 8 track reel to reel recorder, which is used for all of the sessions.
While most studios have unlimited digital tracks, Wayne told me that the limitations of analog actually help the creative process.
If someone comes in and records a guitar solo and they say, hey, I wanna record it again.
You ask them, okay, we can do it again, but if you do it you're gonna You're gonna go over your other parts solo, even with vocals it happens a lot of the time.
And then you see this thing in their head where they kind of make a decision like, okay this is probably the best I can do and then you have some where it's like I know I can definitely do better.
Daptone has been around since 2001, and it was built with the help of the musicians who actually record there.
The thing about this place that, why it feels magical is because it's not like a label where say you're personnel.
And you walk [INAUDIBLE] It's not like that.
Everybody's, we're family.
Everybody's friends.
And when someone's down, someone's gonna give you a call and be like, yo what's wrong.
You know let's take you out, let's go have lunch, let's talk about it, you know like that's the vibe this place and even as far as records, if someone's working on a record you know everybody's around to say I'm here to help what do you need to make your record happen?
You know its a very family affair.
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Wayne says that while he loves recording in the space, he says that the gear is secondary to the people who record there.
He says that in the age of fixing it in Pro-Tools theres no substitute for a good musician.
You can by a compressor, you can buy the same mics, you can buy
You know the same guitar but you can not buy the same player.
That is just something you can not take.
I am bold enough to say 95% of the magic in these records come out in there music.
For me the way that I look at it It is my job to capture that.
While Wayne works primarily as an engineer at
He has also produced one of my favorite new bands " The Mystery Lights".
He said replicating their live show is his main priority.
He even gave the singer hand held mics so he could jump around as he sang.
There is just an energy that they have about them.
I do not know if you have every seen them.
But that is just what made me want to capture that.
Something I was really keen on.
While some producers obsess over every detail for Wayne it's the feel, which is intrinsic to the Daptone sound.
It's more important than fixing mistakes.
We're not sitting here doing brain surgery.
[LAUGH]
We're making music.
Music.
Okay.
It's nothing that we're gonna do is gonna destroy the world.
If anything we're helping the world, no matter what we do.
Steve Gutenberg for Cnet.com.
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