Three Records… October 2026

A handful of records I mastered each month, the ones that stuck with me. Some for the songs, some for the people behind them, some just because the mix hit right.

Jack Kays - Call It What You Want

Jack Kays' new album was recorded live at 38 North Studio, all twelve songs in eight days. The vocals were tracked live too, with no overdubs, which is a feat worth noting. There's no acoustic guitar anywhere on it, a big change for a songwriter best known for his acoustic songs. Brandon Breazeale and Kays produced and Breazeale mixed. Sean Russell engineered, and capturing a sound this big live is no small thing, so big props to him. I didn't want to get in the way of these songs. The snare and the vocal are the center points of the mix, and I left them right where they were.

Maddie Ettrich - Mermaid

Bubble grunge is the genre here: pop melodies carried by heavily distorted guitars. Canadian-born, Nashville-based songwriter Maddie Ettrich wrote "Mermaid" with Jared Corder, who also produced and mixed it, and it was recorded at Polychrome Ranch with Kristofer Jedd assisting. It's self-released. With Maddie it always comes back to the vocal, so I kept it punchy and made sure those very distorted guitars stayed focused.

Boris Uran - Iceflowers (PSI Music)

The Carinthia-based Austrian singer-songwriter Boris Uran introduces his album Close to Love with this trio piece for voice, guitar, and cello. Uran wrote it with guitarist Primus Sitter, a jazz player from Carinthia who also recorded it at Mary Got the Blues Studios, and Jana Thomaschütz plays cello. Ina Riegler made the cover art. The vocal is the center of this one, and I held it in complete focus from start to finish. The instrumentation is a little unorthodox, and very cool. My intern, Nick Butkiewicz, sequenced the masters.