Post-Punk Mixing

Post-punk lives on tension. Dry drums up front, a bass line that carries the melody, guitars that scratch instead of soothe, a vocal with personality instead of polish. Mix it like a rock radio record and the tension leaks out of it. What's left is a band that sounds tight and means nothing.

We mix post-punk to keep the nerves in.

That means drums that sound like a room, not a sample library. It means letting the bass lead when the song is built that way, instead of tucking it under the kick like a pop mix would. It means resisting the urge to de-ess, de-click, de-breathe and de-human the vocal. The cracks are information. We keep the ones that carry it.

​

Who we've done this for

Bands from the post-punk world have been coming through Tapetown for years. We've worked with The Murder Capital and Iceage's Elias Rønnenfelt, whose live session with us has over 340,000 views. KEXP chose Tapetown for the audiovisual production at SPOT Festival. MusicTech called the studio an institution for alternative styles. This is not a genre we serve on the side. It's the music this studio was built around.

​

How we work

Hybrid analogue mixing: the low end and drum bus run through real hardware, because post-punk drums need physical impact that plugins approximate but don't deliver. We mix remotely for bands worldwide and in person in Aarhus when the schedule allows.

References matter. Unknown Pleasures is a different universe from a Fontaines D.C. record, and the modern Dublin and London sounds differ again from what's coming out of Copenhagen and Aarhus. Tell us what your record is pointing at, and tell us what we're not allowed to ruin. That second list is the one we take most seriously.

​

FAQ

Our recordings are rough. Is that a problem? Usually the opposite. Post-punk recorded too carefully is post-punk with the danger removed. Bleed, room sound and rough edges give us material to work with. Send it as it is.

Will you quantize the drums? No. The push and pull in a live rhythm section is the groove. If a fill rushes because the song lifts, that's the band playing music. We don't fix things that aren't broken.

Do you master too? Yes, and for post-punk we master with the same principle: keep the dynamics, keep the edge, loud enough for playlists without ironing the record flat.

How do we start? Send a rough mix and tell us where the record is going. We'll reply with what we hear and what we'd do. Prep details: track prep guide.