Features
How a Broken Reel Made Their Best Record
By Jonas Whitfield · Issue 42
A snapped transport belt, a borrowed splice block and the accident that became the album's defining sound.
Every record has a story the band tells at dinner. Tape & Glass's story involves a 1974 Revox, a broken transport belt and a two-second splice that the band liked so much they kept it.
"We were three days into tracking and the machine just stopped," recalls engineer Dana Pruitt. "The reel snapped mid-song. We spliced it back together, and when we played it back, the edit fell exactly on a beat. It sounded like the song had a stutter it always wanted."
They spent the next week deliberately breaking and splicing other takes, hunting for accidents that felt intentional. Half the album's rhythmic tension comes from edits that should not work. "We stopped trying to fix the machine," says singer-bassist Amara Kline. "We started listening to it."