HrishiHirway

My wish list is pretty long, but here are a few: Björk, Kanye West, Radiohead, Aphex Twin, The Roots/Questlove, Four Tet, Pharrell, Sia, Portishead, Jim O'Rourke…I could do this all day. Actually, this basically IS what I do all day, then look for ways to contact them and see if they'll come on the show.

Hi! The most surprising secret that I learned was how Nick Zammuto of the Books used a spinning vinyl record to create his own custom analog drum machine — http://songexploder.net/the-books

It would be a travel/food show where I seek out the best cookie in different cities in the world. One city per episode.

You misspelled awesome. (And the answer is: very)

Hey /u/beholdthepanda, thanks for the question! Some of the artists have the multi-tracks for their recordings on hand immediately, and it's no sweat at all. And for some, it can be a crazy long process. The all-time champ is Phil Elverum of The Microphones / Mt Eerie. He recorded on 2" tape, so no digital multitracks existed for his song, but he volunteered to digitize them. But the tape was so old (it had been over a decade since he recorded), it had started to disintegrate, so he had to do a restoring method called "baking the tape." I shouldn't put it in quotes, because that's literally what you do...you put it in an oven. Luckily, he was able to salvage it and transfer the tracks to Pro Tools, and that's how I was able to make this Microphones episode.