Chris Gray probably did a better job than these bullet points in his Phoenix article from 2008.

Sean Wilkinson took the photo.

- In 1987-ish my high school band The Deafmutes pooled money to buy the amazing Tascam Syncaset 234 rack-mounted 4-track.

- In the early 90s, inspired by Archie Moore’s impressive ADAT-based basement studio, saved up for a Yamaha MT8X cassette 8-track against all advice. That machine sounded awesome.

- Archie was kind enough to record two albums for Nord Express, a 2-piece band comprised of Robert Goldrick (Whorl, Big Jesus Trashcan, Sharky) on guitar and myself on drums. Archie was in a band called Velocity Girl at the time, and had made records with Bob Weston and John Porter. Everyone knows Archie is pretty much the dude and knows how to make a record.

- In 1996 (?) Nord Express recorded a session with Pierre Sprey at his Mapleshade Studios, which is basically a giant front room in his house outside of DC. Pierre has an amazing purist analog setup – two customized PZMs mounted on a large plexiglass prism hanging in the center of the room, hardwired directly to the heads of a customized 2-track. Drums were on a riser with an angled reflective sheet of plywood hanging above. Amps were all Pierre’s, Fender modded to 50s specs. Archie and Brian even had to use his guitar cables of which he’d designed the alloys of course.

- In 1999, Matt Dingee of Lorelei, LU, Grappa and Textilesounds gave me a Motu 2408 which I used with their Audiodesk software for 6 years or so.

- In 2002 I began interning at The Studio in Portland, ME with Steve Drown. It was nice to finally hear what a U87 or C414 actually sounded like, rather than imagining it from reading books like “Behind The Glass” or “Inside Tracks”.

- Also in 2002 I began playing with Trey Hughes in a project that turned into the band Harpswell Sound. The first Harpswell Sound EP “Port” is Peapod Recordings PEAR001, even though it doesn’t say it anywhere. Trey and I still play together in the Honey Clouds with Sean Wilkinson and Mandy Wheeler.

- In 2005 I got the Pro Tools.

- In early 2007 Anna Hepler asked if I would take up residency in her studio/gallery The Map Room for a few months. I set up shop and got a bunch of stuff recorded including 3 “Map Room Sessions”, improvised sets by Brown Bird, Dead End Armory and Nathan Halverson.

- In late 2007 I moved shop into the New Systems Laundry building, a very large, live and cold room. Quite a few records were made here including Chriss Sutherland’s “Worried Love”, Brown Bird’s “The Bottom Of The Sea”, Huak’s “Secret Trees EP” and Honey Clouds’ “Fall On The Honey Clouds”.

- In October 2008 we began work fixing up my garage for a new studio space. The garage had certainly seen better days – it was working a crazy lean and basically sitting in the ground so the bottom 2′ were pretty rotten. Josh Eckels was crazy enough to take on the project with me, and in April 2009 I had my first session in Forest City, the Jeff Platz Quartet featuring Daniel Carter.