Kishi Bashi - Master Reel to Reel Tape Copy Recording

Original Recording
- Live Recording 
- Straight to tape - zero digital tools used
- Recorded on an Otari MX 80 at 15 Ips, on SM911 Tape, 0 VU =355 nWb/m IEC

Mix/Mastering
- Mixed/Mastered with 1/2 inch 1/2 track Otari MTR-10 (Brand new Flux Magnetics Heads)

Kishi Bashi (Kaoru Ishibashi) is a Seattle-born, Virginia-raised composer, violinist, producer and singer whose music blends indie pop, classical sensibility, and experimental looping. His work often lives at the intersection of emotional storytelling and meticulous craftsmanship. Formally trained in film scoring at Berklee College of Music, he brings a cinematic sense of space and movement into his compositions, while maintaining the immediacy and intimacy of a modern singer-songwriter.

For this String Quartet Session, Kishi Bashi stripped his work down to its most fundamental acoustic energy: four musicians performing together, in a room, captured in real time. These are not layered constructs or digital edits — this is the sound of real players, responding to each other, breath-to-breath and phrase-to-phrase. His most cherished original compositions (“Manchester,” “I Am The Antichrist To You,” “Penny Rabbit & Summer Bear,” “Atticus In The Desert,” and others) are rendered here as chamber music — detailed, dynamic, and emotionally direct. And in addition, two iconic covers (“Losing My Religion” and “This Must Be The Place”) are reimagined with string textures that make familiar songs feel like new experiences.

Kishi Bashi has always been an artist focused on detail: violin overtones, micro gaps of silence, the transients of bow on string. This session showcases those details with clarity. For collectors and audiophiles, this is the exact type of repertoire that is elevated by analog playback — especially open-reel tape — because the dynamic waveforms and the natural decay of acoustic instruments are preserved with immediacy, warmth, and physical presence that digital often cannot convey.