John Vanderslice

John Vanderslice (born May 22, 1967) is an American musician, songwriter, record producer, and recording engineer.

He is the owner and founder of Tiny Telephone, an analog recording studio in North Oakland.

He has released ten full-length studio albums and five remix records and EPs on Dead Oceans and Barsuk Records and has collaborated with musicians such as the Mountain Goats, St. Vincent, and Spoon.

In 1989, he graduated with a degree in economics from the University of Maryland, where he also studied art history.

Vanderslice moved to San Francisco in 1990.

While supporting himself as a waiter, Vanderslice took classes at University of California, Berkeley, with the intention of becoming an English teacher.

Vanderslice then spent five years as a member of the experimental band Mk Ultra, with whom he released three albums in the 1990s.

The last of these, The Dream Is Over, received a 9.2 from Pitchfork.

In 1997, he founded Tiny Telephone, a 3,000 sq. ft., two-room recording studio in the Mission District of San Francisco.

The studio was initially used as a rehearsal space before being developed as a full-time, all-analog recording studio.

Bands who recorded in the studio included Death Cab for Cutie, Sleater-Kinney, Okkervil River, Deerhoof, The Mountain Goats, The Magnetic Fields, Tune-yards, and Spoon.

In 2000, Vanderslice released his first solo album, Mass Suicide Occult Figurines, and briefly gained some national media attention for the single "Bill Gates Must Die" after concocting a hoax in which Microsoft supposedly threatened legal action over the song; Vanderslice had trouble manufacturing the CD because the artwork resembled that of a Windows installation disc, and at least one manufacturer was wary of legal action.

During the controversy, he was interviewed by Spin, Wired, and the San Francisco Chronicle.

He has said about the album: "I was so beaten down after the 2000 election and after 9/11 and then the invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan; I was so depleted as a person after all that stuff happened, that I had to write my way out of it. I really had to write political songs because for me it is a way of making sense and processing what is going on."

Emerald City achieved a score of 82/100 on Metacritic.

Entertainment Weekly called the album "a gleaming gem" that doesn't disappoint.

Billboard's review of the record called Vanderslice an "always perceptive lyricist".

Calling Vanderslice a "master story-teller", Matt Fink of Paste said that Emerald City was "vividly imagined yet subtle in tone, with conflicted character sketches unfolding around somber synth melodies, creaky electronic effects, and fuzzy acoustic guitar strums."

Time Travel Is Lonely and Life and Death of an American Fourtracker followed in 2001 and 2002 respectively, followed by 2004’s Cellar Door.

Many songs on the 2005 album Pixel Revolt referenced the September 11, 2001 attacks and the Iraq War and were more overtly political in their lyrical content.

The album earned an 8.3 rating on Pitchfork and was cited for its "meticulous arrangements" with "everything in its right place", and declared an "excellent album".

The album's ending resolves the narrator's struggles with acute depression ("Dead Slate Pacific") and suicidal thoughts ("The Golden Gate") with a love song to psychotropic drugs ("CRC 7173, Affectionately").

The title of Vanderslice's 2007 album, Emerald City, references both the nickname of the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad and the name of the city in The Wizard of Oz.

In 2009, with Romanian Names, Vanderslice broke away from overtly political lyrical content characteristic of previous albums and turned his focus to personal reflections on romance and a modern person’s relationship to the natural landscape.

Maintaining his commitment to fully analog production, Vanderslice recorded guitar and piano tracks for this album in his analog basement studio of his San Francisco home.

He completed further instrumentation and production at his own Tiny Telephone recording studio with producer Scott Solter.

In 2010, Vanderslice released a free EP called Green Grow The Rushes.

A full album, White Wilderness, was released on January 25, 2011, on Dead Oceans.

Here, Vanderslice forwent his usual meticulous process of manipulating and heavily over-dubbing tracks in the recording studio, in favor a pared-down production style.

He recorded the album live with Minna Choi and the 19-member Magik*Magik Orchestra, the house orchestra of Tiny Telephone, in three days at Berkeley’s historically-renowned Fantasy Studios.

Vanderslice wrote acoustic versions of each song, while Choi wrote all orchestral arrangements.

The collaboration resulted in a looser sound that maintained the structural complexity and pop sensibility of Vanderslice’s previous songwriting.

Lyrically, Vanderslice reflects on his trajectory as a musician and performer and draws inspiration from the California landscape.

"The Piano Lesson" recounts early memories of learning to play the piano as a child, while "After It Ends" imagines a performer destroying and escaping his venue at the end of a show.

The romping "Convict Lake" is an autobiographical account of an overdose on LSD during a camping trip at this Sierra Nevada, California, lake.

Since 2014, Vanderslice has been a full-time record producer at Tiny Telephone and has worked with Frog Eyes, Samantha Crain, the Mountain Goats, and Grandaddy.

He has previously worked with Sophie Hunger, Bombadil, Strand of Oaks, and Spoon.

Vanderslice grew up in rural North Florida before his family moved to Maryland when he was 11.

However, an Oakland location of Tiny Telephone, opened in 2015, continues to operate.

The original studio closed in 2020, with Vanderslice saying that despite being booked year-round it was no longer financially solvent.