Paul Brandon Taft has the goods. He's got the ears, the technical mastery, the creative ideas, the energy, the ability to bring the best possible performance out of the artists, and the marketing savvy to help make them a success.

If you've got the goods, and you put your trust in Paul, you can have a hit record.

During his tenure at DEAL, Paul spearheaded a studio demo CD/package that was a great way to help get the word out about the studio. I've included links to most of the songs here, along with some stories about them, and how Paul went the extra mile to make them happen.

The sound files here are taken direct from audio CD. They have not been re-mastered for little computer speakers, nor compressed, so they will take awhile to download. If you want to hear how they really sound, you may have to burn them to a CD and play them on your favorite stereo.

Junkyard Jane. Like many great bands, this band had two leaders, and it was sometimes the tension between them that makes their collaborations so powerful. Being in the studio can be very stressful, and the energy was very intense. Paul helped them hold together, and the record turned out great. Here is the title cut. Junkyard Jane
Noxious Weed Inspector. On this particular cut, the singer started playing the piano. The only problem was that he hadn't MENTIONED that he was going to play the piano, so it wasn't mic'd. But the original take had such great energy, Paul managed to create a really cool piano sound from the leakage into the mics that happened to be open in the room. The song is Massage Therapy.
Kidd Kurry. Paul likes hard rock. Lonnie is two times Seattle Guitar Starz winner. The result rocked. The song is Thumped.
Tor Dietrichson. Paul joined DEAL when this huge project was in the mix stage. We were still using ProTools III, which only had 16 channels, so the final mix was done on a huge analog configuration with six hot-rodded ADATs. Paul was nominally our tech, always rotating the extra ADAT in and out of the system to clean the heads. But he was also there, he had ideas, and soon the producer, Steve Kindler, had Paul writing reverb programs. Savannah Moon.
Deity. Another raw take during a sound check. The energy was so good that we used it, despite the fact that it took a bit of extra work. The song has an anti-drug and anti-racist message, but it wasn't entirely clear originally. Paul helped the artist tweak the lyrics, and came up with the idea of the altered "pledge of allegiance". This was one of the few times I actually got to play on a DEAL Studios project -- Paul had me double the bass guitar on the Hammond organ pedals. Snow White.