For Thom Monahan, recording is all about collaboration. From his earliest days recording friends to a career producing highly acclaimed records, the key to making memorable recordings has been his acute sensitivity to the artist's intentions. "Knowing what a song is about makes it easier to tell a story in a long form," he says.

It's a skill he's cultivated by spending many hours on both sides of the glass. Thom spent more than a decade as a bassist and multi-instrumentalist in the Pernice Brothers, the Lilys and Monsterland, and learned his trade knocking around studios in his native New England. As a staff engineer at the notoriously rough and tumble Slaughterhouse, "We never knew what was going to come in the door," he recalls, "but we knew we’d have to have a sound in less than an hour."

At Slaughterhouse, Thom learned to record in an all-analog tape environment, but has since embraced digital technology, and most frequently uses a hybrid methodology. With a natural curiosity about technological frontiers that fuels a lifelong desire to innovate and experiment, Thom remembers lugging around an eight-track analog recorder in a flight case during the 1990s. "I lived in a place where we couldn't make a lot of noise, so I learned to take quiet sounds and make them as big as possible," he notes tellingly.

Drawing on these experiences, he brings to the table both inventive technical expertise and a sense of empathy for the artist and the creative process. "It's always more about the performance than about fidelity," he offers. "There's a balance between a love for the artist's performance versus making a sound that translates what the performance is about."

Currently, Thom is in the studio doing pre-production on the new Vetiver release.

Thom's just finished producing albums for Fujiya & Miyagi, Leopold and His Fiction and Johnny Irion and Sarah Lee Guthrie.

More recently, Thom has recorded and produced well-regarded independent acts such as Vetiver, Devendra Banhart, the Jayhawks' Gary Louris, Au Revoir Simone, Beachwood Sparks, Little Joy, Lavender Diamond and Brightblack Morning Light, for releases on stalwart independent labels including Matador, Sub Pop and Rykodisc. Along the way, he's developed a comfort level in both cutting-edge studios and home recording environments, with a broad sonic palette that includes sonorous acoustic music, rich orchestral pop, and electronically manipulated textures derived from contemporary and vintage synths and sequencers. Equally at home with a live room full of musicians all playing together or head down intensely editing overdubs, "I think it's about identifying with the artist and figuring out what they need to make their music come to life," he adds.

A voracious record collector and enthusiastic student of recorded music with a seemingly bottomless knowledge of audio technology and history, Thom says his inspiration continues to come from being a fan first. "My idea of pre-production is listening to records with an artist," he says. It's appropriate that the payment for his first professional recording gig wasn't in cash, but in music - he received a Bongwater double LP and a Jesus & Mary Chain bootleg in exchange for recording GG Allin.