I am listening to Los Lobos' upcoming release The Town and the City. Now, I've always had a certain respect for these guys; they're hard-working, skilled players with a competent finger dipped into multiple genres, emphasizing rock, soul, and traditional Mexican styles (and they're great live almost no matter what). Often times, though, despite David Hidalgo's silky-sweet vocals (one of the more soulful voices in modern pop), the material doesn't edge past "genre-standard." Working with producers Tchad Blake ahd Mitchell Froom, on the other hand, has brought out the best in them, especially on the classic Kiko and the somewhat-underrated Colossal Head and This Time. The three records are not perfect, though Kiko is close, but they're all marked by superb recordings with fresh mixing concepts, and in each case it seems that the studio approach brought out the best energies from the group. (This must have been apparent to them... so apparent, in fact, that Hidalgo and Louie Perez of Los Lobos actually formed a band with Froom and Blake called the Latin Playboys; they have two very interesting albums.) While Mitchell Froom is a wonderful creative mind, mainly Tchad Blake can be thanked for the quality of sound. Much of his work is exemplary of a particular concept: innovations in depth of field. (Apologies in advance for my lack of technical knowledge and jargon about mixing.)Stereophonic music is meant to create the illusion of physical space. Depth of field is the term representing how each element falls into this imaginary, impossible space. Most commercial pop tries to put every element right up against the wall, blasting at you; Tchad Blake works fully against this. His work with this group sounds good on speakers, but the beauty unfurls on headphones. I have doubts that I would have given The Town and the City a second listen if I hadn't given it my first (and now second) listen on headphones. The credit on this record says "Produced by Los Lobos, mixed by Tchad Blake." Several of the songs are mediocre genre tunes, but I look forward to revisiting them because of the generally exquisite depth created by Mr. Blake. Don't get me wrong; he isn't trying to make you think you're sitting in a room with a live band. That's for the Steve Albinis out there. Instead, he uses unorthodox effects and techniques to make some of the sounds rest in your ears, some in your brain, some circling around your head, some echoing in the distance, some muffled by a blanket... Now and then, some of the frequencies he emphasizes and the distortion he employs would sound "bad" in the wrong hands; in his, the balance is perfect, even if it makes you scratch your head for a second. It can be very subtle, but for a listener like me, these things almost always jump out.Here are just a few records that have Tchad (pronounced Chad) Blake's fingerprints smeared all over them in various ways (many of them alongside Mr. Froom):Tom Waits - Bone Machine (engineer)Los Lobos - Kiko, Colossal Head, This Time (producing+ with Froom); The Town and the City (mixing)Soul Coughing - Ruby Vroom (producing+)Elvis Costello - Brutal Youth (producing+ with Froom)The Dandy Warhols - The Dandy Warhols Come Down (mixing)Mitchell Froom - Dopamine (producing+)Sheryl Crow - Sheryl Crow (engineer); The Globe Sessions (mixing)Pearl Jam - Binaural (producing+)Peter Gabriel - Up (mixing)P.S.:There's Blake with a binaural head-- two microphones, one in each "ear" of the "head." Blake is an aficionado of binaural recording technique, a manner of attempting to create a more "pure" illusory depth of field for the headphone listener. This technique, if done well, can really give you a visceral sense of virtual space. He's released a disc of binaural field recordings in Zimbabwe that I'd love to hear.If you're a Bay Area resident, you should go to SFMOMA and, in the lobby, sign up for the "tour" called The Telephone Call by Janet Cardiff. I won't spoil too much of it for you, but suffice to say, you're wearing headphones, and Cardiff's voice takes you through a virtual reality of the museum, made rich by the usage of binaural recordings of the very same space you're walking through. She's done these "walks" in many places and I got a chance to do a 45-minute walk she created that takes you through part of London. Such a treat.