Tchad Blake has an impressive discography, having worked with numerous artists and musicians, including Arctic Monkeys, Lisa Germano, Soul Coughing, Amos Lee, Peter Gabriel, Tom Waits, Fiona Apple, Sheryl Crow, Crowded House, Tracy Chapman, Vanessa Paradis, The Dandy Warhols, Delta Spirit, The Black Keys, Jesse Wilson, The Bad Plus and The Pretenders, amongst many others. Blake to date has 11 Grammy nominations winning seven Grammy Awards, including Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical for Sheryl Crow’s The Globe Sessions (1998), Suzanne Vega’s Beauty & Crime (2007), Peter Gabriel’s i/o (2025) and Grammys for his work with The Black Keys on 2010’s Brothers and 2012’s El Camino, and Fiona Apple’s Fetch The Bolt Cutters (2022). He is well known in the industry for creating original sonic textures (often with unorthodox gear, such as everyday objects like wooden pipes, metal cans, and cardboard boxes) as well as his use of binaural recording, resulting in the unique sound his name connotes.
Although Blake made his name by pushing the sonic limits of the analogue domain, since 2005, he has worked almost entirely in the box. He has a Pro Tools HD rig with an Icon D Control, plus a choice selection of loads of guitar pedals and a few pieces of outboard. Blake comments, “I’m 99.8% in the box now, as opposed to mixing off tape through a vintage API console at The Sound Factory or the very large SSL at Real World Studios in the past. The 0.2% represents instruments I add or pedal-style effects I use.”