Michael Graves: The Patient Philosophy of Audio Restoration
Five Grammys and a working museum of tape machines later, Osiris Studio's Michael Graves reflects on the ethics of restoration, the problem of artist intent, and why the work never stops surprising him.
Today, we're putting The Tonearm's needle on Michael Graves, a five-time Grammy-winning mastering engineer and the founder of Osiris Studio in Los Angeles.
Michael's work is restoration as archaeology—pulling performances off deteriorating tapes, damaged acetates, and obsolete formats, then deciding how much intervention is too much. He's done this for recordings by Hank Williams, Aretha Franklin, Stax songwriters, and field recordings from Cambodia, Sudan, and Mississippi. His most recent Grammy came in 2024 for Written in Their Soul: The Stax Songwriter Demos.
The deeper question his work raises is curatorial: where does restoration end and revisionism begin? What gets rescued, and what stays buried?
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Dig Deeper
• Michael Graves and Osiris Studio:
- Visit Michael Graves at osirisstudio.com and follow Osiris Studio on Instagram
- Michael Graves — Osiris Studio: About
- Michael Graves (sound engineer) — Wikipedia
• Key Projects Discussed:
- Written in Their Soul: The Stax Songwriter Demos — 7-CD box set on Craft Recordings (2023), Grammy Award for Best Historical Album (2024)
- Blondie: Against the Odds: 1974–1982 — box set via Numero Group and UMe (2022)
- Chris Bell: I Am the Cosmos — definitive reissue on Omnivore Recordings (2017)
- Chris Bell: The Complete Chris Bell — 6-LP box set, Omnivore Recordings (2017)
• Labels:
• Artists and People Referenced:
- Chris Bell — Big Star co-founder; I Am the Cosmos recorded in the mid-1970s
- Big Star — Memphis power pop band co-founded by Chris Bell and Alex Chilton
- Geoff Emerick — engineer and producer; produced and recorded Chris Bell's post-Big Star sessions
- Eddie Floyd — Stax recording artist and songwriter; known for "Knock on Wood"
- Johnny Mercer — American lyricist, songwriter, and Capitol Records co-founder; his archive is held at Georgia State University
- Leonard Cohen — Canadian singer-songwriter; Graves worked on his personal archive
• Institutional Archives and Collections:
- Johnny Mercer Collection — Georgia State University
- Alan Lomax and George Pullen Jackson Collection of Sacred Harp Music (1942) — Library of Congress
- Sacred Harp singing — Wikipedia
- Stax Records — Wikipedia
- Stax Museum of American Soul Music
• Professional Organizations:
- The Recording Academy
- Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC)
- Audio Engineering Society (AES)
- The Dust-to-Digital Foundation (Graves is a board member and technical advisor)
• Other References:
- Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab (MoFi) — audiophile reissue label referenced in the source tape discussion
- The Sacred Harp Publishing Company
- Grammy Award for Best Historical Album
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