1996 brought an equally experimental follow-up from Vega, Nine Objects of Desire, worked on Cibo Matto's Viva! La Woman, and crafted one of their finest collaborations on Sheryl Crow's eponymous second album. In 1994, Blake and Froom teamed up with Los Lobos' David Hidalgo and Louie Perez to form the somewhat bizarre, studio-based roots-music project the Latin Playboys, which allowed Blake's fascination with environmental ambience to run wild the same year, the duo helmed Elvis Costello's Brutal Youth and Blake also began a fruitful relationship with Soul Coughing on their debut Ruby Vroom. In 1992, Froom and Blake hit upon what would become their signature experimental sound with Los Lobos' Kiko Suzanne Vega's 99.9O F and American Music Club's Mercury further solidified their blossoming new approach. As the '80s ended, the duo worked with Paul McCartney, the Pretenders, Los Lobos, and T-Bone Burnett Blake also worked on some of Tom Waits' more cacophonous albums, like Frank's Wild Years and Bone Machine. The two soon began working together often, and began a long relationship with Richard Thompson on the same year's Daring Adventures. Blake began his career at age 25 (circa 1979) as an assistant engineer in Los Angeles in 1983, he began a five-year stint at the Sunset Sound Factory, where he met Froom in 1986 when the two worked on Crowded House's self-titled debut. Working in typically organic, stripped-down styles (guitar-based pop/rock, roots rock, singer/songwriter records, world music), Blake's unorthodox techniques - low-fidelity distortion, vintage compressors and effects pedals, mic filters made from everyday found objects, and so on - gave his work a distinctive, immediately identifiable sound, which grew increasingly odd as his aesthetic developed. Usually in partnership with producer Mitchell Froom, engineer Tchad Blake crafted some of the most adventurous - at times, even avant-garde - acoustic landscapes to hit mainstream music during the '90s.
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