Alberto the Frog wrote:bigc wrote:Why is the Psychic Paramount record recorded the way it was? The levels are so high...it's so annoying.
I've been constantly switching between
'it's a creative choice by the band and thus I should embrace it as part of the whole aesthetic' and
'for God's sake! You've ruined your own record you dufuses!'.
It's hard on the ears.
It's obviously deliberate, and I could understand how it could be offensive to some, but it doesn't bother me. If that sort of thing became a trend I'd get annoyed real fast, but by itself, it just kinda makes me say, "Hmm, what an odd way to mix a record." And if the tracks are all just patchworks of various practices (although I don't necessarily think that's true) then I could imagine the band feeling comfortable distorting the levels because they are not attached to the songs at all, because they're not even real songs, they're all kind of evolved 'jams' or something.
Here is a quote from Drew St. Ivany, "I would hope that the music itself would act in the same way as a drug. That’s also why we try to keep it as organic as possible: It’s easier to trance out to something when there aren’t a bunch of sudden stops and changes to distract you.
And it’s also why we play it so loud—extreme volume has an effect on the brain too."
They were probably trying to emulate the extreme loudness of a live show on record.
