Anything recorded on the Ronnie Lane mobile.

beat happening - dreamy (the song "i've lost you" sounds beautiful... i never get over it)

i'm also very fond of junkyard by the birthday party. it's messy, but really helps convey the menace of the music.

Germ War wrote:Inspired by the D. Boon birthday thread, I have to nominate Double Nickels on the Dime. Every time I put it on, I'm amazed by how incredible it sounds. That record is a sonic achievement.

I was just reading a Mike Watt article in the Canadian magazine Exclaim! today -

The whole album was written in a month, and the entire thing mixed in one day. No joke.

While I think the whole album sounds great, the song Canaveral on 1000 Hurts sounds absolutely amazing.

Braden wrote:
Here is what 'Scar Tissue' from Californication looks like. Gotta love them dynamics!

Ha! Looks just like the envelope of that Ricky Martin song.

Bedhead - Transaction De Novo

esp. when the whole band starts playing at the two minute mark on More Than Ever, hmmmmm.....

Keep in mind a lot of my choices are entirely subjective. I will choose albums, singles, or sometimes individual songs.

I'll also choose a worst produced list.

All right - let's go:

Beatles - "Strawberry Fields Forever"/"Penny Lane" - Still unbelievable. Truly avant-garde production techniques, put together with two genius pop songs (the former is better), equals something that still sounds like nothing else.

Beatles - Revolver - This, actually, was probably more revolutionary in terms of production than Sgt. Pepper was, and while a little less clean, it's far more innovative. Sgt. Pepper built on the techniques that Revolver introduced.

Swans - Young God EP - The sound on this EP is astonishing. It sounds as big as the world and as terrifying as one of the lower circles of Dante's Inferno.

Ministry - The Land of Rape and Honey - This is the way to integrate samples into music correctly.

Anything by Pink Floyd sounds amazingly well produced. Even Piper, which does sound like it was done on the cheap, sounds great.

Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures - I probably like Closer more, but this is, in production terms alone, one of the most influential albums ever made.

Wire - Pink Flag - Rough, unpolished, yet completely professional.

Stooges - Fun House - Absolutely raw, immediate, live-in-your-face, and absolutely no frills. The production here epitomizes, um, raw power, unlike the production on that third album.

Lee "Scratch" Perry - Anything from the '70's - Dub production at its finest.

Led Zeppelin - "When The Levee Breaks" - Drums. Harmonica.

Gang of Four - "Capital (It Fails Us Now)" - The production on this track just knocks me out. Don't know why exactly. Punching in the different voices and guitars - it surges while feeling totally restrained.

Sly and the Family Stone - There's A Riot Goin' On - The strangely washed-out, muted quality is perfect for Sly's drugged cynicism. It's like ghosts are living in the tapes - you can listen and find new things in there that you never heard before after literally hundreds of listens.

PiL - Metal Box/Second Edition - Chuck D. says: "Bass!"

Drunks With Guns - The first side of Second Verses - Recording quality is completely fucked, but in a great way = sounds like it was recorded underwater, but somehow adds to the total evilness of the music. Their lyrics weren't so hot, but that guitar tone gave birth to AmRep noise-rock, says I.

Drunks With Guns - "Wonderful Subdivision (original version)" - The sound of this song is just unbelievable...probably the one professionally recorded track in their catalog. Heaviest rhythm section sound I've ever heard in my life, except Swans.

And now for a list of albums that sound like shit:

Husker Du - New Day Rising - eurrggghhhhhh...The guitar sounds like a trebly vacuum cleaner without nearly as much rage as before and the drum sound is laughable. Also you cannot hear the vocals clearly on about half the tracks. I maintain that Zen Arcade is quite tolerable production-wise, but this is horrendous.

Funkadelic - Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow - The production is so bad that it really does distract you from how great the music is. Hideously overtrebly, random awful panning throughout to disguise the fact that it was originally recorded in mono, terribly recorded - they were on acid while recording and mixing the entire album, so it's only to be expected...

Germs - "My Tunnel" - Craptastic - over-recorded and lo-fi, with all the cymbals smeared out...gross.

Any version of Raw Power sounds cruddy, but I prefer the Bowie version cause of the trashed '70's vibe...

Dead Kennedys - Plastic Surgery Disasters - Can you say annoying? Christ...still a good album though.

Dinosaur Jr - "Poledo" - Yeah, it's supposed to sound awful, but...it sounds awful.

Most mid-'80's stuff - gated reverb plus bad synth equals Crap.

These albums are excellently produced:

A Perfect Circle's "Thirteenth Step"

Shellac's " Terraform"

Napalm Death's "Enemy Of The Music Business"

Codeine's "The White Birch/ Barely Real"

Chokebore - "Black black"
Johnny Cash - "American Recordings I-V"
Melvins - "Stag"
Neurosis - "Times of grace"
Shellac - "At action park"

Skronk wrote:Terraform

I was listening to this again last night. The drum sound - especially the snare on Mouthpiece - is fucking nuts.

Lungfish 'Indivisible' sounds great.

Dead Meadow's 'Howls from the Hills' also, the drums in particular sound incredible.

Joe Barresi just did a bang-up job on Clutch's latest release, Beale Street to Oblivion. Best recording of/by them since the mid 90's IMO.

'Believo' by Enon features some pretty creative and enjoyable recording and mixing.

I have to agree with the previous poster on Husker Du's 'New Day Rising'- great album, but boy does the recording sound like shit.