Hello

i was wondering if there was anybody here who could not bear the regular way of recording/mixing anymore (every instruments recorded track by track, in dead rooms with close miking, compressors everywhere, warm & punchy mastering...). This person would only listen to album recorded and mixed at EA or by any other studio/engineer following the same dogma.

Does that person exist ? I'm interested to know more about her : why, and what are your arguments ? just curious...

matthieu

also, another question, on the same subject. are there people out there who can't listen to music, but rather have to listen to production value? are there people who can't stand punk or metal recordings from the 80's because they all sound terrible, even if the music is great? or, conversely, are there people who like very well recorded albums, even though the music is garbage?

i'd be interested to know if there are any people who won't listen to poorly produced albums who aren't engineers, or if there are any people who are not engineers that will listen to shit music just because it's recorded really well.

now what 80's metal would you consider great?

"Does that person exist ? I'm interested to know more about her : why, and what are your arguments ? just curious..."

uh, i'd guess about 95% of the people who read this forum probably feel this way.

personally, i don't care if the drumset has 50 mics or 2 mics on it. as long as it sounds like a human playing the drums and the inevitable shortcomings of the recording process are minimized (lowest noise possible, believable depth and width, 'funny' sounding frequencies minimized, etc.), then it's probably a good, if not great recording.

I admittingly buy records done by engineers i like, whether the music is good or not. The first time i heard Rachel's was when i bought one of their albums because it said Bob Weston on the back. I ended up liking them.
Although i definitely can not help but analize music the first few times i hear it, i can listen to music that isnt recorded that well. (i.e. deerhoof, Latin Playboys, etc.)

I think you've struck an interesting level of maturity (or rather, immaturity) if you can't listen to music that isnt recorded well. Ultimately, recording is about the band.

80's metal. geez, i dunno.

caveat right out of the gate here, i'm talking about music and songwriting and musicianship and creativity, NOT, i repeat NOT vocals or lyrical content. that was often really fucking retarded and sometimes unbearable if you don't know how to listen to the music and not the vocals/words.

that being said...

megadeth - peace sells, so far so good so what
metallica - ride the lightning, master of puppets
slayer - riegn in blood, south of heaven
anthrax - among the living
voivod - everything before angel rat (in order of preference, dimension hatross, killing technology, three way tie between war and pain, rrroooaaarrr, and nothingface)
death - human (okay, that was 91, but it's still fucking great every once in a while)

all that stuff is amazing, in my opinion, though as i've aged i like to listen to it more like once every year or two, rather than all the freakin time. there's a bunch of other great metal that came outta the 80's, but that's the stuff that's easiest to remember and all.

most of it sounds terrible, in the sense that it coulda been engineered a zillion times better. a great example is one i've thrown out here before, voivod's RRROOOAAARRR. the music on that is more aggressive and edgy than i dunno, just about anything. and the production is the WORST. AWFUL! production-quality-wise i've done better in my basement with an SM57 and Beta Green 2.0 only. go figure. it even almost sounds like they just set up a boom-box in a room and hit record, it's that bad. but the music is brilliant, especially considering it's almost 20 years old. i think it's aged really well.

i also wanna put in godflesh's "cold world" single as well, i don't remember what tracks, i seem to think it was tracks 1 and 2, but a couple of the songs on that kicked my ass back in the day, the several times i heard them. i never owned the disc, but a friend had it in college, '92, and i really dug it. not that they were ever really "metal". i remember people loving "streetcleaner", though i don't know that i ever gave it a good listen. but yeah, the cold world single, great music, terrible production.

and there's the O.L.D. album "lo-flux tube" as well. production SUCKED, music was pretty damn dope for 1991.

or, conversely, are there people who like very well recorded albums, even though the music is garbage?

I really enjoy The Used's CD for this reason. Many on this forum would call it "overproduced", and there's a definite digital feel to it, but I enjoy it for all the production nuances. Same with the later Pumpkins stuff (though I do enjoy a few of the numbers off Adore and Machina). Let's face it, Adore sounds like Billy Corgan locked himself in a studio for six months, but in doing so, really perfected the craft.

So yes, some of us DO listen to certain records exclusively for the production value.

Quote:
or, conversely, are there people who like very well recorded albums, even though the music is garbage?


i find myself being this way with the new 90 day men cd. first listen, i thought it was very well recorded horseshit, and now its growing on me, but i still find more enjoyment out of the engineering rather than the music.

speaking of which, i guessed from looking at the liner notes that they tracked everything at EA and went back and added all the drum triggers later at Soma, is this what happened? does anyone know? or care?

...it doesnt matter really. its a good example of tasteful use of electronics, as opposed to the mars volta cd which is a little over the top for my ear at parts.

I guess I prefer a more transparent style of production, assuming the band is any good to begin with. The so-called "mistakes" on a lot of my favorite albums are precisely those moments that linger in memory. My earliest (and most embarrassing) example would be Jimmy Page's clam at the end of "Rock 'n Roll." There's no reason to hit an open D at the end of that riff. And yet . . .

The '80s had a whole mess of good examples of emotion trumping technology (which is sort of the point, duh?): REM, Replacements, Husker Du. If they all had been produced like, say, Stone Temple Pilots, we'd all have been poorer for it. I'll lob a compliment to Albini for some of the best studio banter ever committed to vinyl: "I said, 'You fuckin' die!' to her." This is the sort of stuff that is magical and can't be faked.

I don't subscribe to some dogma when it comes to recording.
I'll do whatever gives the best result in the quickest amount of time.
If a huge reverb/effect really makes the snare sound happen, it's going
on. If it sounds good dry, that's fine too.


I find that I can listen to most anything regardless of
quality/production value/natural/whatever.
There are a few exceptions. I've never been able to listen to the last
Hot Hot Heat record because it's really bright. I don't think that's the
result of being close-minded, it just gives me a headache.

I sometimes will buy a record based on who it was recorded by. I've picked up stuff by Massenburg, Elliot Scheiner, Mitchell Froom, even Steve Albini...not because I like the music, but because I want to learn.

Generally, I would have to have a lot of extra cash on hand, ran out of other things to buy (but still in a record store for some reason), and feeling very studious.

DavidM.