Low
Jacksonville City Nights by Ryan Adams and the Cardinals, seems to have been done more or less live, occasional shitty vocals and all, just put to tape flat out. It makes it much more of a charming record considering it's essentially a deadpan pastiche.
Glassjaw's Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Silence basically sounds like mud - the guitars are really low, the drums are clunky - but Daryl's vocals are so up-front, in your face and raw and it just makes the whole record hit a lot harder than it would if it'd been traditionally multi-tracked, etc.
Anything by Elvis recorded at Sun studios, which was just some slapback and his band.
Anything by Minor Threat, Black Flag's first record.
Tinariwen's Aman Iman which I think was all done live too. Just adds to the intimacy and hypnotic power of the music.
The first two Stooges records couldn't have been produced any other way.
High
Anything by Joy Division. The space, the air, the echo that makes it sound like it was recorded by four band members at four different poles, with nothing but sound in between.
The MC5's Back In The USA deliberately has a very 1950s, tinny, thin sound, all treble and virtually no bass. But somehow the songs stand up to it. The addition of just a tiny bit of organ on 'Tonight' makes it all the sweeter. Honourable mention goes to the follow-up, High Times because they went the opposite way and just piled anything they could think of onto every song.
Glassjaw's second album, Worship And Tribute is totally different to its predecessor as far as sound. It's sharper, cleaner, leaner like a big cat, and it's not so much shiny as it is metallic, like the buttons on a military uniform before espionage. I know I'm sounding pretentious here, but my aim in life is to be a music journo after all.
Any of Dr. Dre's big single productions, but the stuff from his 1990s period stands out to me more, like 'No Diggity' and 'The Next Episode,' or 'Still D.R.E.'
Twilight Singers' Powder Burns. I consider this record to be a modern classic, and the production I think is flawless - it's so smooth and warm, with pianos and strings and the kitchen sink thrown in, it's all so unnecessary yet fits so perfectly to the haziness of the songs.
Changes
First, foremost and above all others - Henry's Dream by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. These are some of his darkest, hardest songs and on this record they sound so wimpy. He did a live album to make up for most of it (including a wonderfully heavy 'Jack The Ripper') but I really wish I could just re-record and re-mix it so it sounds right.
I think that Linkin Park, whilst insanely poppy even on their first album, weren't half as tarted up as they are now and if they stripped their sound back a bit more it'd be a more credible sound than what they have at the moment.
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Topic: Low Production, High Production, and those between. (Read 8333 times)