Music for the hurting ears

While being busy in the studio with our band, working with producing 2 albums, I don't get a lot of free time for my ears. So when not recording and producing, I like to listen something soft and dreamlike.

Animal Collective's (see photo) new "Merriweather Post Pavilion" album has been a good thing to find for the quiet moments after a long day in the studio. I love what they've done with the master sound! It's distant, like it could've come from the 50s, but there are still those fresh synth sounds and modern production behind that all. The mastering was done by Joe Lambert, but the effect was propably made earlier, in the production stage already... cannot be sure though. But what I'm sure about is that the different and unique sound itself makes the record stand out from the masses. In an interview they don't want to call it "anti-internet sound", but it certainly is something against the brickwall loudness heard in modern music. The simply effective songs with great dynamics make me really envious, but then again, almost always listening to good music makes me think: "Why cannot I do that?!".

Upon researching (googling) more about their recording process, I came up with this part of the interview with the producer Ben Allen: 'Just prior to hitting Chase Park Transduction Studios to mix the Animal Collective record, Allen describes the highly creative recording and pre-mixing process. “To get the low end they wanted, we set up four different reamping stations in the studio—using a Fender spring reverb, an Ampeg Portaflex bass amp, a little Gibson guitar amp and the huge QSC P.A. system they use for their live shows,” describes Allen. “They’d record things straight out of their samplers through the Neve 80 Series desk into Pro Tools, and then we’d reamp the kick drum or the snare drum or 20 snare drums or bass synth parts through one of those stations, pick the sound we liked best and record that back into the computer.”

Putting up room mics and reamping these low-end elements gives the band the “live” sound they’re after, as Allen explains. “We’re using that setup to create ambience that didn’t exist in the samples themselves, which makes them sound like a band playing in a room.”' --- taken from: interesting mixing techniques website

That really sounds like what we've been doing and planning with Tuomas Henrikin Jeesuksen Kristuksen Bändi to get the electronic material sounding like it's been played and not just programmed - although we don't have expensive Neve desks or tons of plugins, we still try to be inventive in the studio and often change the working methods based on pure intuition. Usually it works :) Now upon reading about the techniques described above, I came up with tons of ideas. Tomorrow I will go to the library and get some material and then I will rethink our studio setup a bit.

Animal Collective's new EP "Fall Be Kind" is coming out in december. Check out their hit video, but first, listen to this:



The song is 'Maybes' by Mount Kimbie, followed by the whole EP.

'Maybes', the song, is a really nice combination of guitar sounds, organic percussion, tuned vocal snippets. While sounding a bit like burial, a unique soundscape is certainly achieved. The songs sound like they are just beginning a journey and could easily be stretched to be twice as long. 'Vertical' is definitely my favourite song from the EP and it almost sounds a little like Aphex Twin going to more organic directions.

Oh. I've been up all night, and it's 8 am, I should be going to sleep to be able to continue recording tomorrow. Catch you later!