Let's hear it for lo-fi...
Just read the new issue. Nice to know that I'm not alone in the wilderness.
The article on production procedures devaluing music was compelling stuff. I've known for a while that music is becoming far too over-dependent on producers. Also, as a result of this, tunes are sounding increasingly cluttered and messy.
Is it a coincidence, then, that we seem to be having a grand surge in what I like to think of as 'real music'? For the last few years, folk-influenced musicians have come to the fore. Even better, this attitude seems to have spread into other genres, gifting us with the likes of Adele and Duffy and Vincent Vincent and the Villains.
Admittedly, their music still is heavily produced, but the simple styles are so much better for having less going on.
On the downside, you do end up with irksome folk like James Blunt. Can't he be re-posted to the Middle East, please?
- More from spikeyboy.
- Login or register to post comments
Surely some mistake...
...'Gifting us Adele and Duffy'? Gifting us some photocopy of a photocopy? We should be grateful for some Brit school wannabes? Horrid pretendy erstaz soul music. That Japanese take on We Are The World is more authentic.
Now fetch my ladders, I need to get down from my high horse.
Not necessarily...
I was trying to say that the current trend is away from the mass-produced Stock, Aitken & Waterman stuff, which can only be a good thing. Naturally, the big names are still going to stick their money-grabbing fingers into the musical pie to make sure it produces their favourite kind of music - Ker-ching!
So really...
It's all mass produced? Duffy and Adele have suddenly appeared on our radar due to mass production from the studio to the supermarket via media saturation.
Are they not about product and production, heart and soul coming nowhere near?
Jeez, I'm depressing myself.
On the other hand though, M.I.A. is here.
Don't realy care
if it's back to basics or complex and highly fiddled about with so long as it's a great track, which the works of Adele and Duffy are not (much as I hoped otherwise in the case of Duffy). More than one way to skin a cat as they say. Experiments in the studio with new technology may yield great things but sometimes you just want the live performance as it happens 'in the room' - The Beatles did it both ways, as did Radiohead. And of course performers work in different ways depending on what works best for them.
Yes, but...
The Beatles and George Martin worked WITH each other. Most producers these days tend to prefer to work after the band have been sent packing.
Myself, I like to think that an artist sounds like they're presented accurately on disc, with not much to get in the way.
Of course, you do get the producer-as-artist, such as Mark Ronson and Dangermouse (I still want to ask what happened to Penfold...). The DJ-as-artist is also something to consider, but they can often go awry.
Depends
who the artist is and how much control they have and whether producer is working in consultation with act. Not in favour of the kind of fiddling with music after the event, without consultation and purely for commercial reasons at all though. Mind you producers have messed with music without artist involvement in the past too - Phil Spector and The Long and Winding Road of course, that's not quite the same thing though I guess.
Hmmm
I think Macca would say it's exactly the same thing...