Favorite Recordings based on production?

[The_Active_Conundrum]

No Doubt - Tragic Kingdom
Lady Gaga - Born This Way
Protomen - Protomen
Antlers - Hospice
Tool - 10,000 Days
Dream Theater - Scenes From a Memory
Prize Fighter Inferno - My Brother's Blood Machine


yeah, some tacky mixes in there and I know a lot of it is arrangement, but there's so many mixing tricks from each of those that I keep meaning to use.

was going to mention that record. it doesn't matter what genre of you music you identify with mainly, the fact that she's so weird, and writes a lot of her weird ideas into her music and has a great stable of engineers and producers to work with, this record came out really great. no shame, it's a great a record and sounds awesome.

Not just weird. Weird and making it work. I prefer albums that are a ride and that one is quite a ride. No shame. Probably in my top 10. I really prefer the thought of her as a lounge singer, but I'll take a great pop album over a sloppy jazz album anyday. My blasphemy increases: Born this Way had impact on me like Thriller had on most people in the 80s. Though it is mostly synthesizers, I call it the best mainstream rock album of that year.

[Pentametre]

Forgot about this thread somehow.....

Isis has always had some of my favorite guitar tones. I'm pretty sure Turner mostly uses amp distortion for his main dirty tone. They used one the coolest sounding tunings a lot, too (low to high- F#(octave lower) F#, B, E, F#, B/C#
The octaves you can get with that makes for sweeeeeet tones.

IIRC Turner plays through a SLO100. He was also playing some iteration of a '72 deluxe Tele when I saw them live back in '07, and their live sound was great, too.
Kind of surprised no one mentioned Oceanic, which is my favorite of the Isis albums, largely because of the drum sound. Love that snare sound!

M83's Before the Dawn Heals Us is a good example of an album that I like only because of it's production. I rarely listen to it anymore, because there's not much going on compositionally, but it sounds HUGE and impossibly shiny, especially Teen Angst.


Love the production of the Converge records Jane Doe and later. Plagues has such deliciously evil-sounding guitars:

[kbit]

brand new - the devil and god are raging inside me

So many great textures on that one. That sound at the end of Archers haunts me. I think its one of them screaming into their pickups with a ton of gain and delay but man... so cool.

[D.o.S.]

Kind of surprised no one mentioned Oceanic, which is my favorite of the Isis albums, largely because of the drum sound. Love that snare sound!

I like you.

[maggot]

I know that this list is 80s and 90s-centric, but music production (as opposed to music itself) has really taken a dump since then. So much over-compressed crap.

The Breeders - Pod. The 80s-90s were hit (this one, Surfer Rosa) and miss sonically (In Utero). But this is one where the production meets the style of the band perfectly.
The Flaming Lips - Transmissions from the Satellite Heart. I'm not a huge Lips fan, but this one came together perfectly. The drums! The sounds! The voice!
The Velvet Underground - VU. The conventional wisdom on this one is that they made it sound all 80s, but I love the way it sounds.
Nirvana - Bleach. Jack Endino! Nirvana shoulda gone back to him for In Utero.
The Beastie Boys - Paul's Boutique What can you say about that?
Fu Manchu - King of the Road I've never gotten used to the bad singing, but for huge-sounding butt rock riffs, this really takes the cake.
MIles Davis - Kind of Blue There's a reason that this one is the hit out of all the acoustic-era Miles recordings.
Albert Collins - Ice Pickin' So this guy has been playing guitar for decades at the time of this recording in the early 80s. He has a curiously piercing guitar tone, but his recordings for the most part sound kinda normal. Then this record comes out with standard no-frills blues production, but the guitar tone is icy, metallic, pure genius.
ZZ Top - Tres Hombres Not my favorite band, but like Fu Manchu they had a way with a riff. This one is bone dry and organic.
Big Star - 1st Album I'm picking this one over Radio City because it has more variety, and some of the Radio City songs coulda used a trim. Perfect pop production. Shiny but natural. It sounds studio in its perfection but it also sounds like people in a room recorded brilliantly.

Honorable Mentions:

Zep II through Physical Graffiti, Late 90s Fugazi albums, Warners-era Melvins.

Many of my favorite bands, like Husker Du, Witchcraft, early Funkadelic, early Jesus and Mary Chain have love-it-or-hate-it production. You kinda question how it was produced, but it wouldn't be the same if they had gone a more normal route.

[tuj]

Nirvana - In Utero

yeah!

Nirvana - Bleach. Jack Endino! Nirvana shoulda gone back to him for In Utero.

Say waaah? Those Randal amps were crap!

Seriously I think Vig got the best guitar sound of them all on Nevermind, but of course he fucked up the vocals something fierce.

[D.o.S.]

Oooh! Oooh! Iggy's version of Raw Power.

[p.j.]

Getting There by John Abercrombie and Lookout fot Hope by Bill Frisell are both masterfully produced by Lee Townshend. Wow!!!

[GardenoftheDead]

I guess I should add some other than The Fragile:

Disintegration
Animals
Lateralus
The Berlin Trilogy
The Joshua Tree
Blackwater Park
Master of Reality
Fear of a Black Planet
Exmilitary
Drukqs

Artists not listed because come on, you should know.

[BoatRich]

Forgot about this thread somehow.....

Isis has always had some of my favorite guitar tones. I'm pretty sure Turner mostly uses amp distortion for his main dirty tone. They used one the coolest sounding tunings a lot, too (low to high- F#(octave lower) F#, B, E, F#, B/C#
The octaves you can get with that makes for sweeeeeet tones.

IIRC Turner plays through a SLO100. He was also playing some iteration of a '72 deluxe Tele when I saw them live back in '07, and their live sound was great, too.
Kind of surprised no one mentioned Oceanic, which is my favorite of the Isis albums, largely because of the drum sound. Love that snare sound!

M83's Before the Dawn Heals Us is a good example of an album that I like only because of it's production. I rarely listen to it anymore, because there's not much going on compositionally, but it sounds HUGE and impossibly shiny, especially Teen Angst.


Love the production of the Converge records Jane Doe and later. Plagues has such deliciously evil-sounding guitars:

Agreed on the Converge with Axe To Fall having the single best produced sound I've ever heard. Worms Will Feed has hit me with the same intensity every time I listen to it regardless of format

[GardenoftheDead]

Forgot about this thread somehow.....

Isis has always had some of my favorite guitar tones. I'm pretty sure Turner mostly uses amp distortion for his main dirty tone. They used one the coolest sounding tunings a lot, too (low to high- F#(octave lower) F#, B, E, F#, B/C#
The octaves you can get with that makes for sweeeeeet tones.

IIRC Turner plays through a SLO100. He was also playing some iteration of a '72 deluxe Tele when I saw them live back in '07, and their live sound was great, too.
Kind of surprised no one mentioned Oceanic, which is my favorite of the Isis albums, largely because of the drum sound. Love that snare sound!

At the time of Celestial it would have been a PRS or Les Paul and either a Mesa-Boogie Dual Rec or a rack mount set up (Mesa Preamp and some kind of power amp). The Teles came about after Oceanic. For In The Absence of Truth the amp Sunn Model T and afterwards it was all VHT/Fryette Pitbull and Sig:X.

[D.o.S.]

You can get a good look at his guitars and amps over the years on the Clearing the Eye DVD. I don't know if it's still in print, though almost all of it has found its way to Youtube.

Also, the Model T were around for Panopticon, or at least the live gigs around that time. I think they'd been ditched by the ITAOT tour, but my memory might be clouded a bit (that was almost 10 years ago, jesus).

[Chankgeez]

[MaggotBrainNY]

Basically the entire Neurosis/Albini catalog is the benchmark for me. But something about the darkness and raw energy of this album in particular strikes me. They tracked this in 3 days, mixed in 2. So nuts. It almost sounds un-mixed to me in a way. Like very little evidence of EQ and any heavy handed compression... just raw tones and a band fucking destroying a room. Nothing hyped. Sounds incredible at high volume on vinyl.

For just pure sonic amazement, "Honor Found in Decay" is possibly the clearest and most high fidelity representation of any heavy band I can think of. Just masterful engineering on that one from recording straight through to the mastering.



Also, Tragedy's "Vengeance" album. The intensity of the band is enhanced so much by the production. That grimy distortion on everything, the drums... fuck.



For non-heavy stuff... this is probably the best sounding track in existence production-wise:

[kbit]

Pyramid Song is so god damned beautiful.

I really dig the production on METZ first album. It's so raw, yet full and balanced. The drums cut through perfectly, main riff is always dense, guitar noises sit very well against the main riff, and the vocals are not the loudest thing in the mix because they don't have to be. I wish more records put the vocals back in the mix more.