What song(s) do you love the production on?

Niall - Dahlia

Just been listening to the last Kings of Leon album, not a huge fan but one track "Fans" really stood out for me, love how it's recorded. It's really simple but sounds great to my ears, very open, very hard panning yet still sounds natural, love the guitar tone, everything is crystal clear. The first song I heard off the album like most people was "On Call" and I hated the weird gated reverb on the vocals, but I love the reverb on Fans, how everything seems to hang in the air beautifully.

So what songs do you guys really love the production on? Any recommendations for a really well recorded song or even whole album. Especially anything recent. Who was the engineer/producer and why do you like it?

Anima

Well theres an electronic artist called Hrvatski who's productions sound really great. His album, "Swarm and dither", is his latest offering and it's his best sounding to date, production wise at least.

My favourite track would be "Carrot", not only for the song itself but for the flawless engineering on it. It goes from slow/minimal sounding, with just a guitar, a drum beat and an electric piano to a loud, bass and breakbeat heavy middle and end with glitchy sounds in between. All the while it sounds clear, uncrowded, loud and the bass is phenominal. I love it

TelePaul

Grace - Jeff Buckley

Doctor J

Though I'd only rate the songs on the album as ok, I think the black Metallica album is a shining example of how to produce Metal, making it clear and crisp but without sacrificing any heaviness. Bob Rock got a lot of grief, justifiably so, for his work on their last album but really you just can't fault sound of the black album.

Rick Rubin is also worthy of a mention, mostly for his work on Slayer's Reign In Blood. Though Andy Wallace is responsible for the sound, the key to the album's quality is Rubin getting the band to play many of a songs a lot faster than they had written them. Production isn't just about good sounds, it's about getting the most of the songs. In this case, he had the vision to turn what would have been a reasonably decent 40+ minute album into a hugely powerful 28 minute album which revolutionised an entire genre and is still rightly hailed as a classic 20 years after its release which the band have never come close to equalling, let alone topping.

Boston's first album is a template for a great sounding rock album and should be a compulsory purchase for anyone into guitar music production. It still sounds relevant today 30 years after its release, in fact there are very few albums which have come out in the meantime with such attention given to every note and it shows, it's just beautifully produced from start to finish by Tom Scholz.

One more then, Brian Eno for his work on Millionaires by James. As good as anything you'll hear, this album goes from largely electric sounds to acoustic to pretty high energy layering to sparse melancholy and everywhere inbetween but the whole thing sounds cohesive and every song sits comfortably between what comes before and after, which is some achievement given the breadth of the songs.

ogy

not the coolest tune in the world but even if your not a fan check out "do it again" by steely dan. it won a lot of awards for productioni think. the use and transparency of compression alone is amazing. if you move from very quiet to very loud the consistency of the balance is amazing.

judas101

I always think most recordings by Tool sound fantastic.

squibs

I love Thomas Dolby's work on Prefab Sprout's Steve McQueen. It does have an 80s sounds, but it is very lush.

For an example of a good self poduced album, I love The Citadels - Letting Go Holding On (now defunct Cork band). It's slightly flawed but that gives it soul.

For pure pop production, I think The Beat's cover of Can't Get Used to Losing You has never been surpassed.

Use those 3 as references for my mixes all the time.

eddyc

judas101 wrote:

I always think most recordings by Tool sound fantastic.

I'd agree except for Undertow, I'm not a big fan of the production on it , it has a kinda sloppy sound, it may just be crap sounding compared to aenima and lateralus cos the production on them is so crisp.

I really like the work done by Mark Ellis (flood), his production style really is the yardstick by which most of the alternative/electronic albums of the nineties were measured by.
The production of 'The downward spiral' is amazing, it was done with one of the first protools systems and was recorded in 16bit, the effects , synth sounds and samples really work well and stand out to this day. I'd bet that without his work it wouldnt have been as big an album that it was.

Same goes for 'Songs of faith and devotion' by Depeche mode, really powerful stuff there that people with all the plugins in the world would still find difficult to reproduce on a system today, ace producer.

Giblet

TelePaul wrote:

Grace - Jeff Buckley

Dream Brother ;>

TelePaul

Giblet wrote:

Dream Brother ;>

Well I meant the whole album, I love Corpus Christi Carol.

eoin5

Dark Side of the Moon is my fav, I'm surprised it wasnt mentioned yet. If I had to pick a track it would be Us and Them; perfect dynamics and a really huge full sound in the chorus without ending up muddled. Class stuff.

Maccattack

Niall - Dahlia wrote:

Just been listening to the last Kings of Leon album

Funny. when I saw the title of this thread. That album immediately sprung to mind. Of any recent album Ive bought that one stands out. Really like the sound of the new RUSH album too. Very powerful.

Some older ones would be Garbages first album. As soon as I heard that album I thought the band must have been made up of producers. I was right! yay me!

There is a Midnight Oil album called Redneck Wonderland which I really love the production on. sparse yet deeply layered if thats possible. An amazing album. It sounds like it comes from another world. Its an album that can only really be apprecited after many listens. the sign of a truly great album in my opinion.

jimi_t

eoin5 wrote:

Dark Side of the Moon is my fav, I'm surprised it wasnt mentioned yet. If I had to pick a track it would be Us and Them; perfect dynamics and a really huge full sound in the chorus without ending up muddled. Class stuff.

Oh man, so true. Any Colour you Like is like a masterclass in EQ'ing and properly compressing analog synthesisers. Not to mention the job they did on the vocals for Great Gig in the Sky :eek:

More contemporarily, Amon Tobins new album is absolutely amazing. DO NOT PIRATE IT ON MP3, get the CD and give it a listen with a decent pair of headphones. Fantastic stuff.

Some Lee Scratch Perry stuff is mastered nicely, especially with the gange smoke blown on the reel to reel at the end, just to give it that irie feel mon :cool:

eoin5

A recent album that stood out is The Walls - New Dawn Breaking. Its a really nice smooth CD to listen to, great mastering job. Great to see an Irish band doing it right, Ash - Meltdown was a real ear bleeder, may it never happen again.

Executive Steve

dillinja - silver blade - prototype recordings

the best tune ever by one of the best engineers ever imo... how he managed to get so much space and dynamic range in that drumbreak while still keeping that depth and impact in the bassline is just beyond me...

nobodythere

Muse - Origin of symmetry.

It just sounds so damn good

thetater

If its electronic music you like then check out "The Idiots Are Winning", an album by James Holden. The production is superb. There's some great contrasting sounds and some intresting movement in tracks like "10101" and "idiot"

Dr. Seuss

thetater wrote:

If its electronic music you like then check out "The Idiots Are Winning", an album by James Holden. The production is superb. There's some great contrasting sounds and some intresting movement in tracks like "10101" and "idiot"

I don't really think Electronic music counts in relation to this thread, since there's not really much to it 'production' wise. It's just mixing samples together. You'll never get the same ambience or feel of a real musician playing a real mic'd up instrument, and you'll always be missing the nuances that make the aforementioned tracks & albums so unique.

squibs

Life (Cardigans)

Amen to that, and I think it was the producer's first big gig? Love the up-front intimate sound of that one. Of course having such good musicians must have helped.

squibs

I don't really think Electronic music counts in relation to this thread, since there's not really much to it 'production' wise. It's just mixing samples together. You'll never get the same ambience or feel of a real musician playing a real mic'd up instrument, and you'll always be missing the nuances that make the aforementioned tracks & albums so unique.

Ooh - you're probaly going to be clapped on the back and flamed in equal measure for that one.

Personally, I disagree. There's far more to electronic music than that. An electronic performance will always be lacking when it tries to emulate acoustic instruments.

However, an electronic performance which explores the creative possibilities of the platform is a thing of beauty. There's a degree of expression in a well played synth that cannot be emulated on acoustic instruments. Pitch bend, modulation, filter cutoff, resonance, velocity multi-sampling and aftertouch can all be manipualted in realtime by a skilled musician to give a hugely expressive performance.

frobisher

Dr. Seuss wrote:

I don't really think Electronic music counts in relation to this thread, since there's not really much to it 'production' wise. It's just mixing samples together.

:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:
And for the record I'm an acoustic singer/songwriter but I'll say it again:
:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:

You need to open your mind and your ears Dr. Seuss.

Paligulus

ogy wrote:

not the coolest tune in the world but even if your not a fan check out "do it again" by steely dan. it won a lot of awards for productioni think. the use and transparency of compression alone is amazing. if you move from very quiet to very loud the consistency of the balance is amazing.

The production on the Aja album is amazing. I'd advice everybody to check out the Vh1 classic Album episode with Steely Dan's Aja. Great program. Now obviously it dosn't go into all the nitty gritty of the recording process but you do get an insight into how 2 really obsessive producers work!! Great stuff

Den_M

I don't like the band all that much, but Greenday's last album has a song called Whatshername and the heavy guitars towards the end of it sound unbelievable. I don't think I've ever heard guitars sound more powerful than that.

cornbb

Dr. Seuss wrote:

I don't really think Electronic music counts in relation to this thread, since there's not really much to it 'production' wise. It's just mixing samples together. You'll never get the same ambience or feel of a real musician playing a real mic'd up instrument, and you'll always be missing the nuances that make the aforementioned tracks & albums so unique.

I would absolutely disagree. Production is more important than ever when it comes to electronic music - because you are dealing with abstract, unfamiliar sounds as opposed to the familiar, well-defined sounds of "real" instruments, the production process is what really defines the sounds you hear and therefore becomes an integral part of the composition itself - an electronic musician composes his/her instruments as well as composing the tunes. The production process for acoustic music is like adding a coat of varnish by comparison (not that I mean to knock the art form that is acoustic post-production). "Mixing samples together" is only one technique out of the thousands that are used to create electronic music. You'll find that synths and samplers (especially analogue ones) have plenty of individual nuances of their own too.

Dord

Den_M wrote:

I don't like the band all that much, but Greenday's last album has a song called Whatshername and the heavy guitars towards the end of it sound unbelievable. I don't think I've ever heard guitars sound more powerful than that.

Its a great guitar sound! Afaik Billie Joe ran his guitar direct to the mixing desk and blasted the input so it went into overdrive, he used this along with his regular SLP setup.

My favourite song's production has to be Muse's song Bliss. Great sound to it.

Hypnotoad

grasshopa wrote:

Muse - Origin of symmetry.

It just sounds so damn good

I agree with you there,all except the first riff on newborn.They made it sound terrible.

Yv

I think Boards of Canada (esp. Music Has the Right to Children and Geogaddi) sound amazing - the texture of the sound is class.

Kid A by Radiohead sounds pretty great too (the song especially).

cornbb

Yv wrote:

I think Boards of Canada (esp. Music Has the Right to Children and Geogaddi) sound amazing - the texture of the sound is class.

I agree - they have a way of making all their tunes sound like they're coming from a 1950s TV