dj mute button.
1.
A while ago, I stumbled on The Court And Spark.
I instantly loved their music, which one might describe as "alt-country slowcore". Their new record
came out this week and I ordered it right
away. This one is a bit of a disappointment for three reasons: one, it's more uptempo than their
first two records. Two, there's some awful lyrics in the "I love you babe, you have beautiful hair"
vein.
But the most interesting disappointment is the third: the production. Not the recording, which is beautiful, but the production decisions. The arrangements are too damn dense. The earlier C&S material was pretty straightforward; it sounded like the band could have tracked the songs live onto 16-track. This time, it sounds like they brought all their friends to the studio, and kept layering up the Protools with tracks. Does that chorus really need a timpani part?
2.
Greg recorded Cousteau live for AOL a
few years ago, and played me the recording. I'd never heard of them but I dug the songs. And the
recording is amazing. It's unbelievable that it's live to 2, both because Greg nailed the
recording and mix, and because the band was solid. Overdubs, second takes, six months in
the studio with a producer, none of that would have done a thing to improve this recording.
Greg sent me a CD of the performance (hope that doesn't get you fired, big guy). After listening to it for a while, I bought the first Cousteau record. Ugh. Strings, horns, layers of crappy scenery. The good stuff about the songs got buried under the overdubs. I wouldn't have liked their stuff at all if I hadn't heard the live recording first.
(correction: It was for KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic. Looks like the audio is available from their archive.)
3.
At work, a co-worker and I spent a while talking about some coding problems he's having on a project
right now. Some of his teammates get so dug into a problem that they never stick their head up to
see where they've gotten. It's like, "we'll run north for ten miles! Well, we hit a problem so
really quick let's run to the left for a mile, then turn around this corner, then that means you'll
have to go south for 2 miles before cutting east, swimming for a while, then going down this cliff...
okay! We're here! Success! Write down that course!". The complexity eats itself and before you
know it you've written 400 lines of code to compare dates.
I've seen lots of programmers do this. You're so bent on solving The Problem that it never occurs to you how ridiculous a solution you've built.
But when you stumble on code that someone else wrote this way, you sure as hell know it. And you hate that bastard.
4.
Last night I was listening back to some of the songs that I've abandoned halfway through.
One had a bunch of its components as individual files, so first I listened to them.
They were wicked. Nice ideas with tweaky little curve balls to keep you guessing.
Then I listened to the song itself, which basically consisted of each of those parts strung together. And it sounded like nothing. All the ear-bending, all the complexity, gone.
5.
The Dillinger Escape Plan. Nuff said.
6.
Greg assisted Eddie Kramer on a
live Hendrix remix. At some point they were talking about mixing philosophy and Kramer's came down
to, "if someone plays something good, turn that up".
7.
Brad Derrick, the man who never knows when to stop. A few years ago Brad was showing me one of his
under-construction Plink songs. And it was, like, 82,000 cool things at once. Typical for Brad.
(actually, 82,000 is a little lightweight for him.)
I muted half the tracks and the song got better. Since then we call me "DJ Mute Button".
8.
Can you step outside of your own creations?