Bonkers recording aesthetics - recommendations?

Hey, we should update this thread! Preferably without too much argument about Ariel Pink, but still.

Alex Chilton's Like Flies On Sherbert

i was reading about The Urinals yesterday, their first single was recorded on 4 track with a microphone used for recording sounds underwater, the second on a film-scoring stage, and the third in a gym during a weightlifting session! more a lack of money than a conscious aesthetic though.

Not recent I'm afraid, but "Well Wired" by Daughters of Albion is a great example, especially because the single version is produced straight and sucks compared with the phased/panned/flanged/etc. album version.

Oh, I see this finally came out on CD on Fallout! Must order.

does ulver - nattens madrigal qualify for this?

The Coachwhips
Wavves

Always loved the sound of The Germs' "Forming," and Half Japanese's cover of "Paint It Black" from the Miniatures compilation which the liner notes describe as sounding like it was recorded on a $2 cassette recorder inside the bass drum.

Fallout! Must order

does not compute

royal trux, accelerator: "hey let's digitally compress and process everything!!"

the Music Tapes often record on 1895 Edison wax cylinders, 1940's wire recorders, etc and then layer those different techniques upon eachother digitally. The result sounds great.

Black metal is full of this, but for me the prize goes to Paysage D'Hiver - solo project of Tobias Mockl from Darkspace. Varies between chilled out synth ambience and everything-in-the-red blasting. What really makes his work is the jolting, but perfectly managed, transitions between the two. A riff that is so distorted and degraded that's on the edge of being pure white noise is suddenly joined by a matched, clean keyboard part that makes sense of it all. I'd guess that the structures are influenced by dance music - he'll ride a riff until it's almost unbearable, then drop it out or break it down in a way that makes it feel like your head is coming off. And that's without mentioning the interminable intros of footsteps trudging through the snow, which are initially irritating, but rack up the tension. It's kvlt BM, so need I mention that it's all home recorded and originally issued on cassette, with all the fabulous lo-fi murk that that implies?

A nice example of bonkers recording technique from j of Wrath of the Weak in an interview with Maelstrom: "Well, it was just the vocals which were recorded with the headphones. If you plug them (or a speaker of any kind, really) into a mic input, it'll effectively function as a microphone."

When ordinary distortion just isn't enough . .

Plenty of discussion on the relevant thread, but Low's Drums and Guns fits this bill - Dave Fridmann mixes the vocals hard left (or right) for the majority of the album, so whilst it sounds great on speakers it's a very peculiar experience on headphones (imo).

Xpost to electricsound: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Daughters-Albion/dp/B00117BK78

Boycott Fallout!!!

thank you and goodnight.

(plus, can't you get a decent vinyl copy of that album for, like, 15 bucks?)

you can listen to well wired for free anyway:

http://www.myspace.com/daughtersofalbionx

just rip the album from a blog. don't give fallout your money. probably sound as good anyway since all of fallout's boots are needledrops.

Oh, sorry. Didn't know they were evil...

Anyway, the single version is produced totally normally and it's nowhere near as good!

for me the prize goes to Paysage D'Hiver

Which album should I start with?

Funkadelic "Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow"

nothing else sounds like this album

the first Sightings EP is really far out, but most of their catalog probably qualifies for this thread.

xpost: I'd recommend "'Kristall and Isa" as the starting point for Paysage D'Hiver - it has a balanced mix of chill and blast, and the tracks are relatively short. Some releases are more ambient, others are pure frosty riffage. Let Metal Archives be your guide. "Winterkalte" is the magnum opus (so far, anyway) giving Tobias' full range at epic length. If you can find the Kunsthall reissues, they're beautifully packaged in matt paper booklets with minimal, monochrome designs.

Early Who records produced by Kit Lambert. Townshend tells the story (I guess in The Kids Are Alright) about Lambert not really knowing what he was doing, just twisting dials, and the engineer going "aw no mate, you can't-- AW NO, NOT THAT ONE"

The great thing about Garageband-type self-production across the genres from dubstep to BM is that there is no engineer to say NO, NOT THAT ONE!

the story of reality d. blipcrotch and the recording of the one album is still one of the best. and it never gets old:

http://www.gotarevolution.com/reality.htm

xpost on Daughters of Albion: I had already ordered the CD before hearing about Lookout's evil.

It is a needle-drop, I think, but that's based on like one minor pop or two. On the whole, it sounds pretty great and much better than the vinyl rip I did myself (on a reasonably decent system). Unless Lookout is using their profits to kill babies or something, I'm not regretting the purchase. I'll leave it to the audio experts to sort things out in detail.

They screwed up the back cover art and got a couple of track names slightly wrong. Maybe the thing to do is to look for a download of a rip of this, for the best of all possible worlds. I still think this may be the best rare-ish pop-rock album from the 60's. It really ought to get a Rhino treatment or something.

Whoops, "Fallout" not "Lookout."

MES's self-production on Imperial Wax Solvent is even odder than usual. There seems to be a bunch of arbitrary fader-sliding, "50 Year Old Man" being the masterpiece.