The thread where I hate famous indie rock producer Dave Fridmann

You, sir, have gone to extraordinary lengths to ruin the recording of rock music. Please retire.

Seconded.

haha. i am intrigued by your thesis. please elaborate.

I like quite a lot of the albums listed here, but then I was a fan of the bands in question before so maybe that's why.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Fridmann#Selected_Discography_as_a_producer.5B6.5D

huh; i only own one record from the list of his credits on wikipedia

I dunno, dudes, I know he's come in for some heat in these loudness war things everyone talks about, but his career includes some pretty sweet sounding records! Flaming Lips/Mercury Rev in the 90s ... Mountain Goats' Tallahassee ... Sparklehorse' Wonderful Life. I love the way all those records sound.

Rev's See You On The Other Side is an amazing sounding record for example.

he's getting to the point where i really can't listen to any record he produces...like his aggressive compression and just general sandblasted flatness of everything hurts my ears.

he's somehow happened into this position where he works with good and/or famous bands, so then other bands think "oh yeah he must be good" and he gets MORE work as a result and then the vicious cycle continues.

the sleater kinney thread reminded me of how much he ruined The Woods...

I dunno, dudes, I know he's come in for some heat in these loudness war things everyone talks about, but his career includes some pretty sweet sounding records! Flaming Lips/Mercury Rev in the 90s ... Mountain Goats' Tallahassee ... Sparklehorse' Wonderful Life. I love the way all those records sound.

― tylerw, Friday, April 9, 2010 7:26 PM (18 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

He's like Anakin Skywalker...once he went evil he went all the way

though i do like the records you mentioned.

rock action is my second favorite mogwai album, so there's that

nah, m@tt, i know what you mean, his 00s work has been pretty harsh sounding (Mountain Goats record being one of the exceptions I've heard). kind of an interesting case though -- wonder if anyone's asked him about his opinion regarding the loudness/compression issue?

all i've heard of that list is soft bulletin and drums and guns. and the MGMT album, ha. which sounds like total shit.

the fried out mids and highs are one thing, but his bottom end is really weird too. can't put my finger on it tho, it's like it's overbearing or just jacked up after the fact. like not just recorded loud, or with the bass instruments mixed high, but just each low-end frequency is rammed up w/o reference to anything.

I listened to The Great Eastern and Hate a month or two ago and found his drum sound, in particular, very distracting...as in, I didn't like it, and yet it kept drawing my attention.

I hated what he did to that Creeper Lagoon album...I dug the album before that (their debut?) a lot so I was def. pissed to hear what he did.

I love the way Hope and Adams sounds but hate what he did to Per Second... (what a fucking annoying name for a record btw) so I am inclined to think he started believing his hype in the time between that (from The Soft Bulletin I imagine).

guess he teaches at SUNY Fredonia ... he must keep up with all this compression chatter in the production world. Can't seem to find an interview online with him.

he's not always good, but he has made some amazing records - I can't hate on him

MGMT album was the last thing of his I liked, I think, but I'll rep for Hate and See You On the Other Side/Deserters' Songs, Rock Action (the only Mogwai album I've kept), probably some others.

V. much enjoy the soothing sounds of these records...

2009 Embryonic The Flaming Lips
2007 Drums and Guns Low
2005 The Woods Sleater-Kinney
2005 The Great Destroyer Low
2002 Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots The Flaming Lips
2001 Rock Action Mogwai
1999 The Soft Bulletin The Flaming Lips
1999 Come on Die Young Mogwai
1995 See You on the Other Side Mercury Rev
1995 Clouds Taste Metallic The Flaming Lips
1993 Boces Mercury Rev
1992 Hit To Death In The Future Head The Flaming Lips
1991 Yerself Is Steam Mercury Rev
1990 In A Priest Driven Ambulance The Flaming Lips

These, on the other hand...

2008 Snowflake Midnight Mercury Rev
2006 At War With The Mystics The Flaming Lips
2005 The Secret Migration Mercury Rev
2002 Romantica Luna
2002 Hate The Delgados
2001 All Is Dream Mercury Rev
1998 Deserter's Songs Mercury Rev
1997 Zaireeka The Flaming Lips

I haven't heard the majority of his productions - I just hate him for what he did to Café Tacuba on Cuatro Caminos. The world already had one Flaming Lips, it didn't need another for the Spanish-speaking market.

2009 Embryonic The Flaming Lips
2007 Drums and Guns Low
2005 The Woods Sleater-Kinney
2005 The Great Destroyer Low

Admittedly this bunch (everything decent from the past 5 years) has its overblown production working in spite of itself. The change in sonics worked well for Low (a great contrast to their previous, very hushed sound) whereas half the point of both The Woods and Embryonic is for those records to sound like they are physically destroying the speakers as they play. Production's in the red, sure, but it works!

xpost

2008 Snowflake Midnight Mercury Rev
2006 At War With The Mystics The Flaming Lips
2005 The Secret Migration Mercury Rev
2002 Romantica Luna
2002 Hate The Delgados
2001 All Is Dream Mercury Rev

This bunch in particular is fucking unforgivable. All those sound horrible.

just got the new album by grand mal an hour ago which david has mastered and its all about that gorgeous warm 70s sound.
none of the mgmt excess at all.

2005 The Woods Sleater-Kinney

this record doesn't sound overblown to me. it sounds like a normal S-K record. don't know what people are hearing that i'm not

and the parts that do sound extra loud, the parts that people probably would call overblown, i would call awesome and cool

Romantica sounds horrible? I dunno, it's ok. Will definitely agree w/ At War With The Mystics. And the Secret Migration's songs were so bad that I didn't really spend much time thinking about the production.

also wtf there's a new Grand Mal album?

to key to hearing his recent stuff to me is to listen over real speakers on a real stereo. what can sound like a muddy wall of crap on mp3 over computer speakers totally opens up in the room, all sorts of cool subtleties within the fuzz.

Grand Mal! http://clandestineband.blogspot.com/
Amazingly, the dude is sharing all those old St. Johnny records for free over there ... Those albums were kind of OK! If I remember correctly.

I only own two of those, The Woods and A Dream In Sound. The former is absolutely the worst-produced S-K album, but the latter sounds great to me.

also wtf there's a new Grand Mal album?

from the first 5 tracks, tis a wonderful continuation of love is the best con in town.

more detail : http://clandestineband.blogspot.com/

as always though with bills music, its all about the voice.

you will either love it, or hate it.

[xpost !]

he is ok.
some of the records he worked on sounds good, some just ok (most of them probably) ond some are bad.
never produced something that i'd say "WOW" to though, but maybe one day he will.
sometimes putting his "vision" into record doesnt succeed but at least he has one.

xpost i had a couple friends in high school who loved the hell out of St. Johnny (and subsequently Grand Mal) ... I think they even looked up his phone # and called Whitten and he was a nice dude.

Those albums were kind of OK! If I remember correctly.

― tylerw, Friday, April 9, 2010 7:53 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol you should be their press agent!

haha. i just remember hearing them a lot back in the day due to said high school friends, but I never got terribly into them.

btw I know on the Flaming Lips Embryonic thread someone had made a rip of the vinyl mix/master of the record ... would love to hear that, was never able to track it down.

That Wiki list appears to be missing the Wallmen's Not Too Long Time Sound, which came out on Bar/None sometime in the 1990s. Oh well. It's a total obscurity.

also Prolapse 2nd album, which has its moments

yeah i like embryonic in theory but it's reaaally tiring to listen to, and i like the songs a lot.

honestly half the reason i'm so into vinyl these days it's it's like a last line of defense against bonkers mastering

if this guy produced Hit To Death In The Future Head and In A Priest Driven Ambulance, he can live. ADORE the sound of those records.

A+ premise for thread

and the parts that do sound extra loud, the parts that people probably would call overblown, i would call awesome and cool

Petition for all of the above!

I only own two of those, The Woods and A Dream In Sound. The former is absolutely the worst best-produced S-K album

Fixed.

this record doesn't sound overblown to me. it sounds like a normal S-K record. don't know what people are hearing that i'm not

Without taking a stand on whether the effect is good or bad, surely you can hear that the album is filled with sludgy, overdriven guitar? I mean, compare that to the spidery, angular guitar sound on The Hot Rock. The Woods wouldn't even have room in the mix for a melodica solo like on "A Quarter to Three."

'The Fox' alone is massively classic

i kno its my fault for caring but the 2nd clap your hands say yeah album was the most appalling ugly sounding record i have ever heard and made like masonna sound like chic

was that fridmann's fault though?
(half kidding -- i never understood what people saw in that band)

Yall think maybe after he produces a record whoever Warner Bros. has mastering these is told to make them as loud as possible? I mean I'm sure that's not all his fault. He did do "Clouds Taste Metallic" as well as "At War"....

was that fridmann's fault though?

^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The Woods sounds way different than the rest of Sleater-Kinney's albums. Everything is totally overdriven and pumped up. I personally like what he did on that album, but can understand why others would hate it.

Embryonic is basically the same story. I pretty much like this whole album except for one of the more atmospheric songs which has a clanging chord that repeats periodically and causes a sharp pain in my head each time.

Without taking a stand on whether the effect is good or bad, surely you can hear that the album is filled with sludgy, overdriven guitar? I mean, compare that to the spidery, angular guitar sound on The Hot Rock. The Woods wouldn't even have room in the mix for a melodica solo like on "A Quarter to Three."

hmmmm. i guess add to this the fact that i like when bands play with an explore their sound, so the overdriven stuff doesn't seem that different or weird to me versus the Hot Rock stuff. i mean, the differences between the two records are fairly minor to my ears.

'The Fox' alone is massively classic

so true! and still: doesn't sound *that* different than the other S-K stuff.

Big in-depth thing with him in last month's Sound on Sound on the recording of Embryonic - it's interesting even if you don't like him or the Flaming Lips.

I adore Romantica (my second favorite Luna), but am inclined to give the band the credit.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar10/articles/lips.htm

Ugh it hits a paywall right when it starts to get good! Anyone want to post the whole thing?

i don't have romantica in front of me, but I think Fridmann just contributed to the mixing of the record? maybe I'm mistaken ...

Here's the full sound on sound article about recording the Soft Bulletin.

http://www.breathingprotection.com/sound_on_sound_fridmann.pdf

Mercury Rev have an album called Snowflake Midnight? Lordy.

I can't possibly say anything bad about someone who did what he did in the '90s. I like a bunch of the '00s stuff too.

Ugh it hits a paywall right when it starts to get good! Anyone want to post the whole thing?

Long story short: they kept the drummer's original demo recordings and overdubbed them, only used a few mics, didn't use a click track, and laid off on the Pro Tools.

that's a great story

i haven't listened to too many of his records, but definitely noticed that the woods and embryonic were very loud. for SK that's alright, for the lips it was fine until i was listening to songs on my mp3 player on shuffle, and "watching the planets" just about blew my brain out.

aside from the loudness though, i don't really mind what he does. i wouldn't go so far to say that he's ruining bands for me or anything like that.

not really my kind of thing ne more, but back in the day, i thought 'deserter's songs' sounded fine, but 'the soft bulletin' gd terrible with a few exceptions

the drums are particularly bad, but it's all over the place

i always thought that yerself is steam sounded rilly cool. and i did get into the sounds on deserter's songs when it came out but i didn't know then that so much stuff would end up trying to sound like that for years to come and if i had known that i would have been sad. cuz when its done wrong its so overblown and kinda horrible. i was already sick of it by the time that the next rev album came out and then soft bulletin. couldn't take soft bulletin at all.

oh wait soft bulletin then all is dream. whatever. really regretted buying rock action. thought i'd take a chance. such a nothing album. so boring. and the production was only half the problem.

i really liked my see you on the other side t-shirt though. they were giving them away at 3rd street jazz with every purchase. wore it for years!

the drums are particularly bad, but it's all over the place

It's funny, when the Soft Bulletin came out I thought the drum sound was one of the best I'd ever heard! The record store clerk where I bought it compared it to the Bonham sound. Since "Clouds" they've been pushing for a more crunchy and distorted drum sound, and if you want to layer things over such a sound, so that you can hear what you're playing on top but still have the drums nice and loud in the mix, then massive compression is really the only way to go... At least that's the way it seems from my own (limited) recording experience.

tallahassee was produced by tony doogan fyi, recorded @ fridmann's studio

drums on soft bulletin are one of the only drums on an indie album that i actually like!

not really my kind of thing ne more, but back in the day, i thought 'deserter's songs' sounded fine, but 'the soft bulletin' gd terrible with a few exceptions

^^^^ this

Everything he's done since Soft Bulletin is sonically horrible and compressed to shit, even if the songs / arrangements / individual instrument "sounds" are actually fine. After Embryonic I simply wont buy another record produced by him.

that first Clap Your Hands record sounds great, but whatever I heard of Some Loud Thunder (can't remember) was seriously O_O. they should've just had the same dude produce both.

can't really speak to many of those records but the low ones sounded awful.

Without hearing the unmastered versions, it's hard to tell how much of the damage was done before the mastering stage, but there is something about those crunchy drums that might make the average mastering engineer reach straight for the brickwall limiter.

tallahassee was produced by tony doogan fyi, recorded @ fridmann's studio
how would you know, dude?
(kidding! my mistake, thought Fridmann had actually produced ...)

2009 Embryonic The Flaming Lips

i thought maybe it was a bad rip but yeah this one is just ear-bleeding

drums & guns sounds great imo