The worst sounding recording of 2007, so far.
Iffy sound quality isn't a new problem. Bad sound can't directly be blamed on digital, analog, vinyl, CD, or even MP3. Those are release formats; the quality of the recording itself is what I'm talking about.
Granted, personal taste plays a big part in defining good or bad sound. For every person who says the sound is clear and detailed, there's another who thinks it's ragged and harsh.
That said, the trend of late is toward spitty distortion, the kind that obscures the sound of the vocals and instruments, and buries them in grunge. I'm not opposed to grit that adds an edge to music, but I can't stand recordings made by people who either don't know what they're doing or are too deaf to notice the error of their ways.
Bob Dylan, of all people, agrees with me.
"You listen to these modern records--they're atrocious, they have sound all over them. There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like--static," Dylan said in a Rolling Stone interview with Jonathan Lethem in September 2006.
He's not just referring to other people's records; he included his own record, "Modern Times," in his rant: "Even these songs probably sounded 10 times better in the studio when we recorded 'em." I believe Dylan. That album was a blurry wall of sound. You can hardly hear individual instruments.
The worst recording of 2009 so far--it's still early--is the Heartless Bastards' "The Mountain" CD. It's too bad because I really like the music. It rocks hard, and I love Erika Wennerstrom's strange voice, but there's severe distortion whenever she sings loud.
The distortion was so incredibly annoying that my speakers' tweeters sounded broken. If the distortion just appeared on the hard-edged, bluesier numbers, I might have thought that it was intentional, but the sound was just as ragged on "So Quiet," in which Wennerstrom is accompanied by violin.
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It's one of those as you like it stories. We like the music that we like. Me, I hated the sound of Bob Dylan's "Modern Times" CD that came out last year, and Bob wasn't too crazy about it either. "You listen to these modern records, they're atrocious, they have sound all over them. There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like--static." That's what Dylan told Jonathan Lethem in Rolling Stone magazine, September 7, 2006.
I dissed Modern Times for its muddled sound. Dylan's vocal was upfront, maybe too loud relative to the instruments, and the overall sound irritated me to the point it distanced me from the music. Oh well, Modern Times hit #1 on the charts and was one of Dylan's best selling albums of all time. So "atrocious" sound doesn't seem to affect sales. And that's a good thing since almost everybody who listened to Modern Times heard it either over pipsqueak computer speakers, the freebie earbuds that come with iPods, or in the car. Hardly the sort of environments where sound quality would be appreciated. Me and Bob, we bemoaned the sound of modern music. It's too often an overly compressed, intentionally ear-shredding noise that doesn't sound like any sound heard in nature. Yes, that might be cool for electronic music or hard-core rock, but ear-shredding static ain't a nice adjective to apply to acoustic music. CD, MP3 or iTune, Modern Times didn't cut it.
Real music from say, an acoustic guitar played in your bedroom, doesn't sound anything like that. Ah, but slip on Dylan's "Bringing it All Back Home" CD or better yet the LP, and check out "Mr. Tambourine Man" or "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," and listen to the guitars. They sound like strings and wood. That entire album was recorded in three days--January 13, 14, and 15, 1965. Now, return to 'Times, and see if there's something going very wrong with the sound. The four decades of recording technology have taken their toll. Static, yeah, Bob summed it up nicely.
I'd be the first to admit that sound quality is entirely subjective--we like what we like--but the aesthetic has shifted. And the Audiophiliac and Bob don't like it one bit.
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