TMTYL

[mike coleman]

wowie!!!!!!
so while you guys get the technical part all patched up how's about this:
return to original mission statement:  band is a black nightmare out to make
people's head's and sphincters explode....
slap governments in face and reduce to little schoolgirls....
my comment about Silver Machine popping up meant this to me: Lemmy is on
good terms with band......?
hopefully everyone has taken time to email the producers of Lemmy's movie
about the importance of Dave and whoever to be in it......



On 6/20/08, Carl Edlund Anderson <cea at carlaz.com> wrote:
>
> On 20 Jun 2008, at 04:59 , iain ferguson wrote:
>
>> I like rather a lot of it, but like yourself find some too Digital - maybe
>> because this was recorded on a MAC using Logic I believe, which
>> the band had to learn how to use, and have commented on the whole process.
>> working in the analog world you add Dirt and warmth throughout the
>> recording, mastering and pressing  proccesses, giving you a warmer sound,
>> recording in the digital world you have to add that dirt back in or it
>> sounds clinical, harshly bright etc, maybe what you hear in parts is where
>> not enough dirt was added back in.
>>
>
>
> I am a musician (though not a drummer ;) -- albeit a very amateur one --
> and most of my home recording is on a Mac using GarageBand, which is
> basically Logic's little brother.  And I think that the digital vs. analogue
> issue to which you refer is not the "problem" in the production on
> Hawkwind's recent recordings.
>
> Honestly, the whole analog vs. digital recording (or playback) debate is a
> bit silly these days; with the right equipment and (perhaps more
> importantly) skills one can make extremely good recordings on either
> analogue or digital equipment.  Much of the perceived "analogue is better"
> argument, I think, goes back to the early days of digital recording when
> people simply weren't used to it.  They are different beasts, and if you
> spent all your life engineering analogue recordings, you could easily run
> into some difficulties if you expected digital to act like analogue (the
> famous example are a suppose the differences between what happens when you
> overload the signal on an analogue medium like magnetic tape, which tends to
> produce a sort of natural compression effect, and what happens when you
> overload signal to a digital medium, which tends to produce an awful noise
> :).  But since digital recording was introduced in the late 70s, the
> cumulative benefits of more experience and better equipment have lead to
> progressively better digital recordings.  (And, actually, one of the
> criticisms in early digital recordings was that _more_ "dirt" in the form of
> ambient background noise, etc. was being picked up than was typically with
> analog recordings.)
>
> So I don't think the perceived problem in Hawkwind's case is necessarily
> that of digital vs. analogue, even though surely Brock & Co. probably have
> more years of experience in the analogue realm than the digital.  I think
> it's more that recording with a system like Logic makes it incredibly easy
> to apply fantastic amounts of tweaking and processing to everything, to add
> new layers than then tweak and process them into the middle of next week as
> well.  This is an awesome temptation for the musician!  And I think this is
> what results in the kind of "muffled" sound Mike refers to -- it's something
> I've noticed more an more of over the last decade or so of Hawkwind records,
> particularly in the most recent studio outputs.  I think they (or Dave
> anyway) are just overcooking everything, producing everything to death with
> piles of tweaking and effects.  When you've been working on a track for a
> few months and have become way to familiar with every part in it, you adjust
> a few extra things here and there and slip some new bit in -- and suddenly
> it sounds great to you again .... But to the casual listener who never heard
> it before, and may never hear it until they buy the disc, rip the song to
> some relatively low bit rate MP3 and crank it through their iPod earbuds ...
> it just sounds glossily muffled.
>
> 'Course, this is _all_ subjective.  If one thinks that TMTYL is the
> greatest thing ever, then "right on"! :)  But IMO Hawkwind have been
> progressively overcooking their recordings.  If I were ruling the world, I'd
> inflict a producer on them who would get them back to basics -- or rather
> take away their control over the sound. :)
>
> It's certainly possibly to use a zillion ingredients in the production of
> an awesomely subtle curry that balances fire and flavour on that
> scintillating knife edge of perfection.  And it's also possible to end up
> with a mess of confused ingredients -- in which case, you may be better off
> just chucking a steak on the grill (or, if one prefers, the vegetarian
> equivalent of such simplicity) and having done with it. :)
>
> But, ya know, mileage varies!
>
> Cheers,
> Carl
>
> --
> Carl Edlund Anderson
> http://www.carlaz.com/
>