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It’s worth checking out Daniel Lanois, not only a great musician in his own right, but a great producer as well, done some superb work with Brian Eno, U2, Emmylou Harris, among others. Seen him live solo, and as part of Emmylou’s band on her Wrecking Ball tour, the album he produced.
Portishead have always had great production on their albums as well.
Daniel Lanois
Definitely - he’s even done an album with drill n bass merchant Venetian Snares... now that’s some versatility!
He also produced Dylan’s Oh Mercy which is a marvellous album.
Trevor Horn and Depeche Mode Violator are very good posts.
Great call on Daniel Labour, @CountZero.
I thought his work with Eno on U2’s Unforgettable Fire was amazing (whether one likes U2 or not), and almost everything he has done since has been equally good.
O god , so many to choose from.
Gerry Rafferty City to City
Hows that for a start?.
For me, the Kings of Leon were brilliant before Sex on fire, however, the production before that massive hit was so poor you struggle to understand any vocals.
I always thought that was intentional especially so on Youth and Young Manhood. A different thread, but they are number one on my list of bands that turned to shit very quickly. Their first album and EP were like a snot nosed CCR fronted by Eric Cartman and it was great. They then became Coldplay or The Killers or something.
Ian Dury & the Blockheads
New boots and panties
I’ve won 😊
I think Metallica's production is often hampered by Lars' idea of what a good drum sound is. The snare on And Justice For All is shockingly bad and makes a fair bit of it unlistenable. Like a cap gun being fired by a metronome.
New boots and panties just a great album and bass
Oh - I've got a good one. Nothing Like the Sun by Sting.
That is very finely produced and engineered album.
Had the magic of Hugh Padgham and others.
@SaxonRider - yeah, I think he’s often overlooked as an artist in his own right, his albums always seem to have a sort of ‘shimmering’ quality, I can’t describe it any other way, he does use an Omnichord quite a lot, which does have that sort of sound.
The The - Soul Mining and Infected are both very well produced, they sound incredible on headphones.
I honestly can't believe no one has mentioned The Cocteau Twins - Heaven or Las Vegas (or any of their albums really).
Should have thought of this earlier, well, I did, earlier today, but couldn’t remember the title and couldn’t remember where my copy is, but this book should be essential reading for everyone here who’s interested in music and the recording process:
https://www.amazon.com/Perfecting-Sound-Forever-History-Recorded/dp/0865479380
It’s a fascinating in-depth look at the history of the recording process, including the infamous ’Loudness Wars’.
I must dig my copy out and re-read it again.
Weird one
....and the Circus Leaves Town by Kyuss.
First time you hear it, it sounds like unlistenable mud. Turgid garbage.
Then you hear it in the background a party and it catches your ear. The songs are god, if you could just hear them through the awful production.
Then you meet a young lass who deals exctasy out of her thigh highs and you smoke a couple of Js in your mate's room with this album on and something in your brain just *clicks" and suddenly all stoner rock makes sense and it is an incredibly moving experience - a paradigm shift in your perceptions and you become a new being.
Then you hear it in the background a party and it catches your ear. The songs are god, if you could just hear them through the awful production.
I choose to believe this was not a typo, and I concur 👍
Colour by the Christians ,Laurie Latham
This might be a bit abstract, but Zaireeka by the Flaming Lips- produced so you can reproduce it yourself!
Also, and especially, The Soft Bulletin by The Flaming Lips
Both work of Dave Fridmann and very distinct. The production of the latter is superb. So many different layers of sound, and with the particular complication of very lo-fi live drums, yet tight and distinct instrumentation.
I'd also champion the work of Nigel Godrich, producer of much of Radiohead's output, and a surprising amount of work from that era, but I find these albums particularly good in production terms:
Kid A
Amnesiac
Hail to the Thief- Radiohead
Terror Twilight- Pavement
The Eraser
Anima-Thom Yorke
Sea Change-Beck (such an brilliant redirection of Beck's sound in this album)
50 pounds of bone by Robert lukas, completley blue on audioquest records,
Almost falling into pick your favourite tracks mode here but this was recorded in one take by Steve Albini, keeps it pretty raw but gets it bang on for me, the outros perfect
Anyone recommened Tool yet? Fear Inolculum is great
Apologies if it's been said before but credit for the sound quality should go to the engineer not necessarily the producer. Although they're often the same person or a close knit team.
Secondly I often like albums that sound pretty raw or even rough. Two examples The Waterboys Fisherman's Blues and SLF Inflammable Material both of which would not have benefitted from an over polished "perfect" sound.
Someone mentioned Californication earlier, which if memory serves was held up as an example of an album that had all the life squeezed out of it by compression when I studied this kind of thing at uni (far too many) years ago.
These suggestions are a little different from some of the stuff that’s come before, but:
Ulrich Schnauss - A Strangely Isolated Place
Amon Tobin - Chaos Theory
BT - This Binary Universe
All electronic albums of one type or another, and they all sound amazing in different ways.
@soundninjauk - yeah, the book I linked to above ^^ goes into some detail about that and other albums produced in recent years that have suffered from the obsession with ‘loudness’, compressing the dynamic range to make music sound louder when played through the shitty little speakers on mobile phones.
That’s why I posted the link, that book goes into so much background to the development of recorded music since the turn of last century. I remembered I’d also bought an ebook of it as well, and I started reading it again last night, just after that post.
Fascinating stuff.
Listening to Blind Melon, Nico whilst writing this and the soundstage (as in the stereo width and all the little noises and richness is alarming. Through Sennheiser hd600 headphones which in itself is immersive. Love it.
And now on Paul Simon's There Goes Rhymin Simon which is also incredible! Cracking album too.
Someone mentioned Californication earlier, which if memory serves was held up as an example of an album that had all the life squeezed out of it by compression when I studied this kind of thing at uni (far too many) years ago.
These suggestions are a little different from some of the stuff that’s come before, but:
Ulrich Schnauss – A Strangely Isolated Place
Amon Tobin – Chaos Theory
BT – This Binary Universe
All electronic albums of one type or another, and they all sound amazing in different ways.
Californication suffered from the Rick Rubin problem.
Tobin and Schnauss are excellent at what they do. Schnauss is gifted at sticking a lot of things in a mix and managing to maintain excellent clarity and dynamics through it, and he brings a degree of I guess old school musicality to the whole thing. Tobin is very leftfield but equally brilliant.
It's tricky to talk about production on its own when it comes to electronic stuff, it often times has the roles of author/performer(sometimes)/producer/engineer all mashed up into one person driving cubase in their bedroom studio.
Weird one
….and the Circus Leaves Town by Kyuss.
First time you hear it, it sounds like unlistenable mud. Turgid garbage.
That’s an album that benefits from being played very loud through a decent setup. Sounds very dull at low volume and with poor bass. Really comes to life when played loud through a good setup though. Not sure why that is.
I’ve just listened to Daniel Lanois’ ‘Acadie’ through headphones, having not listened to it for ages, it was part of my music library that went awol, and I couldn’t put my hands on the CD, which was hiding in plain sight!
Stunning production, forgotten just how good it is.
Californication suffered from the Rick Rubin problem.
Rubin's in the business of selling records. He doesn't decide how/when/where we listen to them! He's a genius, and he better understands more than most I guess what most people perceive as "audio quality" is actually just a wall of constant volume... He's just producing music for today's uneducated consumers mostly!
Pharrell Williams is the producer for me... Daft Punks "Random Access Memories" has been mentioned several times already (which he featured on of course, but was mostly produced by Thomas and Guy with a bit of help from Todd the God, DJ Falcon, Giorgio Moroder and not forgetting Nile Rodgers!) on here, but arguably not Pharrell's finest hour production wise as yet... Which was...
Justin Timberlake - Justified
To me, good music production is something you can really appreciate, over and over again, even if you're not into the music. It says something that I'm not into about 90% of the music that Pharrell produces, but I can just listen to it for hours on end cos he's a genius!
Todd Edwards is the absolute master of vocal sampling though... 👌🏻
DJ Shadow's not bad with the samplers either! 😉
But yeah, Quincy Jones... The GOAT...? You better believe it! Off the Wall was good enough on its own, but he's got some back catalogue...
Revisited The Acid's "Liminal" album yesterday. Production on it is well spooky. Self-produced by Adam Freeland and a cuple of others. Haven't listened to it since I saw them live cos all I can think about is the arseholes talking all the way through the gig!
Anyway, example
Another beauty is the Ivo production on This Mortal Coil's "It'll End in Tears", so sparse, but every instrument dead sharp.. and the vocal levels are just so perfect. Everyone knows "Song To The Siren", but the opening track is a beauty too
[i]even if you’re not into the music[/i]
Nope! Still not down with that. 😀
Rubin’s in the business of selling records. He doesn’t decide how/when/where we listen to them! He’s a genius, and he better understands more than most I guess what most people perceive as “audio quality” is actually just a wall of constant volume… He’s just producing music for today’s uneducated consumers mostly
For sure, it's all engineered to be audible on a cheap and nasty car stereo struggling to beat the road noise, or whilst being broadcast over radio one to a single speaker radio the scaffolders are listening to. Nobody has disagreed with what you're saying (possibly the word genius, but I'll not quibble the rest of it).
However.
His* productions are still shit, musically.
* he's not the only producer doing this kind of thing.
It's amazing how much the loudness wars has ruined some music. I got a leaked copy of a Metallica album Death Magnetic that had different levels and it sounded superb. Another example is Amy Winehouse Back To Black. The official CD is so squashed and loud sounding it really spoils the music, the one I've got sounds amazing.
I'm not sure who actually does this though, is it the producer, mastering engineer, some exec who says it needs more punch? Dunno
Here's some info on the Metallica album:
https://www.wired.com/2008/09/does-metallicas/
And a pic showing it:
There's a Spotify playlist called "Songs to Test Headphones With". Most of the music on the list is pretty well produced.
His* productions are still shit, musically.
[url= https://www.discogs.com/Johnny-Cash-American-IV-The-Man-Comes-Around/release/6058756 ]Musically shit[/url]. Hmm mm
Another beauty is the Ivo production on This Mortal Coil’s “It’ll End in Tears”, so sparse, but every instrument dead sharp.. and the vocal levels are just so perfect. Everyone knows “Song To The Siren”, but the opening track is a beauty too
Thanks for reminding me of this, it’s yet another album that’s (mostly) missing from my iTunes library, and I’m now going to have to dig through all my CD’s to find it! I’ve got ‘You And Your Sister’ from ‘Blood, and ‘Song To The Siren’, so I’ve got ‘It’ll End In Tears’ and ‘Filigree & Shadow’ to get now. Life’s such a chore sometimes... 😁
Oh yeah, I was going to mention Talk Talk, there’s a band who refused to compromise with their vision of how their music should sound, becoming ever sparser until the last album is a fair bit of empty space with music to highlight it. I listened to Mark Hollis’ solo album for the first time in years, after I dug that out and ripped it. Listened through headphones, and it came back why I hadn’t listened to it for ages; it’s even sparer than ‘Laughing Stock’, and very intimately recorded, you can hear little pops and clicks as Hollis opens his mouth to sing, and he sings in such a restrained way, with such big empty spaces that it becomes uncomfortable to listen to, I start to feel fidgety, rather than relaxed, which seems odd somehow. Difficult to describe exactly.
Superb recordings, though.
Just bought Carpenters ULtimate Collection on CD.
Superb production.
He has probably been mentioned earlier but just listening to the Dude by Quincy Jones on vinyl, pretty good sound
Colour by the Christians Laurie Latham might have been the sound guy . Whatever happened to the Christians ?
https://lstnsound.com/blogs/main/10-of-the-best-produced-albums-ever
And another list
https://www.whathifi.com/features/50-albums-audiophiles
Bitches Brew
Innervisions
Whats Going On
Will attest to those three.
Also ‘Tales Of The Inexpressible’ by Shpongle.
*Edit
And this remix (nice for the eyes too!)
Before I forget -
Little Dragon - ‘Little Dragon’ (2007)
This struck me when it was released and became an instant favourite on the ipod - but this month I returned to listen via Tidal at hifi quality through some AKG reference headphones. Woah!
Did a bit of research, turns out it’s produced by
(From Wikipedia): Pete Hutchison
Co-founder with Paul Ballard and owner of Peacefrog Records. Elder brother of Bill Hutchison.
Founded The Electric Recording Co., which issues valve-only, Audiophile-quality, extremely limited classical and rare jazz recordings
Hugely recommended.
Am I a complete ignoramus to suggest:
Avalon : Roxy Music
Dr Dre : 2001
@lister:
lister
Full Member
Copper Blue by Sugar is great. As good a noise as anyone has managed to get Bob’s pure rage-filled guitar sound.Posted 6 months ago
I do like Copper Blue, but definitely prefer Beaster. A couple of songs on it are really dark and filled with even more rage! (Tilted and Judas Cradle).
People keep saying Quincy Jones and I ended up with this, which just does brilliant things with relatively few elements by just letting them all have space and come to the front and fade away again.. Then, kind of proves how good it was by totally ****ing it up at about the 4 minute mark and mixing all the colours together to make brown.
Then for some reason that made me think of Chris Sheldon, who just quietly spent the last 30 years producing absolute solid gold. Not normally "staggering" but just about any time I'm listening to a brilliant british rock album (and some Pixies and Foos) and thinking that it's just got the perfect touch to let the music really thrive and speak for itself, there he is. Including making Troublegum work, letting Hundred Reasons get their shit together, and I think 3 Biffy albums which could have been a total disaster without the right man at the desk.