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December 4, 2007 - 8:30am
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post-acoustic audiophiles?
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Everyone who still has all the Fresh Aire LP's raise your hand.
I think all sorts of electronic music -- from early, experimental stuff done on tape (John Cage, David Tudor, Vladimir Ussachevsky) to more modern stuff done on computers (Autechre, Boards of Canada, Jimmy Edgar) -- sounds awesome on hi-fi. Exciting, dynamic, and fun. A lot of rap music sounds great, I think. Rap has some of the most interesting sounds in all of pop music today, I feel. And those sounds sound cool as hell through a hi-fi. Today's basic rock music, by comparison, is often lifeless and abrasive -- the recordings are too loud and lack space. But the more interesting, intelligent rock or indie stuff -- Andrew Bird, Broken Social Scene, Feist, Joanna Newsom, Bill Callahan, Fiery Furnaces, I can think of more... -- sound pretty good to great, too, I think.
So, yeah, I think there's tons of non-acoustic music that can be enjoyed with a good hi-fi.
What're the Fresh Aire LPs?
http://www.shop.com/+-a-fresh+aire%2Fmannheim+steamroller-p41015983-k36-st.shtml
http://music.aol.com/artist/mannheim-steamroller/2676/album/fresh-aire/83345
I couldn't have sold Double Advents and McIntosh without them, though the deal closer was the Advent Demo tape.
"What're the Fresh Aire LPs?"
Fresh Aire LP's are to whatever the hell genre they occupy as "Jazz at the Pawnshop" is to jazz.
Plenty of fun to be had with "non-acoustic" sourced sound. It can even qualify as demo/review material when comparing gear and exploring the piece for information at deeper and deeper levels.
People have been exploring remasters and reference gear by using Dark Side of the Moon for nealry 35 years! (Not an endorsement, just saying.) The Beatles, even longer!
I agree. Most of what I will listen to is indie rock & folk. Its hard to find any good mainstream musicians today, and if you do, the recordings are not great.
As ttt said, a lot of multitracking is done, which I think takes away from the from the recording. One of my favorite artists, Brandi Carlile Band (Indie rock/folk combo) actually recorded their latest album without even cutting a pasting different takes together. Hear everything that was great, and some imperfections, for better or worse(all better I think)>
Kraftwerk's "Minimum/Maximum" is pretty cool.
Boards of Canada sounds great on LP! A lot of their stuff is actually made with old analogue synths and real tape loops so it's post acoustic, but not entirely digital. Tortoise also sounds great on LP. Actually, everything sounds better on LP, heheh.
Neil Diamond is post acoustic for sure, ahead of his time. I'd call his music atmospheric.. Has anyone tried Neil Diamond on Wilson's?
Steely Dan's Live in America on CD. Gaucho in DVD-Audio is sublime. Donald Fagen's The Nightfly, Kamakiriad and Morph the Cat in DVD-A are superb. Two Against Nature and Everything Must Go in DVD-A. Beck and Talking Heads on DVD-A. Capt. Beefheart's Clear Spot on vinyl. Al Di Meola's Elegant Gypsy on Japanese SACD. Aime Mann's Lost in Space on CD. The Band's Music from Big Pink on DVD-A. Billy Cobham's Spectrum on DVD-A. There's just too much great non-acoustic to list that would rate "audiophile" status in content and recording quality. (All DVD-A in 5.1 discrete, not Dolby Digital- video circuits "off").
I can't raise my hand because I don't have the LPs. But I have the Fresh Aire I through IV on CD. They do sound good. I bought these CDs years after a friend lent me his copies of I and II on LP to listen.
Kitaro's Silk Road series
Ray Lynch's Tubular Bells
Tricycle
What fun!
Proof I'm getting used to you guys is that I popped off this question without actually thinking what might come back as an answer, or even what I might answer if asked the same.
I guess I was really thinking of "post-acoustic" more in the Boards of Canada / Autechre genre -- where the source material is manufactured rather than recorded, but from your responses, I see that its really a grey area where acoustic recording blends into electronica.
I'm be keen to discover examples of recorded music that have all the fascination of acoustic music - the richness of human voices and bowed strings, arranged as subtly in space as an omni-miked recording in a small church, and the nuances of phrasing and interaction between the voices compels one give over to the movement of the music - except created in the abstract. Perhaps that's impossible, I've never heard these characteristics equalled outside a live acoustic recording.
And here's a tumbling of riches!
IMHO -- Dark Side of the Moon wins the Most Audacious Recommendation Prize -- I really ought to listen to that chestnut again!
- Since reading the first couple responses at work yesterday, I paired this one up with Steely Dan with this choice recommendation, and here it is in the flesh from rvance.
- Represents mainstream pop with excellent studio work, but also with the materials of actual instruments being played by people. The Steely Dan crew are artists in production, I love how they provide the touch and phrasing of great musicians, but airbrushed to perfection. Will look up some of the related ones you mentioned.
- suppose Alan Parsons project fits this group in time and audience, although I personally found him a bit sterile back in the day.
- The original Tubular Bells?
Then there's the retro-electronicists, as in Kraftwerk. Loved the recent story about the cut with the Tour de France. On original listen -- Autobahn et all -- I thought this was sort of lame to my teenage ears, worth another listen.
- Fresh Aire is of this ilk? Sounds like a classic I missed. Will check out for sure, but fear it may be a bit musak-y for me.
Beck and Talking Heads? Together?
I really like Talking heads, and I would add the Eno/Byrne My Life in Bush With Ghosts. The recent remastered version has as great a sound as my SACD-virgin ears have heard from a post-acoustic recording. Some of this was recorded with real people, but I'd forward this album as an example of what can be done with a studio to please an audiophile.
Rvance: you're my hero. Although not the sort of repertoire I expecting to be recommended, I will definitely follow up on the unknown-to-mes on your listen. Lots of overlap in our tastes, remembering E Costello. Aimee Mann is very well produced, though I much prefer her Bachelor #2. Captain Beefheart! I cherish his Trout Mask Replica, but the sound doesn't thrill me.
I do listen to lots of indie pop, so again, thrilled with some new recommended names, but in general have not been enthralled with the sound experience. I have a recent Broken Social Scene, which is a sort of delicious mess, but New Pornographers are a real favourite and their recorded sound is rather middling.
Stephen -- I agree rap can be interesting -- the virtuosity of the vocal delivery can be very compelling, but I can't much relate to the ethos. Thanks for reminding of Boards of Canada. You got me digging into my collection, listened to Venetian Snares this morning!
The trick with this topic for me is not to get carried away with all the wonderful examples -- and I will be researching for days now, thanks everyone, I have a mission! But I am really interested to learn if there is anything to match the acoustic recording as I praised above. Perhaps not yet?
I second that one. Back in the pre-CD days I spent quite some time hunting down a used copy of "Clear Spot". Recently (as in the sometime during the past few years) the vinyl was reissued as an "audiophile" pressing with 180 gram vinyl and some fancy packaging (but not as fancy as the original clear vinyl jacket that the original LP came in). Both the original issue and the reissue versions sound very good.
The day after John Lennon was shot I saw Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band and he dedicated a version of "Nowadays a Woman's Gotta Hit a Man" (from "Clear Spot") to Lennon. At the end of the song Beefheart stated that it was the best version the band had ever played.