Category: Music - Page 39 - UNDERDOG of PERFECTION

It’s here!

My Radiohead In Rainbows “discbox” set arrived today, and it’s quite a sight.

There’s a heavy cardboard slipcover over the box/book package. Inside, an inner pocket holds a 12-inch square glossy booklet of abstract artwork. The right side consists of an attached 12×6 booklet containing more art and the lyrics along with the two CDs (the album proper on the first, 8 bonus tracks plus a couple of folders full of more digital artwork and photography from the recording sessions on the second). And lastly, slits on each side (in traditional LP gatefold sleeve fashion) contain the two heavyweight 12-inch 45 RPM vinyl records with the album’s 10 tracks.

I haven’t had a chance to listen to any of the new material yet (although I’ve already enjoyed the main album via download for the past couple of months), but already I am incredibly impressed with the quality of the presentation. The product itself is a work of art.

Rolling Stone on “the death of high fidelity”

I’m certainly no audiophile: although I can tell the difference in quality, the fact is I’m too cheap to pay for high-end equipment, and I know I’ll rarely have the time to immerse myself in the kind of sensory isolation necessary to really appreciate it anyway.

That said, I still want things to sound good, and I notice when they don’t. I’ve observed with frustration the ever-shrinking dynamic range on CDs over the last decade, as the mastering process has been refocused on the singular goal of making everything absolutely as LOUD as possible.

Rolling Stone has recently published an interesting article on the phenomenon. Hopefully this bit of negative publicity will mark the turning point where we return to quality.

But I think blaming MP3 compression (as the article does, at least in part) is misguided; the problem predates the iPod and seems only tangentially related to the MP3 phenomenon. Although MP3 does drop certain details at the dynamic and frequency extremes, higher-quality MP3s sound indistinguishable from the uncompressed original versions on all but the highest-end equipment. And the loss of quality that comes with MP3 compression — data compression — has absolutely nothing to do with the dynamic compression being applied during the mastering process. The former removes data that will likely not be missed; the latter actually changes the relative loudness of different parts of the recording, making everything sound more homogeneous.

A good example of dynamic compression gone horribly wrong is in the new remixed versions of classic Genesis albums, released in 2007. (Of these, I currently own Duke and A Trick of the Tail. While I’ve got mixed feelings about the new stereo mixes — or more specifically, the masters of those stereo mixes — these CD/DVD sets are worthwhile for the rare archival concert footage alone.)

While overall I find these recordings to be a fascinating reinvention of the originals — with fine details originally lost in murky analog mixes suddenly brought back to life with bristling vividness — they also suffer to an almost incomprehensible degree from the current trend in excessively loud dynamic compression, particularly in sections of the music where the band is rocking out in full. The more delicate passages in the music sound wonderful and are a joy to discover, but the louder sections are compressed to such a degree that I can hardly pay attention to anything else.

Part of the problem may reside in my listening to the stereo mixes; these albums were remixed primarily for the purpose of creating 5.1 surround versions. Since I don’t have the equipment to listen to the 5.1 mixes, I have no idea what they might sound like, but I’ve been told that surround mixes rarely suffer from the mastering compression flaws that so severely plague the CD market today. Presumably that’s because the record labels don’t care about slapping the listener upside the head with the music in the surround mixes, whereas that’s apparently their primary objective with stereo CDs. Either that, or this is part of a long-term strategy to convince the public that stereo CD technology is woefully inadequate compared to 5.1 surround (which is true, but not to such a large degree), in order to get us all to invest in new audio equipment.

At this rate, what is the RIAA going to have left to protect?

I’ve already made my opinion of the RIAA known, but this latest development is truly unbelievable.

Apparently, the RIAA now feels that CDs you’ve ripped for your own personal use are unauthorized. What ever happened to the long-standing clause in copyright law that allows the holder of content to make up to five copies for personal use? What of the fact that it’s built right into the stupid DRM that the RIAA has forced Apple to implement on iTunes that you can put purchased music on up to five computers (and, implicitly at least, an unlimited number of iPods synced to those computers)?

It is patently absurd that any kind of legal case to this effect could be made in the current technological climate. According to the RIAA, just about everyone who owns an iPod (or a similar device) is a thief, even if they’ve paid for every single song on the device.

Well guess what: fuck you, RIAA. We are not thieves, we are your customers. But maybe we shouldn’t be.

With all due apologies to Bill Bruford (and the rest of Yes)

Endure it if you dare.

Things were just different back in 1971. And if you don’t believe me, consider this: a very successful rock album from that year was Fragile by Yes.

This album contained not only three tracks near or longer than eight minutes each, but five brief tracks that were the individual creations of each member of the band. Some members were not so enthusiastic about this approach, most notably drummer Bill Bruford, whose contribution was an awkward, 37-second noodlefest for drums, guitar, bass, and organ entitled “Five Per Cent for Nothing” [sic, although apparently that’s how they spell it in Britain].

Only 37 seconds, you say? Or more to the point, only five percent, you say? I have now attempted to rectify that shortcoming.

The piece as it originally appears consists of a complex rhythmic pattern, played through twice by the band. Well, if twice through constitutes five percent, simple arithmetic tells us that 40 times through will yield the full 100%. (It also clocks in at a pleasing 11:11.)

So here you go…

[audio:http://blog.room34.com/wp-content/uploads/underdog/100pct.mp3]

If you like/can tolerate this, I encourage you to consider purchasing the full album. (For what it’s worth, I myself have purchased it in one form or another no less than seven times.) It features some outstanding playing and great songs, including my favorite piece of music in the history of human civilization, “Heart of the Sunrise.”

But if you’re in the market for something a little more current… a little more seasonally-appropriate… a little more ridiculously titled, then I would steer you no further than to Chris Squire’s Swiss Choir, a drunken joke new Christmas album featuring Yes bassist Chris Squire, drummer Jeremy Stacey (formerly of Sheryl Crow’s touring band and more recently of the briefly-reformed-and-now-once-again-defunct lineup of Squire’s pre-Yes band, The Syn), and ’70s-era Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett.

Normally I would look at something like this and think, “Mannheim Steamroller, but somehow, incomprehensibly worse.” And yet, from the samples I checked out online, it’s surprisingly not complete shit! “Complete” being the operative word. When I emailed a friend about this album, with the subject line “Holy crap,” he replied “I think you have just come up with the perfect two word review for this album.”

If by any chance you do choose to purchase it, I would implore you to consider doing so via this link to the iTunes store, so they’ll know who recommended it! (OK, they won’t. But at least I’ll get a tiny piece of the action.)

OK, follow my train of thought here…

The other day, for reasons I’d best not get into, I was listening to the Steven Wright tracks from the Reservoir Dogs soundtrack. If you’ve seen the movie, you know that the soundtrack is interspersed with segments of deadpan comic Steven Wright‘s voice as a DJ on “KBILLY’s Super Sounds of the ’70s Weekend.” Listening to those tracks in sequence with absolutely no music in between them is a surreal experience.

In addition to the long-buried ’70s gems that made it onto the soundtrack, a slew of other songs did not appear, but did however get a mention from Steven Wright, tantalizingly conjuring a world beyond the details of the film, where a radio station that actually plays all of this crazy stuff exists! (Granted, this film predates the Jack FM phenomenon by a solid decade, but Jack rarely plays stuff this obscure.)

One of the titles Steven Wright mentions caught my attention: “Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)” by Edison Lighthouse. (Anyone who knows me personally will know why that got my attention.) So I listened to a bit of it on iTunes, and it jogged a vague memory of this one-hit wonder from 1970. Then I headed over to YouTube, where I was delighted to find the music video:

Now many people of my generation or younger — or older for that matter — may not realize that they made music videos back in 1970 (and even earlier). I still have no idea where these things actually got played in a pre-MTV world. Of course, I don’t know where today’s music videos get played either, given that they sure as hell aren’t on MTV anymore.

Groovy.