Albums Marred by Over/Under Production

I find that most blues albums up to the 80's show little appreciation for a neat production/mixing. The proposition that "the blues is one take" is not valid for me.
 
I read somewhere that John always had that vocal effect, he wouldn't sing without it, when the producer of a Beatles record tried to turn it off, John stopped until he turned it back on. I always thought he had some kind of effect on every vocal performance he delivered.
 
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instrumentals cut within four hours. thin production, under-engineered and made to sound as amateurish and hurried as possible, probably the last thing the Magic Band wanted. there's a reason Moonlight on Vermont and Veteran's Day Poppy sound so good in comparison to the rest of the album -- they were recorded and engineered at a completely different session with a different set of studio engineers. contrast this to say, something like Lick My Decals Off, Baby and the difference is palpable.

Frank Zappa, in all his wisdom, pretty much fucked over the album from the beginning.
 
For another album, maybe we can put some blame on U2's Pop for being among the albums that encouraged over-production.

Now to my defense for End of the Century. The Ramones needed to break away from the "First Four Albums" sound, and while the work with Spector was not as great, sometimes it was a perfect match and not as bloated as usually thought - The Wall of Sound vs. The Wall of Guitars with both sides influenced by the same Pop greatness. It works a little better if viewed as what could have been The Joey Ramone Show as it was clear that Spector wanted to really focus on the singer (The only reason why something like the cover of "Baby, I Love You" would wind up there), and while the techniques did cross the line (The always-mentioned version of "Rock and Roll High School" which to my ears was good with the Wall of Sound), in the end it was a good diversion that was inspired in concept but flawed in execution which still resulted in a few gems ("Do You Remeraber Rock and Roll Radio" and "Danny Says" especially).
 
Classic example is the Ramones End of the Century with Phil Spector producing. Putting his wall of sound on top of the most basic rock group ever was a disaster. You can't hear the group amid all the strings and brass, the sound is muddled, a mess.

who thought this would be a good idea?
 
Phil Spector may have turned into one of the unforgivables, I'm still going to have to look back on his work with The Beatles as sometimes great. In the defense of The Wall of Sound for Let It Be, "Across the Universe" and "I Me Mine" alone stand well for his intrusion, although I do agree on those who thought that "The Long and Winding Road" was turned into ultra-mush. Siding with John, he did take what was about to be a failed project and did the best he could with it.

Spector's Sound worked it's best with his greatest hits and the Ronettes, but it did however hit a very over-produced bump in the road with what many consider as one of the Greatest Singles of all Time - "River Deep, Mountain High" by Ike and Tina Turner, which had one majestic performance by Tina that was swamped by an orchestra with an heavy amount of Reverb. I have yet to hear Spector's Post-Beatle/Pre-Ramones work, but I fear that those recorRAB are even more doses of hitting The Wall too hard.
 
I'm guessing you meant this thread? I completely forgot I made it until you mentioned that :D

Anyway, I have another to add to the list. Most of R.E.M.'s 90s material is overproduced. Monster... ewww!



I'd say this song features some of my favourite black metal production. Drenched in fuzzy guitar but well-produced enough to have audible bass, raw enough to be sinister and demented, but not so raw that you can't hear what's going on, and not as hard on the ears as that Ulver song I posted.

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Behemoth is an amusing case because they started out with production that was raw even by BM standarRAB and then evolved into a DM band with some of the most sickeningly slick production I've heard in a metal band... seriously, how many times are the vocals layered in this song?

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I like hearing what metal can sound like with intense production. I can see how a disaster might occur, but this album is freaking great.
 
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Electric Hellfire Club—Burn, Baby, Burn!
At it's core this is a pretty good faux-satanic, somewhat psychedelic electro-industrial album, but unfortunately the production blows. This is a type of music that really requires terrific production but this album is muddy as hell. There is no sparkle to the high-end whatsoever, the beats are flat sounding, the guitars sound like they were recorded in a bathroom, the vocals lack any kind of crispness and the samples are completely buried under everything else.
 
Boris by Yezda Urfa.

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Excellent folky/symphonic prog album (Yes being the strongest influence), marred only by awful production, it sounRAB like it was recorded in an outhouse, verry muddy, thin and hissy. It was recorded in 1975 but the production quality makes it sound like it could have been made in the late 50s. Though this was an album that never evolved from the demo stage (the band never managaed to finish it) which is the big reason for it's poor audio quality as it's not technically a finished album, in fact it was not officially released until 2004 when it was remastered but even then it still has a very tin can sound.

Though some might say that gives it raw authenticity and indie kiRAB may dig it but dammit this is prog, and prog is supposed to be grand and this is an album where the excellent music is there, so it deserves hi fi treatment.

The reissues have bonus tracks and for some reason the production quality is WAY better than what's on the actual album.
 
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