Beck Sea Change. The perfect X-mas gift for lovers of sound.

I intended to post this before Christmas but life got busy, but it still gets the point across.

It may seems strange that I am recommending a depressing break up album by a Scientologist as the perfect Christmas gift, but there is a reason I think it’s the perfect gift for any lover of recording….

Beck’s Sea Change album is a staggering production and engineering Tour de Force. The strong writing is perfectly captured and supported by Nigel Godrich’s stellar production. The Sonics and arrangements takes the material to a place that perfectly suits the mood and emotion of the songs, and envelops the listener. The recording techniques Nigel Godrich used perfectly support the material. Although I teach tons of people how to record I am, and hopefully always will be, a student of recording myself, and I seem to learn something new every time I listen to this album. I am solidly good at making records, and quite often I hear a great album, and think to myself that I could have done that, with that group and those resources, but Sea Change is one of those (to quote Wayne’s World) “I’m not worthy albums”. The production is pure genius.

I am constantly amazed at the beautiful texture and depth of the recordings, and how Nigel Godrich weaves sounds that often might not sound ideal on their own, into a part of an amazing sonic tapestry. Sonically the album seems to effortlessly combine the last 45 years of recording, coming off as some love child of Nick Drake, Neil Young, Pink Floyd and Radiohead, and some how managing to never sound forced or campy. As a producer myself that has been aspiring to such goals for 20 years, I can tell you its no simple feat.

Of the many things I love about the production,  the album holds together as a cohesive whole, but each of the songs has its own identity. In some songs the drums are very big dry and in your face, other times they are tiny and distant. The guitars shift from bright and sparkly to warm and dark, but always in a way that best supports the song. The shifts in arrangement and dynamics take the songs from small and intimate to huge and epic, but with out any of the harshness in the big sections that can plague so many modern releases. The arrangements and sounds are always intriguing, and surprising but never take your focus away from the songs and the voice. Despite all the elaborate production, Sea Change at its core never stops being an intimate singer songwriter album.

One of the great things that Godrich does which is easy to experiment with in your own work is to keep most of the element in the mix very dry and focused but to accent the arrangement with elements that have huge amounts of delay and/or reverb on them. The contrast of super dry and super wet creates a ton of front to back depth in the mixes, but what is so cool is that the very wet elements come and go through out the song, keeping the landscape of the mix constantly changing. Is a wonderful mixing technique that is easy and dose not require super expensive gear to accomplish.

Although I am getting all of this second hand, I have been told that most of the album was recorded live at Ocean Way Studios, tracked and mixed analog with no automation. The mixes were done as musical “performances” While I can not confirm this, the album seems to convey that that feel.

If I was to levy any criticism against what I consider to be a near perfect production, it would be the song “Sunday Sun”. Not that it is bad in anyway, but it’s the one moment of the entire album where the production takes me away from the songs rather than enhancing them. The vocals sound really strange in the verses, almost like Beck is singing with his hand in his mouth, and the dissonant melodic material and unnatural percussion sounds feel almost gimmicky to me in the context of such a stellar album. But even that might knock the production down to a 9.9 out of 10.

I guess the real reason for this blog post is that so many people turn to me these days to learn about recording, that I periodically want to share things that inspire me and educate me on my journey towards making better records.

Produced, engineered and mixed by Nigel Godrich at Ocean Way Studios

Assistant Engineer: Darrell Thorp

Mastered by Bob Ludwig

Check out Nigels insanely cool web site www.fromthebasement.tv which features footage and photos of many of the artists he has worked with.

If you have albums that continually teach you things, please post them in the comments section.