What do you y'all think about the occasional list? I'm not even sure anyone reads this stuff. So here you go ether!

Here are some records that I think sound great. I like the music on all these records, but what really stands out to me is the recording. It just sounds good no matter what their doing. I'm just sticking to rock music for today.

John Vanderslice - Life and Death of an America Fourtraker
This guy might be the must underrated producer in music today. He's got an all analog studio in San Franscico called Tiny Telephones and everything he touches is just gorgeous. Like all great recordings, it's the little things that do it for me. He spaces things like no one else in music these days. You get fuzzed out something and dirty drums next to a synth and nice harmony and doubletracked vocals on "Cool Purple Mist." The analog gives everything a nice punch and the compression is used in the just the right places. For someone who packs so many sounds in a few minutes he manages to keep things organized and never overdoes any one sound. The opening track on the Vanderslice Mountain Goats album We Shall Be Healed is one of the more memorable recordings in the past five or six years (the glass smashing get me every time).



Butthole Surfers - Locust Abortion Technician
Me trying to get folks to listen to the Surfers usually begins with a memory of "Pepper." Then I put this record on and we hear some truly gorgeous ambient and then a little tape distorted vocals of a conversation between father and child and then "Satan! Satan! Satan!" and then the most kickass guitar riff ever. But then they tell me to turn it off and they never here the analog tape work that must have taken a month to do just for one track and then they miss the pretty interludes that break up the baddest guitar riff on the planet. These guys are geniuses and they have some of the best sounding records every made. Ever. Even if you can't get behind the music, they need to be heard by anyone who is interested in recording. I've still never heard anything that compares, and that includes all those stuffy academic musicians who never had live sex during their performances. And it's hard to top their 35 second homage to Weber.



The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin
Speaking of the Surfers, here's the Flaming Lips, who were in their words (and I'm paraphrasing here) trying to rip of the Surfers but sucking to much at their instruments so they just played as loud as humanly possible. But the star of this show for our purposes is Dave Fridmann. He owns Tarbox Road Studios and he's incredible. Unlike the aforementioned Vanderslice, Fridmann is all about digital. This guy practically invented the dirty, one mic drum recording (and is lucky enough to have Steve Drozd to play for him). I can't imagine how many tracks there are on the Soft Bulletin. You can hear it all, but the tracks are as nearly spacious, though the mixing will mess with your head if you have a nice pair of cans or speakers spaced 10+ feet apart. It's hard for me to think of anyone more influential to the contemporary rock sound scape. He almost parodied himself on the Lips' Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. Even the new Coldplay record has his influence all over it. If you can get four cd players and eight speakers together I highly recommend putting together a listening session of Zaireeka. You'll be amazed that he and the Lips manage to trap you inside a sphere of distorted cymbals; it freaked me out. Fridmann also produced my favorite sounding record in the past couple of years: Low's Drums & Guns. I have no idea whose idea it was to pan almost all the vocals hard, but it worked.



I apologize for this kind of gross video. Just minimize the window if you have to. Plus the hard pans are not to be found in the youtube. Just imagine vocals and organ hard right and percussion and backward guitar solo hard left.



Jens Lekman - "Sipping on the Sweet Nectar"
I'm preety sure Lekman is his own producer. All his stuff sounds great, but this is one of the great headphone tracks. It will almost make you dizzy how much space he creates out of two speakers. The youtube quality doesn't quite do it justice, but it's the best I've got.