This album is a little more stripped down. Once again, the production is top notch. Even with only a single guitar, drums, bass, and (sparse) piano and vibraphone, there's a pretty rich layer of instrumentation. The ride cymbal or the hi-hats are almost always riffing in the background, even when the guitars are jagged. The whole record combines 3 different styles on the drums, guitar, and bass that work well together - thick, flowing basslines like you hear in bands like Tortoise or the Red Sparrows; sparse and jagged indie rock guitars, and very jazz influenced drumming.
The tone of all of the instruments is obviously important to the band; few vocals are featured, but work very well when they are - a lot of bands try to force singing that they can't pull off, but these guys just work with what they have, and it works fine. Most of the vocals are whispered Slint style with the occasional shout out.
A fantastic bass tone plays prominently in the arrangements. Without doing any actual research I'd put my money on some jazz style bass, just based on how well the bass moves from growling leads to smooth, burpy bottom end roles. The opening of Fastest Way Through The South shows off a rich, growly bass tone with nicely placed double stops; once the guitars and drums come in the bass settles down to a polite thump. Listen for the 1 2 3 kick and bass pattern to start the riff, then the bass runs off on it's own. Yet despite the seeming randomness of the bass line, the kick hits with it and nothing else.
The guitars are (to me) the epitome of "crunch," you can hear that the single note lines and arpeggios are very clean, but they break up quickly as soon as he digs into chords. There's a very nice dynamic range on it, too, not much compression - mostly just the natural compression of the amp, given that there's roughly a 99.9% chance that the guitar tracks were recording with a tube amp - perfect for that crunch, clean shine, and natural compression. The band always knows when to follow the breaking up chords, and when to back down.
A lot of guitarists in this style like to cover up their guitar work with lots of delay, but he keeps it very clean here and it works extremely well. Too much delay and reverb on a single instrument can muddy up a mix very quickly, and it's likely that the bass and drum tones we hear wouldn't work with a wide, washy guitar sound.
On the top of Down On Your Old Lung we hear some very disciplined drumming. Notice how the drummer pulls up slightly on his hi-hats just before the snare drum hits, creating that 'whoosh' into the snare hits. The snare has a lot less bottom end that many rock snares, meaning more space for the bass as well as the kick drum - all though, in keeping with the jazz inspired drumming, there's not a lot of kick drum use except when emphasizing the bass patterns, and there's a lot more intricate hi-hat and ride work happening.
Pay close attention to the tom fills at the beginning of The Vortex East - he gives them a purposeful slow down or retardado. You could argue that it's a tempo drop, a well cut up quarter note triplet, or just a stylist perk.A lot of drummers (or any musicians) pull this move without knowing exactly how it works. It's effective because as active music listeners we're expecting even 8th notes, but each hit comes slightly later and it jumps out at us. In other words, it grabs the attention a lot more than standard 8th or 16th note rolls.
Perfectly placed in the mix are the very wide stereo panned vibraphone hits. You should be able to follow them from high to low across the stereo field. A good stereo micing technique is important; a lot of people think that hard panned sounds like that are the result of panning on the studio console. In truth, it's very difficult to mike a large instrument like a drum kit, or even a vibraphone, and have it sound natural with hard panning. In reality, using a natural stereo field makes your brain do the work, instead of the mix - you hear sounds to the far sides of the stereo field because of the natural cues of reverb from the recording.
Another important element is the harmonic interplay between the guitar and bass. Often the bass will showcase a scale based figure that repeats (generally in time with the drums, of course) while the guitar "creates" the chord progression by playing off different notes of the scale. So while the bass might loop a root, 7th, 3rd, 6th progression with fairly quick succession, the guitar sticks each note out a little longer, descending along the progression, so that at any given time, a different harmony is being created with the same notes of the bass line.
You can hear this happening in Nazca Lines Of Peru as well as well as Highways Like Veins. It's another way to demonstrate the fractal or exponential nature of music; whereas a single instrument is limited in it's melodies or harmonies, adding a second instrument to the mix (or more accurately, adding a second musician) opens up an exponentially larger number of possibility. Again, we have to considered the limited range of the 12 note western scale. Creating chord movements without actual chord changes is a good way to expand on limited physical possibilities.
Overall, this record again shows how the most important studio element is a band working together, and understanding what the other players in the band are doing. If a band is fighting against itself in tones, or in composition, it's not going to make a great record. It's clear from hearing how each instrument is given individual moments in time on all the songs that this is a band that has confidence in itself and each other.
Like the June of 44 record, From the Vapour of Gasoline demonstrates many key aspects of a good recording:
-Equal or shared responsibility between instruments
-clearly EQed instruments (ie, the snare drum)
-a tight rhythm section
-strong use of dynamics (amplitude, and tone that follows as such)
Some studio cuts:
And an extraordinary live video:
Enjoy! I plan to attempt to recover from a sudden onset of the flu (hopefully not of the swine variety)
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