brendan o'brien

so right now i'm sitting here listening to rage against the machine and marvelling at their sound and it occured to me that brendan o'brien (producer/engineer) has been responsible for either producing, recording, or mixing a tonne of the great music that i spent my teens listening to

now i'm always going to love this guy cause he recorded and co-mixed 'blood sex sugar magik'. he made that album, which was recorded in a house sound fucking great and unique. one of the great qualities this album is that it sounds like no other that came out around that time, the rawness that comes from non-ideal recording situations makes this album come alive like so many of the great punk albums before it

now if you were in your teens during the 90's and you loved bands such as pearl jam, stone temple pilots, rage against the machine, the offspring, incubus, soundgarden, red hot chili peppers then you owe brendan o'brian your left testicle. this guy has some mad skills

i suggest checking out any of the pearl jam or rage against the machine albums that brendan was involved with if you want to hear the epitomy of the nineties rock sound

compress and compress again, and then again for volume

i'm a little concerned with the current trend to over compress music lately in order to make things sound loud. it is getting to a point where it is sucking the life out of the song

what are the main elements we look for in sound to stimulate our ears? we look for frequency response, dynamic response and clarity, amongst a bunch of other factors. when you compress a mix and squeeze the shit out if you are reducing the dynamic response and also creating distortion, thus messing with the main components that stimulate our ears and subconscious. when a musician plays his instrument and puts his energy into performing, this energy is audible to us via the dynamic range between the notes we can hear and feel. when you take this dynamic range and reduce it so much that everything almost sounds the same volume, you effectively take out the emotion that the musician was putting into the playing. and whilst distortion can be good, distortion caused by over compessing a mix can ruin it, and is only subtly heard, thus affecting our subconscious experience of the music

too many audio engineers and producers are giving into the pressure to create a louder mix which in my opinion is fucking up modern music. there are some great artists out there, producing highly creative and entertaining music. unfortunately we are giving into what the punter thinks he wants rather than guiding them into an understanding that louder isn't necessarily better. its like letting your three year old kid convince you that mcdonalds is good for them

how absurd is that idea?