1980'S ROCK POLL ALBUMS/TRACKS VOTING THREAD. (Voting closes September 20) (all welcome to vote inc Lurkers)

now that's a good point.

Oh weird, listening to "'Cross the Breeze" now, I feel like things are actually more distorted on the remaster. Maybe the increased volume just made it more immediate on the first listen or at least made everything a bit more audible? Hm. Potential audiophile fail. I'll have to give it time.

I dunno, I still feel like stuff sounds kind of distant on the old CD.

Yeah, drums are worse on the new.

interesting. i have the early 90s geffen CD and remember it clipping at certain sections, nothing too dramatic but the distortion was kind of displeasing at high volumes. as i recall drums sounded just fine tho. anyway 9 times out of 10 the new remasterings alter the essence of certain albums to a ridiculous degree and the supposed improvement in terms of sound quality is at least questionable.

Turn On The News is one of my very fave songs

and, yeah, grant wrote that one. he's much more willing than bob to go for untwisted rock songwriting, and i love him for it.

Bob's guitar at the end is amazing. Wish there was an extended version.

i could never get much into the hüskers but at the same time i really dig 'hold me down' by the goo goo dolls and those guys were basically a dü/mats tribute act at the time. i feel a bit weird about that.

haha HOLD ME UP !!

It seems we have 36 album ballots , 22 tracks ballots and a joker

my albums ballot is set but I need to revisit a lot of these tracks before i vote.

lol what's the joker

Yeah, I guess it's not so much that the drums distort on the 90s disc as that they just seem more distant than they should be to me. (Compare to the drums on Murray Street, especially the presence of the bass drum. Or Scorpions' Taken by Force, which I think is an example of an excellent recording of a heavy rock band from even earlier than SY.) Vocals are a bit like this too. On the remaster, this seems like it's corrected a little but it's at the cost of even more clipping. I guess hearing things in a slightly different way just made it seem a bit new and made the album seem more exciting the first time.

The third Velvets, which Tim mentioned above, is another good reference point.

Yeah, I guess it's not so much that the drums distort on the 90s disc as that they just seem more distant than they should be to me. (Compare to the drums on Murray Street, especially the presence of the bass drum. Or Scorpions' Taken by Force, which I think is an example of an excellent recording of a heavy rock band from even earlier than SY.) Vocals are a bit like this too. On the remaster, this seems like it's corrected a little but it's at the cost of even more clipping. I guess hearing things in a slightly different way just made it seem a bit new and made the album seem more exciting the first time.

This is the whole point of heavy compression and limiting; they're applied to make the recordings seem louder and more exciting and vivid, often at the expense of sound quality (which leads to listening fatigue over longer listening sessions). The liberal use of compression used to be more a feature of commercial radio (and singles destined for commercial radio), where it makes sense in terms of grabbing the listeners' very short attention spans, but over the past, say, fifteen years, listeners in many genres have come to expect a certain loudness from their music as a somewhat ironic signifier of high production values, and many records have been remastered several times over the years to match continually evolving expectations of loudness (which after being on the ascent for years, appear to be leveling off after considerable publicity about the "loudness war" and its toll on sound quality).

I mean, all of this is obvious and well-known, but I don't think it's merely the "newness" of the remaster that made it seem more exciting.

Things aren't remastered just to make them louder, of course. I'm sure sund4r is right that there's improved fidelity with the DN remaster, too. It's just a shame if it is indeed clipping and if the dynamic range was squashed.

I think remastering jobs used to be more properly focused on restoring and reviving older recordings and actually making them sound better, but so many remastering jobs these days (especially on fairly recent recordings) seem to be almost exclusively concerned with meeting contemporary expectations of volume (they also seem to be perceived as an opportunity to repackage a record, pick up a little publicity and sell a few more copies, especially to people who already own the record). I'm sure you're also aware of the fact that in an A-B listening test, the louder recording will almost always be picked as the superior sounding recording, even if the two recordings are identical in every other way. But I'm not at all doubting sund4r's experience. I'm just not surprised that a recently remastered recording can seemingly sound both better and worse.

/Zzzzz...

Some recordings are horribly quiet and need to be made louder. Just not all recordings need made louder for the hell of it.

I feel sick mouthy should be posting in here. Can't have a loudness war chat without him. It's just not cricket.

Do you all think original 80s cd's sounded better or worse?

You're Living All Over Me is probably the album on this list that suffered the most in its initial CD pressing and improved the most in its more recent reissue

TURN YOUR AMLIFIER UP.

Some recordings are horribly quiet and need to be made louder. Just not all recordings need made louder for the hell of it.

You're 100% right. I'm not actually an audiophile purist when it comes to these things. For instance, I would gladly take fuller, louder (even slightly clipped!) SST records over what's currently available. My only original point is that records seem to be remastered at a much faster pace these days, and for sometimes dubious reasons, and that I'm not surprised that an initially exciting remastering job seems less-than-great over an extended listening period.

I'm also under the impression that Reign in Blood has been remastered about ten times, but I can't find the info atm.

Bowie albums seemed to get remastered every 2 years for a period

Elvis Costello is the absolute worst for this.

yeah but who buys Elvis Costello albums?

If you hate 80s Rock then this thread is for you CLASSIC POP Magazine - ILM's Ideal Magazine for Old Farts?

yeah but who buys Elvis Costello albums?

― VOTE in the 1980's ROCK POLL PLEASE! (Algerian Goalkeeper), Saturday, September 8, 2012 1:44 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

stop hatin, EC >>>>>> most of the shit you're reppin itt

He's so boring. I'd rather listen to Ray Charles.

For anyone who hasn't heard it, I'd like to rep for Voivod's Nothingface: I can't think of anything else that sounds quite like this. Manages to synthesize thrash, prog, punk, and postpunk art rock into a spaced-out angular sci-fi math rock that still rocks really hard. On-a-dime stops and starts, choppy chordal inversions, nasal but tuneful vocals. Highlights, nominated on the tracks list: "Missing Sequences", "The Unknown Knows"

Also try the two Sharrock albums for post-Hendrix jazz guitar noise. Seize the Rainbow has plenty of riffing rock. Guitar is more droney guitar smear.

Did you nominate the Fushitsusha and Keiji Haino, Hellhouse? They're great.

Also repping for Queensryche's Operation: Mindcrime: Operatic, sample-happy high-concept pomp-metal with virtuosic vocals. Highlight on tracks list: "The Needle Lies". The Fates Warning is worth checking out too.

If you're a longtime poster, Hellhouse, I have a guess as to who you may be.

It was I who nominated them.

Still haven't had a chance to read all the noms here but I already know what my number one choice is going to be; it's also likely no one else's, not even in their top 10, but howandever...

VOIVOD always reminded me nicely of Die Kreuzen

Some albums on a Spotify playlist. Incomplete but it can be added to
http://open.spotify.com/user/pfunkboy/playlist/4mgtVe8Ccj0qC4K9zldY8D

It's no way complete but please subscribe to it and help out with what is missing.

Kind of funny listening to Evol after all this discussion about Sonic Youth and production and after listening to all these other noisy 80s albums. It's lo-fi but also really 80s in a way: almost like they were trying to get a Cocteau Twins atmosphere with budget gear. All that reverb!

A little surprised that Children of God mostly holds up.

Btw, I'll also rep for Einsturzende Neubauten - "Kalte Sternen", where they actually throw a sugary pop hook behind the buzzing guitars and bracing noise.

Ugh, "Kalte Sterne"

Maybe it was a Joy Division/New Order atmosphere they (or Martin Bisi, most likely) were going for?

Kind of funny listening to Evol after all this discussion about Sonic Youth and production and after listening to all these other noisy 80s albums. It's lo-fi but also really 80s in a way: almost like they were trying to get a Cocteau Twins atmosphere with budget gear. All that reverb!

― EveningStar (Sund4r), Sunday, September 9, 2012 4:45 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah hearing Evol for the first time after some later SY albums what really strikes you is the big cheesy snare drum

Thanks Hellhouse for topping the Spotify playlist up
Everyone should subscribe http://open.spotify.com/user/pfunkboy/playlist/4mgtVe8Ccj0qC4K9zldY8D

Here's the correct version of Grauzone's Eisbär. It's awesome.

spotify:local:Grauzone:Eisb%c3%a4r:Eisb%c3%a4r:255

http://open.spotify.com/local/Grauzone/Eisb%c3%a4r/Eisb%c3%a4r/255

oh shit just realized it's my own library. Move on, nothing to see here.

i see those SY records pretty much as experiments with recording techniques. funny thing is, prob no other band from that era had a run of 5 or 6 albums sounding so different from each other. the EVOL production is too sterile, sure, but bad moon rising sounds absolutely fucked up in a really amazing way. it's like they tried to make a bombastic sounding record with very limited resources and to achieve those goals they viciously pushed everything into the red and didn't look back. so they ended up having the guitars jumping out from the speakers and these mammoth, bonham kinda sounding drums from a parallel universe or something. the cymbal sound in "society is a hole" always gets me and the bass tone is fantastic all through the record. i think nothing beats BMR in terms of twisted, one of a kind production.