Grimes/Claire Boucher thread

Heavy compression as aesthetic (as opposed to hamfisted mastering) has been a thing for years now - Oneohtrix, Arca, the first Twigs album etc etc. Sounds pureed and fused together into a veneer - this is definitely deliberate and it works here.

Sounds like shit when there's just one sound in the mix admittedly but that hardly ever happens here.

― Matt DC, Tuesday, February 25, 2020 1:10 AM (twenty hours ago)

The last Holly Herndon, Yves Tumor, Chino Amobi...

― Matt DC, Tuesday, February 25, 2020 1:13 AM (twenty hours ago)

This album sounds worse production wise than anything produced by any of those artists honestly (okay - Arca is guilty of some bad mixing with his early work and the first Twigs EP is def poor). Herndon's production is mostly outstanding - not even sure how she's even brought up here.

I am just a bit miffed at the regression of mix quality on this compared to her last few. She's progressively improved the quality of her sound over the years until this one. If it was her deliberate intention to put out an "amateurish" mix to create an atmosphere, okay - but I still don't like it. Shame, because the music deserves more.

I haven't listened to this album enough yet to know if I like it or not but 2 things are sure :
- I like it better than Art Angels
- IDORU is lovely and arguably her best song since Visions
(also lol the "Wonderwall" guitar in "Delete Forever")

2 tracks into my #firstlisten on bus ride home

surprised most of the discussion itt is about production being thin or lacking, i find it’s the songwriting that’s conspicuously absent. these songs are well produced but they sound like the rave in the matrix reloaded. track 1 prob worst grimes song since the pre-visions era, sounds like a parody or a fans attempt at a grimes song, the

song 3 (country)

liking this more. would fit on art angels

song 4 “violence”

much better. not sure why it takes 5 years between each album to make songs that are 15% gothier, but this ones pretty good

song 5

i think I’m starting to see what you guys are talking about re: production. pretty fun when the breaks come in but the mix is a little confusing/cluttered. this could smash with Art Angela style production. idg the singing in this, it’s just

6 new gods

didn’t make much of an impression. lots of reverb, maybe too much

7

sounds just like that one on art angels. she’s really smashing the sustain/reverb. great beat, chorus is v catchy too. i like the guitar riff at the end. this ones def a highlight

mostly this album is making me want to listen to art angels again so far. also it makes me want to play PlayStation 1

8 you’ll miss me

beat slaps right out the gate. kinda sounds like a charli xcx song (good). really good songwriting, another high light imho. don’t think it ranks w her best material but perhaps it’s too soon to tel

9 before fever

kinda sounds like chill wave mumblerap... p bad. chorus is an improvement

i kind of feel like she’s got a similar process as kanye where she intentionally fucks her album up last minute or rushes it to try and get that lightning in a bottle... there’s no way these tracks were fussed over for 5 years. art angels sounded so heavily crafted

10

drums are drenched in reverb... set them free

not sure if there’s another song on this album but I’m at my stop. overall pretty good album, glad i didn’t have high expectations of it, will maybe listen to it a couple more times

last song IDORU is actually mb the best, i was distracted

What is it specifically that people mean when they say the production or mix is bad? What are the problems with it? How is it amateurish? And how / where / on what / to what are people listening?

I don't listen in anywhere near like the way I used to 10 or 15 years ago, and I'm not atuned to latest trends like I almost was once upon a time, but I'm not hearing amateurishness here. I've bought the CD, ripped it to my server as FLAC files, and stuck it on my iPhone as 128aac files like I do with everything else. Listening is in the kitchen (off the server), in the livingroom (hi-fi), and out-and-about (Koss Portapros). Yes, there's loads of compression and reverb, yes the songs are way less strident and pop than Art Angels, but I'm not hearing anything here as 'wrong'.

I don’t hear anyone saying the mix is “amateurish” it’s obviously a purposeful choice?

The compression is an effect but also I do kind of wonder what the album wd be like with more “club mixes”

FWIW the algo mixes did sound to me like there was some eq tweaking but maybe when I was a/bing it I was jumping to wrong parts of the song cuz of edits ... “violence” is longer in the bonus tracks but I guess that’s the “club mix”

Octobeard describes the mix as amateurish about four posts ago.

I don’t think it’s amateurish, she’s proven she is a very apt producer and her aesthetic choices are very deliberate, following on Matt’s point, the comparison might be otm since I also dislike how Arca and OPN sound, I’d describe the sound as “sharp” and “angular”, I can see how some people might vibe to them but to me it’s stressful to endure for a ull album.

FKA Twigs and Holly Herndon I like and I don’t think sound like this (maybe FKA’s first EPs, her two albums sound very muscular to me as opposed to this hollow, sharp sound)

I don’t know if it makes much sense but I don’t know the technical way to describe it.

It's basically aggressive EQ and cavernous reverb, making everything sound like a cold warehouse. She knows exactly what she's doing, nothing remotely amateur in her production skills. viz: http://songexploder.net/grimes

idk the issues i have with the production are more about things like the way the drums on "idoru" sound very detached from the rest of the song and the way her voice is presented which is different enough from the previous albums to emphasise a lot of things i find really annoying.

"delete forever" is the only one where the compressed sound really doesn't work for me, it does just sound wrong and awkward to my ears.

I'm not talking about the quality of the production per se, I was specifically addressing the point about the use of compression. All the artists I mentioned have made better produced records than this, even when I don't like them as much (eg Arca).

i think "so heavy" is one of her best productions ever, really feels like you're being orbited by these glacial smears of sound

but again i don't get the complains about production/mixing regarding this record

"new gods" and "before the fever" may seem slight on first blush but they're two of my favorite tracks now. "new gods" is a really beautiful, stately melody ("hands reaching out for newwwww gods") and "before the fever" especially sounds like visions-era grimes gone through the wormhole

imminent annihilation sounds so dope

I love So Heavy.

album is like unused music for the cyberia rave scenes in serial experiments lain

"before the fever" turning itself inside out until it's all sub-bass sounds... fuckin awesome

but again i don't get the complains about production/mixing regarding this record

― american bradass (BradNelson), Wednesday, February 26, 2020 7:39 AM (thirty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah idgi the production here sounds pretty ill to me, a valid choice on her part, and i don't know that the album would work as well done in another manner. the very sci-fi ness of it is perfect.

if her aim was to make it sound like a forgotten hyper corporate alt rock album downloaded from Kazaa at >128kpbs ca. 1998 the sound is perfect. it’s very “veiled” and the vocals sound very harshly bright (eg compare to a rnb record with that matte finish above 5khz)

I love IDORU but the line "you're so cool cos' you don't think you're cool" is a bit cringey when you have Mr Musk in mind !

"IDORU" is such a fantastic album-closing track...

I’m asking for records that would work in a club system when I complain abt the sounds here ... compression doesn’t really translate

Again I think the album is great

Ok, I can totally understand that.

What is it specifically that people mean when they say the production or mix is bad? What are the problems with it? How is it amateurish? And how / where / on what / to what are people listening?

I don't listen in anywhere near like the way I used to 10 or 15 years ago, and I'm not atuned to latest trends like I almost was once upon a time, but I'm not hearing amateurishness here. I've bought the CD, ripped it to my server as FLAC files, and stuck it on my iPhone as 128aac files like I do with everything else. Listening is in the kitchen (off the server), in the livingroom (hi-fi), and out-and-about (Koss Portapros). Yes, there's loads of compression and reverb, yes the songs are way less strident and pop than Art Angels, but I'm not hearing anything here as 'wrong'.

― Hey Bob (Scik Mouthy), Wednesday, February 26, 2020 2:47 AM (yesterday)

Poor use of compression and EQ. Beats, specifically kicks, sound fuzzy and distorted, but not in a good way. A great visual analogy for me is looking at a JPG with a ton of compression artifacts. This album is that but with its mix. It's not a huge deal for me, better than poor brick wall limited mastering, but it's disappointing given her previous work and the quality of the new songs.

Artists of Grimes' caliber and popularity generally don't produce mixes like this and often hire external help to adjust the mix level settings/compression/EQ at the track level. I am not a fan of artists getting lazier with craft and calling it "art". I also admit I'm more anal about this than others because I produce and know how easy it would be to fix these issues

i guess the thing w/this album is to me it seems like a specific choice vs a problem she would have wanted fixed, and i guess it doesn't particularly bother me nor do i notice it (i'm not a producer btw). the tunes have a lot of hooks which come through. but historically i also enjoy a lot of albums in this realm and style, so idk. it sounds like grimes.

often hire external help to adjust the mix level settings/compression/EQ at the track level

But there are "mixers" credited on every track... I think IDORU is the only one where Grimes is the credited mixer?

Yeah I saw that... which is why it's likely a deliberate choice, and one that I don't agree with.

Oh it’s totally a deliberate choice (sorry, guess I misunderstood your comment). I personally think it “works” and sounds great, but obviously that’s a matter of taste.

I don't know that I buy that, there are plenty of records where a professional engineer just fucked up the mix. I definitely hear digital clipping on the kicks and it does not sound purposeful to me.

moodles otm, basically the line between production and mixing doesn't really exist anymore so you have producers making mix decisions and vice versa and it can end up with the mixer sorta being the label's enforcer to juice and maximize things to earbleed levels sometimes or rush things to release.

but it sounds great on my iphone speakers, and i don't notice the mediocre quality when i am commuting with headphones on. it suffers played back to back with extremely expensively made records. but at the end of the day the album is fascinating, and sort of suggests a chillwavey nostalgia-as-future-anxiety with the past being y2k era instead of vhs, and the future anxiety being apocalypse rather than joblessness. the garbage comparison resonates because it hits that period where the digital hooks were going in and we weren't really noticing, and now look where it got us.

speaking of hooks ... it is absolutely packed with hooks and ... i think people have differing definitions of what a hook is? i have had like 5-6 different ones running through my head after just two listens

people hear things differently... like the tonic of “sweet home Alabama” or w/e

I think there’s been a lot of projecting w/the relatively few reviews calling this a failure, little discussion of her skills as a musician creating a melodic work and more about her skill in executing the concept album she mentioned which like i said before was more a jumping-off point wrt inspiration vs any explicitly told dystopian tale.

Interestingly I think like AA it comes off better as a whole, when listened to in one sitting. vs listening to the tracks as they were rolling out — they sounded cool but it works well as a piece. Also idk if it’s better than AA but I think it’s a more consistent record so maybe I’ll agree w D-40 eventually.

chillwavey nostalgia-as-future-anxiety with the past being y2k era instead of vhs, and the future anxiety being apocalypse rather than joblessness

Holy shit I love this description thank you

Interestingly, in another forum someone took the leaked album and inverted the audio from the official release to see if there were adjustments made between then and now. Only You'll miss me when I'm not around had any changes.

a forgotten hyper corporate alt rock album downloaded from Kazaa at >128kpbs ca. 1998

^^this is the description I luv

maybe it's the grimes album for ppl who aren't particularly grimes fans? idk... none of her stuff other than "oblivian" has really grabbed me, but I'm so locked in to this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCrhTU9HkVQ

can anyone confirm if grimes likes anime

almost as hard to determine as whether she's been into tumblr

Having just listened to the new Caribou album, yeah, this sounds like shit. Still enjoy it though.

Is it just me or are her music videos very low effort this album cycle?

Friendship with @Fantano CANCELED ! Friendship with @pitchfork RENEWED pic.twitter.com/DgKnFynbN4

— ༺GRIMES༻ 🤍 小仙女 (@Grimezsz) February 28, 2020

ha ha, that’s awesome

pic.twitter.com/Ed4HLucaXe

— maddie (@elfnymph) February 28, 2020

That is how artists should respond to good/bad reviews xxpost

otm good stuff

Answering my own question but I wasn’t too far off with the “lesser effort” in her music videos for this cycle compared to previous albums, from an AMA he did in reddit a couple hours ago:

There was also a lot of stuff planned that didn't pan out due to my manager's passing (LAUREN FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!!!) and my pregnancy. We had planned a short film with Jodeb that was about all the Goddesses fighting but being pregnant got too crazy to make somethning like that, and a "modern demonology" with Heavy Metal Magazine that would be a coffee table book with all the Gods

Kinda sucks that her original vision for the visuals of the album got slashed away.

Here’s the AMA : https://www.reddit.com/r/popheads/comments/fb38tj/popheads_its_grimes_and_my_new_album_miss/

the ama also has grimes talking about the mix:

For Miss A i think each song is a mini world/ personality whereas AA is more of a cohesive statement. So some songs just required specific personelle to finish. Like with So heavy, its such a wierd song production wise, i needed someone who could keep the bass heavy but bring the vocals up without losing verb and without muddying the mix, which is why Illangelo was the only option to mix. He's worked extednsively with the weeknd and i think a song like the hills is one of the only songs that has lots of reverb on the vocal and still bangs.

I know she’s just typing fast, but I genuinely dig the “personelle” neologism.