Sade: Classic or Dud?

her next record in 2024 will be a return to form, trust me

j0hn i feel you to a certain degree, inasmuchas love deluxe> promise > diamond life > lovers rock > soldier of love > stronger than pride (album not the song)

but it's frikkin SADE man! her weaker albums are manna from heaven compared to 99.9% of all other tripe out there, and i'm counting the days till 2024

I am with you! I am stoked to have a new Sade album! it's just that the groove isn't as mmmmmm as I'd like & I'm putting that on the degradation of production techniques & standards over the years - I know this is corny decrepit listener central but if these guys were tracking to tape with an engineer who knew his way around a big analog console, every mind on this thread would be completely blown by these exact same songs

the whole albums a bit slower and less sexy, more introspective. i put it down to mrs. adu herself, like it's just where she is in her life and so that's what her album sounds like...

actually you can see her whole catalog through this kinda mental filter - diamond life = young n carefree, promise = budding young love with the guitarist, stronger than pride = difficult relationship choices, getting married (not to the guitarist), love deluxe = clock ticking, i'm super horny someone please get me pregnant asap, lovers rock = concerns over stability in relationships...

soldier of love = ...looking back on the past, reminiscing at 50 etc? fuck it, i'll listen to sade reminisce if thats what she wants to sing about

if these guys were tracking to tape with an engineer who knew his way around a big analog console, every mind on this thread would be completely blown by these exact same songs

sad but truth bomb

if these guys were tracking to tape with an engineer who knew his way around a big analog console

are you sure they aren't? sade's "the most successful solo female artist in British history.[2]" so if she wanted to track to tape with the same engineer who recorded promise, i'm sure that's exactly what she did, industry trends be damned.... though if anyone has a link to a sound on sound article about this joint, i'd be happy to be proven wrong, just to read what studio/mics/preamps etc she DID use

ok enough sade stanning from me for a while

i bet she doesnt give a shit about tracking to tape or recording in a nice studio blah blah audiophile blah. wouldnt be surprised if most of this album was done in a home studio. could be totally wrong of course - i dont have the cd to check. but a lot of artists think that sort of talk is for saddos and geeks. plus recording to tape and all that is more expensive these days. a lot of artists seem to prefer being able to record in their own studio or a small home setup rather than going to a professional one.

but comparing the sonics of this album in terms of richness/expansiveness etc to the older ones is just :( which is sad, cos yknow, its SADE.

im gonna listen to it again now anyway.

are you sure they aren't?

I would bet money on it.

the whole thing sounds thin so im guessing it was straight to digital.

it's that + I would also guess that an above poster is correct: that the guitars are being tracked in the console room and treated in the HD with various processes that simulate amp tone - which may some day provide the varieties of tone you can get with guitar + pedals + amps, but sure doesn't at this stage imo, or which doesn't anyhow outside of the hands of some really forward-looking engineers

I could be completely wrong tho gotta say I am just estimating on what I hear. for all I know it's just a lazy mastering job.

to my ears it sounds pretty much like the same sort of production values of a james blunt album.

xpost - why dont people just actually use guitar pedals and amps?

it costs a lot of money to run a big studio & upkeep good vintage gear & there's a general movement toward soft emulators of amps & effects - convenience & the unassailable truth that most people don't give a shit & won't notice the difference

one can have v. long discussions about this, it's hard not to sound like an "oor it were much better before awl the CHANGES, yargh" person on the one end but I've tracked electric guitars in both contexts with world-class engineers and imo plugging directly into the board is borderline criminal; room tone is hugely important, and it's something people pay less & less attention to

"most people don't give a shit & won't notice the difference"

these people are listened to far too much.

I have no idea where she actually recorded it but she's got a studio in the basement of her house in Islington.

J0hn maybe this is all a set-up to prime you into purchasing "Soldier of Love - Unplugged"? Only half joking..

"most people don't give a shit & won't notice the difference"

also, i think these people do notice the difference, they just arent able to verbalise it.

well - on this - the liner notes say "recorded at realworld studios uk & el cortijo spain." realworld is world-class, was state of the art when it was new & I'm assuming is still something special - its website is droolworthy stuff. El Cortijo looks if anything more amazing. so if there is a problem, it's not in the environment - there is no reason, given enough budget, not to make an album full of "soldier of love"s in these rooms. "soldier of love" is to me sonically on par with plenty of other sade tracks.

but it does have this one sampled guitar hit throughout that I find distracting - it can't really hurt the track, but that's partly because the track is made of really strong stuff - and this is part of the sonic picture that isn't working for me - this sort of frankenstein feel. I look toward the digital treatment of percussion & of performance for a culprit here, and sometimes to mastering. the album was mastered at metropolis - I don't know anything about them, but john davis, the mastering engineer here, has a strictly a-list bunch of recent clients - snow patrol, stereophonics, arctic monkeys, bloc party - whose records I haven't heard, so I can't say what his aesthetic is.

so, I don't know. the problem isn't the studio, and it's probably not the mastering job. as an analog dude I'm inclined to point fingers at changes in technique ushered in by the wholesale transition to digital - I listen to that monochromatic beat on "babyfather" and think "if you'd tried to bring that blah sound into a love deluxe session you'd have been laughed out of the room." but maybe I just ain't feelin the songs as much? I don't know.

Derail: just noticed how she's sloowly turning away...

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b356/olem/sadeturns.jpg

(I'd estimate the time of orbit at abt 58 years (ie 2042), except a couple of them I had to l/r-flip so it doesn't really work)

j0hn you got called on the quantizing thing already so now you're changing yr argument & real talk you sound exactly like every sade critic ever. TOO MUCH LIKE A STUDIO. i dunno. it strikes me as fronting. i just listened to 'cherish the day' seconds ago & the drums are just as 'quantized' as ever. they never sounded like a live band, or when they did, they sounded like a live band that was TRYING to sound as mechanistic/studioized as possible, clean & antiseptic in the rhythmic department.

i dont hear any problems with the sound quality on this record, really struggling to hear what everyone's problem is tbh

it doesnt help that u keep shifting the goalposts. is it 'tinny'? those drums dont sound tinny to me. they sound ... like regular sade drums. i dont hear, like, compression problems. can u guys try to tease out exactly whats so annoying about the sound because i dont get it

when did I say "tinny"? you're so busy insisting that everybody (which is a bunch of people) who hear this record as quite different from other sade records are somehow kidding themselves, etc., that you can't even distinguish between who's arguing what. there is kind of no point in trying to make a case to you - you're just going to reject the argument anyway owing to your lack of interest in discussion - glad you think the album sounds exactly like every other sade album ever, plenty of people who've been listening to sade for 20+ years don't hear it that way, w/e dude

like this

they never sounded like a live band, or when they did, they sounded like a live band that was TRYING to sound as mechanistic/studioized as possible, clean & antiseptic in the rhythmic department.

not going to dispute that that's how they've always sounded to you, but "mechanistic" is about the last word I'd've used to describe the band playing "cherish the day" - they always sounded like a live band

also, the diff between a band TRYING to sound mechanistic or whatever as opposed to a band that DOES sound mechanistic is pretty big.

though i wouldnt say they sounded mechanistic either.

Sade's on Jonathan Ross!

titchy it can also be pretty small!

& john -- listen to cherish the day right now. how do those drums sound like a 'live band' to you?? ppl were comparing them to trip hop for a reason

& yes the rev rodney did in fact say the drums sound tinny as have other ppl -- i wasnt responding to you when i mentioned that

im interested in discussion i just think so far yr answers have been nonsensical!! & ive explained why.

imo it sounds like your idea of 'sade' is different from the music of sade, like theres a divergence between how the music sounds when listening & yr (....shh .. rockist??) remembered view of some incredible band.

im not saying everyone has to love the new record! im not speaking in absolutes about your degrees of interest in it. im just saying that your criticisms so far sound like things ppl have been throwing at this band for years, and i dont really hear much difference AS FAR AS the specific shit you've mentioned. yes it is a different record, in a lot of ways. but no, their drums have always sounded like this & i dont get where yr coming from at all

their drums used to be much fuller sounding

deej I made a point of listening to cherish the day before I singled that one out - my hearing of sade is rooted not in some remembered view but in the music of somebody with whose music I've been actively engage for a couple of decades, whose development I've followed as one follows the music of an artist in whose work one takes an interest. but take for example the sort of shaker-sound in "babyfather" - now a/b that with, say, the closed hi-hat hits on "nothing can come between us" from stronger than pride - both are right on time, obviously in-pocket and locked into the groove are what this band is aiming for. but there's an audible difference between snapped-to-grid stuff like that shaker (fish? you'll hear what I mean, it's a soft version of one of those chains-of-metal-beads handshaker things) on "babyfather" and the live band feel that I've always gotten from sade. I mean, you dig, right, that they put out a live album after lovers rock? unless you count them as really cynical ppl, I think putting out a live album kind of asserts "the band that made this album is a live band."

( which is another way of saying: are you sure it's not your own not-exactly-supported-by-the-evidence expectations/ideas about sade that are being brought to bear on the text? )

the drums on cherish the day are obviously looped though. any idiot can tell you that. so of course they dont sound like a live band. but ultimately, even then, as the rev says, they sounded a lot fuller and had more body. on the new record they sound tinny, small, and just insipid overall. the sounds are also deeply uninspired. when i said waht theyve been doing wince love deluxe has basically been with the remnants of that sound, i meant their production is not really distinctive from any number of sub zero 7 groups or downtempo singer songwriter types, which is a shame.

i caught a bit of solider of love on jonathan ross - i thought the band/backing sounded horribly 'canned'. was like all the sounds were being played off someones mobile phone.

anyway, some examples of old sade where they DO sound live. and these arent tucked away on the albums. these were singles. is it a crime, your love is king, smooth operator, sweetest taboo, and so on and so on. youd be hard pressed to say they were trying to or DID sound mechanistic 'all along' from listening to these tracks. that argument really makes no sense. i mean, sure you could argue the drums sounded boxy, but then so did every other 80s band at the time. even then though, they werent dully quantized to shit like they are these days.

this isnt hard to hear. im just working through tracks on their best of album.

*doing since love deluxe

"the sounds are also deeply uninspired. when i said waht theyve been doing wince love deluxe has basically been with the remnants of that sound, i meant their production is not really distinctive from any number of sub zero 7 groups or downtempo singer songwriter types, which is a shame."

but the sounds on any number of sub zero 7 groups/downtempo singer songwriter types are often really 'good' in terms of effect -- its just that the songwriting isnt there (whereas with Sade it obviously is). titchy ive read your shit on here a long time & while ive given you shit a bunch i do think you bring some pretty good insights sometimes. but this is one of these things where i just smh @ u because it feels like you're missing the entire point. Sade's sound is not about standing out for its sonic invention -- or even sonic 'refinement,' its always been to a degree about 'fitting in' imo. people come to her for the songs, the voice, a kind of sense of universal restrained & intimate romance. i kind of hear where you're coming from in that i dont think this stuff sounds like its dropping dollar bills all over the place, its not sonically ~~expansive~~ but the actual production qualities themselves sound pretty high

& fwiw i never claimed that all sade was trying to sound mechanistic (certainly not 'is it a crime'), & theyve always been a hot live band, but obviously huge swaths of their shit was going for a really stable, precise rhythmic feel that doesnt sound loose/'live' or, like, blatantly swinging. theres a sense of intentional stiffness to the drums on tracks like "sweetest taboo" which has always been a part of their sound.

i do hear how the drums sound less ... banging? less large. but they dont sound 'tinny' at all, there is definitely a sense of clarity & not distortion or bleeding high frequency that i think 'tinny' implies

how is Lovers Live, by the way? i can't believe i've never heard it!

i dont expect sonic innovation from a sade record. just good fidelity. tinny as ive said before is the wrong word but ive also used small, insipid, and generally lumpen to describe the programming, rather than the sounds. hence, i think the backing is often more functional than anything else. that richness/general opulence of sades sound is what made them, well sade, to me. obviously pop production values have changed a hell of a lot since the 80s, though at the time they were making those early classics, they didnt sound like most pop bands, ie drum machines, synths etc, so to have them basically reflect pop sonics now is a bit dissapointing. you keep talking about what 'people' have always said about her, or what they come to her for, rather than actually looking at what else they got along with those obvious qualities. its like saying people came to rakim only for great lyrics and a certain cool poise and ignore when a new album of his comes out with terrible production and hooks that affect everything else. so, sure most people might not notice whats missing/whats there on the new sade album (though i played it to my cousins who were all teenagers in the 80s and loved sade and they said they thought it sounded different for some reason and didnt warm to it as much), and yes, the main elements that make sade are still intact, and make me return to the record, but its still important.

btw when i say modern pop sonics im not talking about your gagas and britneys obv, more the dido/james blunt/singer songwritery types with mass appeal that get sold in tescos and sainsburys.

i think thats a decent argument. i dont really hear it personally, or its not detracting from the positive qualities of the record for me (i dont recognize any similar feelings while im listening to this record) so im not really sure i agree.

actually on reflection i hear it to a degree actually - i would buy that this one is recorded digital when the prev were analog for instance. and there are places where it IS clearly noticeable now that you mention it, like that one weird distorted guitar on soldier of love that pops in every once in a while, and is clarly cut-and-pasted into every chorus... if it were analog you couldn't really do that easily and there would have been subtle differences each time he played that fill on each chorus...

i don't think it really overly detracts from the album though, it's still lush and beautiful and well produced. it's just most likely recorded digitally like everything else is these days, and maybe sounds a touch "thinner" for it. look, in 30 years people are gonna be paying top dollar to emulate the "digital" sound of the naughties, reproducing that thin digital gloss on retroesqe albums etc - just roll with it

ugh at that thought

Lovin' this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW8HHw8kpfM&feature=player_embedded#at=102

I love the production on it, too.

yeah, this is nice

sooooooooooooooooooo classic!

i feel "paradise" does not get enough love

i feel Stronger Than Pride altogether does not get enough love

my favorite Sade track of all time is on Stronger Than Pride:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzvM0M6lRfI

I could listen to "Never As Good As The First Time" on a loop all day.