What Does ILM Think of Daniel Lanois?

I saw Willie live when Teatro was new (at Farm Aid) & he sounded terrific playing those songs: it sounded huge & spooky in the giant amphitheater. It's a good record but not one to which I've returned, & I ought to do so.

I think I was at the same show. Tinley Park? Was Lanois in the band? With those two Cuban drummers?

Tinley Park, right, the year with Brian Wilson, Phish jamming with Neil Young, & Mellencamp with a rap interlude.

I didn't know Lanois was in the band, though! Definitely remember the drumming: that was a big part of the spooky vibe that night.

Especially love the last track on Teatro, "I've Loved You All Over The World."

Similarly, I saw Emmylou Harris at First Avenue when Wrecking Ball came out, with drums and percussion and all, and she was terrific.

his recordings: Acadie then diminishing returns

his productions: unlistenable in philly otm: "But with Lanois it feels kind of - I don't know - like, his aesthetic can draw the best out of an artist, but that's not really his primary concern. Which I find a little offputting, even when it sounds terrific"

i kind of dig the instrumental record he did with brian blade and mehldau a few years ago. haven't really been a fan of his vocals
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zeu7kMwQPws

his productions: unlistenable in philly otm: "But with Lanois it feels kind of - I don't know - like, his aesthetic can draw the best out of an artist, but that's not really his primary concern. Which I find a little offputting, even when it sounds terrific"

I missed this post earlier and completely agree. You only need to look at the number of times he's either hired a documentarian to film the proceedings (Rocky World, Wrecking Ball, Here Is What Is) or written about himself (Soul Mining) to see that it seems like it's a lot more about him than the people he's working with.

Oh Mercy going down pretty nicely at the moment. "Most of the Time" is really fabulous.

Such a weirdly first rating guy. I want to love his sound and approach and then he goes and films himself live mixing a track in some Hollywood mansion after drinking a shot of "truth serum." Gag.

I was surprised to learn, on buying a Raffi record from the used bin a while back for my kids, that it was produced by Daniel Lanois, who, at the time, ran a small studio near where Raffi worked.

https://joelfrancis.com/2009/05/15/lanois-raffi-eno/

Xpost, first rating = frustrating

Listening back the last few days ...

Flesh and Machine, his most recent solo record, is really good. Whereas most of his records have his sensitive new age guy emoting on them, lots of Rock-with-a-capital-R guitar and a bunch of his (admittedly nice) pedal steel playing, this one is pretty much just Lanois manipulating loops on his Lexicon Prime Time. About half of the tracks have Brian Blade doing his Brian Blade thing and there's a bit of pedal steel and piano in places. But most of it is loops, echoes and textures he's mixing together to create some kind of composition. Probably my favorite thing under his own name.

Le Noise, his Neil Young album from 2010, is generally really good if somewhat less revolutionary than he probably imagined it was when he made it. It's one of Lanois' uber– pretentious conceits: just Neil, his guitar and Lanois' "sonics" recorded in a spooky Hollywood mansion with shit projected on the walls while Neil laid tracks down. And candidly, there isn't much about the production that you can't do using a handful of plugins on a Mac in today's day and age. But Neil's songs are among his strongest in probably 20 years – "Hitchhiker" is a rambling Neil classic. And Lanois' production, to his credit, brings out some nice Crazy Horse-ish textures on the guitars and an often hidden ghostly quality in Neil's vocals. B&W film of the proceedings (another Lanois hobbyhorse of late) is pretty solid as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU5B53b9ntQ&feature=youtu.be

goodbye to language is pretty cool, nothing incredible but i feel like i've wanted an album of ambient pedal steel for a long long time

i love it, really beautiful sounds.

chuck johnson has an ambient pedal steel record coming out on VDSQ, keep your eyes open!

yeahhh that should be cool.

nice i keep forgetting to buy that sarah louise too

yeah, that is prob the best purely solo guitar record of the year (that i've heard anyway). better than glenn jones! (barely).

anyway, some heavy what-if-kevin-shields-played-pedal-steel vibes on the new lanois

I've seen some stunning Lanois shows which were mostly him on pedal steel and Brian Blade on drums. He's a great songwriter and guitarist, though, so sometimes I wish he would release another songwriter record.

anyway, some heavy what-if-kevin-shields-played-pedal-steel vibes on the new lanois

― tylerw, Friday, September 9, 2016 9:59 AM (sixteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not pedal steel but the half of Le Noise that works, works really well and reminds me of a neil/mbv thing

yeah this is really good.

fuuuuuck
this album of ambient pedal steel is ON FLEEK

love it

yup

it's kind of like everything i like about lanois freed of troublesome "songs" (which sometimes his cavernous production tends to overwhelm imo)

"ambient pedal steel" sounds like catnip to me, psyched

xpost I dunno we've talked about it before and I think the trademark Lanois production is a lot more about amps and guitars and rooms than production tricks. His solo albums are a million times less fussy than, say, "So." Though I don't think "So" is an indicative Lanois production, so ...

yeah I don't view his productions as "cluttered" so much as very very distinctive, and here I'm generalizing a bit but with certain albums and certain artists it's definitely putting a stamp on the album like I "Time Out of Mind" or "Teatro"...and can be a big heavy handed at times (IMO) but also really good, I mean he's definitely got a thing

this album is just the best

U2 made their best albums (Boy and Zooropa) without him, IMO.

I agree. They also made their best albums, "Unforgettable Fire" and "Achtung Baby," with him. They also made their worst albums without him.

guys u should hear the Joshua Tree, overlooked gem in the U2 catalog

It's one of their best! Or, alternatively, one of their worst, if you like the others better.

i'm a how to dismantle an atomic bomb guy & that one song from tomb raider guy myself

I like the "Batman" song. No Lanois on that one, though, it's a Nellee Hooper track.

i'm a how to dismantle an atomic bomb guy

― Pull your head on out your hippy haze (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

whoa this post is like

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/06/25/483514456/an-avian-mystery-rare-parrot-spotted-in-wild-for-first-time-in-15-years

i'm an avowed U2 "stan" and despite a couple of "gems" that one's my least favorite of theirs

Yeah, this was pretty much guaranteed to be up my alley and it is. Not blowing my mind as such but the sort of thing I can see myself putting on a lot. Like a smooth counterpart to Fennesz or something.

(iTunes promotional stunt album def the best, whatever it was called.)

but i feel like i've wanted an album of ambient pedal steel for a long long time

I think BJ Cole has been making those for decades.

what is a good bj cole album to start with

Sad eyes, sad eyes
Where're you going with that confidence?
Sad eyes, sad eyes
Where're you going with that confidence?

I'm going to where the boats go by
Caledonia river flows so wide
I'm going to where the boats go by
Caledonia river flows so wide

what is a good bj cole album to start with

― marcos, Tuesday, September 13, 2016 2:32 PM (forty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

iirc there are only two: The New Hovering Dog, which is the "classic," and one that came out many years later on Hannibal whose name escapes me but is probably more what you're looking for (less song-based). Both, as I recall, are really great if you dig this sort of thing. See also: Chas Smith (who's even further 'out')

I've listened to some later BJ Cole and always has an 'oh' reaction - one of those where you mean to return but never do. Just discovered the New Hovering Dog is on Spotify and has Robert Kirby arrangements (Nick Drake's buddy) and Danny Thompson on bass.

I've always dug "Indian Red" from the Wynona album, maybe its only because it expands on the mid-80s U2/Robbie Robertson sound, just, without the Bono or the Robbie. I especially like how Peter Gabriel used him as a plucked instrument and less-so for defining the entire palette.

...Bit of a proto Nigel Godrich?

I can't help but think that The Unforgettable Fire is the lousiest sounding album U2 put out in the '80s, and probably the worst production on a U2 album until Pop.

My ears must be broke

I'd kill to see All the Pretty Horses restored with Lanois' score

BJ Cole also did a record with Luke Vibert. I haven't heard it in quite a few years, but remember liking it.

'goodbye to language' is all I'm listening to this week in this household, only 36 minutes long but inexhaustibly great. the textures of Apollo smeared and extended out, unexpected late period add to the eno/lanois ambient music chapter (in the liner notes, evidently Eno tipped Daniel to the tiny sampler used for this album -- he bolted it to the steel guitar, to make it a physical part of the instrument)

interesting how the NPR preview & even my iTunes mp3 tags of the CD call it a Lanois solo album, but the packaging clearly calls it the duo: Daniel Lanois / Rocco Deluca

definitely time for me to go back and check out some of the other Lanois solos, especially the instrumental ones

All I know of Daniel Lanois as a musican is Eno's Apollo and now Goodbye to Language, which is knocking me out. Are all his albums in this vein or does he jump around?

A few, Acadie, For the Beauty of Wynona and Shine, are singer-songwriter but beautiful and excellent. Others are more experimental, some quietly, some more noisy.

He jumps around but they all have a lot of texture. I find his singer songwriter stuff to be excellent sometimes—his solo recording of "Where Will I Be" on Here Is What Is is amazing—but often pretty turgid.

His brother Bob died today:

https://www.ajournalofmusicalthings.com/bob-lanois-the-producer-studio-owner-brother-of-daniel-has-died/

Among many other things, Bob Lanois produced the sessions that became Simply Saucer's Cyborgs Revisited. According to the story Bob told me when I was writing my book, Dan came home late while the recording was happening in their mom's basement and plugged his ears. R.I.P. https://t.co/Fl4QhdN3So

— Jesse Locke (@wipeoutbeat) April 20, 2021

Aw.

Proper obit here:

Bob Lanois patiently taught me how to run a mixing board at Grant Avenue when I was teenager. This skill helped guide my future in radio. He also showed me how to "listen" to sounds...musical and all sounds. #RIPBobLanois. You were a sweet soul. https://t.co/pWGRmn0gsy

— Peggy Chapman (@PeggyChapman16) April 20, 2021

Good take on a posthumous release, imo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs8nUCLQTgw

Long interview on Beato's channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxP9kKzbCFA

Which is how I learned of this, the group Lanois worked with that brought him to Eno's attention:

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