totally rad unconventional recording spaces for totally meaningful indie bands (besides a church)

Supposedly once a chicken coop:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-T7JTbUqCCJ8/UJ6By4DMDXI/AAAAAAAAAyQ/9CgRBl2_Ue8/s1600/3trackshack.jpg

xp some next-level chicken housing there

I'm ok with Link Wray, but AnCo are a bunch of hucksters, apparently:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campfire_Songs_(album)

The album comprises five individual songs played back to back and recorded in one take. Although it was the middle of November and thus very cold, the recording was made outside on a screen porch in Maryland, using three Sony MiniDisc players with Sony ECM-MS907 microphones placed strategically around the band. Ambient sound from the surrounding area was also captured and added later.

I really need to start a blacklist of artists who pull this shit.

aw, i love that album. i don't know if they are "hucksters" really, even then they weren't considered lo-fi purists.

this really doesn't seem like any sort of dastardly artifice to me. i guess there are levels at which records that somehow super-foregrounded the mythical genesis of their record might be deflated by revelations about them being made in a studio but it just seems like both of those things - surrounding your record w/a certain narrative/context, or importing ambient sound for atmosphere & affiliation - are legitimate parts of a group's toolkit. it's like cinema. it's okay that it wasn't filmed in an actual remote village. it's okay that it never really happened. i think there are probably more ~problematic dynamics~ involved in like shitty mercury rev records that apply effects to a piano track than there are w/somebody making a collage & putting a name on it.

while we are here sometimes it is nice to go to bat for a cool record & anyone who likes sorta field recorded nice group records might enjoy this tenniscoats record, temporacha, on room 40, which they recorded just kinda out & about & which is very gentle & musical but also subject to the ebbs and flows of traffic and nearby ambient activity. i think there is maybe a better school of unshowy "naturalism" in some japanese stuff - cf reiko kudo records where the song stops when the phone rings or dishwasher starts, katsura yamauchi lps where he records intermittent sax motifs separated by the noise of water flowing.

http://room40.org/store/image/cache/data/tenniscoats-temporacha-450x450.jpg

http://blog-imgs-31-origin.fc2.com/h/y/d/hydrargentum/rokuon02.jpg

btw movietone fans might be deflated to know that a bunch of the non beach songs on their records are recorded in a library, iirc, fwiw.

lol. libraries are best known for being the opposite of the beach.

aw, i love that album. i don't know if they are "hucksters" really, even then they weren't considered lo-fi purists.

If you record an album in your backyard and title it CAMPFIRE SONGS, it had better be as pure as it gets, no matter what the rest of your discography sounds like.

Virginia Astley didn't really record From Gardens Where We Feel Secure in one take on a lazy summer's day:

http://www.virginiaastley.com/discography/albums/html/gardens_03.html

The sound effects used on the album were recorded at various times between April and June 1982 at locations in and around Moulsford, Oxfordshire.

so that makes...

AnCo
Movietone
Tom Waits
Aerosmith
Virginia Astley
PAT FINN

If you have any more artists to add to my least, feel free to implicate them itt. I already have some major suspicions about Deep Listening Band, but I don't want to be too hasty here.

*my list

If you record an album in your backyard and title it CAMPFIRE SONGS, it had better be as pure as it gets, no matter what the rest of your discography sounds like.

― first geir, it's alright (hongro hongro go faster faster) (unregistered), Sunday, April 14, 2013 4:10 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is like the homely & bucolic equivalent of I LIKE MY RAPPERS PACKING HEAT right

i remember relating some recording mythos to a guy at a party in college -- i think it was about the crystal castles guy recording in icelandic churches -- and he became very hostile, saying "so? so what? does that make it sound better somehow? what is the point of that?" one of the worst conversations of all time.

what if it turned out that ... bon iver wasn't really heartbroken

shocking cctv footage reveals modern comforts of bon iver's "mountain hideaway"

he had netflix streaming

there were two whole days when he was just having a nice vacation

something sad to me about people buying campfire songs & then being disappointed that they cannot actually smell sausages cooking while they listen to it

DEAR ANIMAL COLLECTIVE
I RECENTLY PURCHASED YOUR CAMPFIRE SONGS ALBUM AND WAS VERY DISAPPOINTED TO FI

the French village in which it was recorded has no "Main Street" at all. That would mean "Hand Street" over there anyway. FRAUDS

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51JA6YQJ4YL.jpg

faulting all these stupid hat & vest bands for being inauthentic about their retro authenticity kitsch is just as dopey, imo. i imagine that most of their fans just like the songs, not so much the idea that they're really real about the appalachian folk tradition or w/e. it's musical steempunk.

stones a key text supporting the CONCEIT RULES/AUTHENTICITY DROOLS thesis

i recently wrote about that in the lumineers thread!

although my thesis was a bit different. i distinguished between different kinds of inauthenticity, and how some are better than others. it's a fraught issue, and a key one, i think, that people who think a lot about music get tripped up on. The Lumineers i'm sure there is a thread about the issue of authenticity somewhere in the archives...

At the time of recording [Tales from Topographic Oceans], heavy metal group Black Sabbath were producing their album Sabbath Bloody Sabbath in the studio next door. Singer Ozzy Osbourne recalled that placed in the Yes studio was a model cow with electronic udders and a small barn to give the room an "earthy" feel.

i forget, did the beach boys record all of their music on a beach?

not impressed unless they did it all whilst surfing

lol.

didn't the boredoms record that piano bit at the start of seadrum on the beach

via wiki
Parts of the album was pieced together from previously recorded material, some of which included guitarist Yamamoto, who was no longer in the band. As its name implies, parts of the album were recorded by the ocean, and some audio was recorded directly underwater.[6]

the thing about this whole trend that annoys me is that it seems like people are trying to use it as a shortcut to ACTUALLY BEING GOOD AT MUSIC

I'm just waiting for some singer-songwriter guy to record an album in "a variety of settings that were integral to my personal development". the lyrics would be strictly autobiographical, and the tracklisting would go something like...

1. Hospital Room
2. The House I Grew Up In
3. Playground
4. Fairhaven Regional High School (sad & lonely)
5. Dorm
6. Couchsurfing at Eric's
7. Westfield Rehabilitation Center
8. My First Real Apartment
9. Buca di Beppo (Jenn will you marry me?)
10. Recording Studio (this is now!)

the deluxe version of the album would come with a bonus DVD with clips of the artist driving to all the different locations while reflecting on his past. in one clip you see him convincing the owners of his former childhood home to let him record a song in their guest bedroom. he gets a little teary because he can barely recognize the place with all its new furniture and decor, but it all comes back to him when he pulls out his guitar and starts to play, and then the camera pans across an Instagram-faded photo of the way the room looked when he was a kid. it's all very emotional, very authentic, you can hear dogs barking in the distance if you have the right kind of headphones.

1. Just got out of jail!
2. On my way to the hardware store
3. People all look the same from the roof of a house (it's your house)
4. Watching your window from my sister's car
5. This town doesn't have enough pay phones
6. Sleeping in my sister's car
7. Combo #5!
8. Creeping up the stairs (it's your house)
9. Hand on your bedroom door
10. Standing at the foot of your bed

"Oh, hi there f.g.t.i.. Plenty of room in the bed, it's a cold night. Need a blanket?"

are there any albums recorded inside an igloo?

http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/16806/

^ this seems pretty authentic

http://continuo.wordpress.com/2008/07/14/moniek-darge-sounds-of-sacred-places/

At the time of recording [Tales from Topographic Oceans], heavy metal group Black Sabbath...

lol

Folsom prison.

yeah, you know the iconic moment when Johnny sings "...just to watch him die" and some guy shouts "WOOOOOO!"?

that "WOOOOOO" was an overdub http://i.somethingawful.com/forumsystem/emoticons/emot-colbert.gif

> 42 each member in the back of 5 different pickup trucks, all travelling down the highway at slightly different speeds.

135 on a similar tack to the above: each member in a different helicopter

The Utah Data Center.

i wanna buy this down the street. my new performing arts center.

http://www.cohn-company.com/properties/601

why can't i win the lottery? would make such a great venue.

this one is nice too. up the road a piece. cheap. you could live in it and have studio/performance space.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xib8vq_historic-renovated-church-charlemont-mass_people#.UbCbRPnryQM

142. hydrothermal vent environments, which are often home to unique and thriving ecosystems

omg, $150K? that's nuts.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lhtahevJw81qhxwcso1_1280.jpg

lol whoops, wrong pic