Sinister: Production Values (Warning, High B&S Content)

[Brian Pennington]

Hello,
	Hrrm....for some reason I keep feeling like I should talk 
about Belle & Sebastian, and nothing else I can seem to think of 
feels like I should blurt it on out, you know?

At 6:06 PM +0100 7/7/00, the original pixidustlady wrote:
>if anything, i think tony doogans production of B&S is not right.  it's too
>perfect, too rounded, too balanced.  there aren't enough rough edges.  like
>the bit at the start of tigermilk when you can hear stuart zipping up his
>cardigan before he starts to sing.  thats so nice because its so personal.
>so in that case, i think tight production is wrong.

	Okay, this is just plain wrong. I can see what you're getting 
at, but I really don't think Tony Doogan had anything at all to do 
with it or with that zipper. I mean, I don't *know* but there are 
some ink polaroids Stuart David wrote discussing Struan recording an 
ice cream bell during a song in Tigermilk. I think when they did 
Tigermilk, the band liked doing things like throwing in odd ambient 
noises...and they continued doing it, too, just look at "If You're 
Feeling Sinister," which sometimes I think is the best song they've 
ever done, just because of those kids in the beginning. Obviously 
that mysterious recorded party was one another attempt at throwing 
some ambient noise into a song, I wonder why they decided against it. 
Could the song be on a Loneliness of the Middle Distance Runner 
single? ;)
	Ambient noises really do add a lot to the atmosphere of 
songs, though, just have a listen to Let the Snakes Crinkle Their 
Heads to Death by Felt. One song features some seagulls and another 
features...guess....some people talking as if at a dinner party ;) 
Wonder where B&S got the idea... Anyway, I've always adored ambient 
noise in songs, and I'd go ahead and include samples in with that 
category. I tried to incorporate ambient noise into one of my own 
songs, and I think it really did a lot for it. I have this idea that 
someday I could make an entire album and go out and record various 
ambient noises to give the songs character, and write songs about the 
places or the people I recorded. But I'd need one of those DAT 
recorders I think, and those cost an arm and a leg. Someday, maybe.
	On to production values...tight and otherwise. I think people 
who don't know anything about the recording process tend to get 
caught up in the lo-fi versus hi-fi debate, decrying production and 
such. Myself until relatively recently included. But having actually 
recorded myself with shitty equipment, not by choice, I find myself 
wishing I had some better stuff. It's true that amateurish things in 
the recording process add to the intimacy of it, but these are more 
aesthetic values of the musicians recording than they are of which 
knobs are twiddled. Like when people talk at the end of a song and 
start asking one another what's going on. Cheap equipment, on the 
other hand, just tends to make everything sound muffled.
	I think in the end it's an aesthetic choice of what sort of 
production you're doing rather than hi-fi vs. lo-fi. Certain slickly 
recorded things have a certain nauseous feel to them, I agree, but 
certain records with really high production values sound fantastic. I 
just think it has more to do with the sort of production the producer 
is trying to achieve. And to this end, I think Tony Doogan does a 
magnificent job producing Belle & Sebastian, and Mojave 3 for that 
matter.
	I see the problem you're getting at though...a lot of Belle & 
Sebastian's newer songs tend to go for the soaring giddying heights 
rather than the intimate depths. And you probably miss that, as I 
guess we all do. Sometimes songs from Sinister seem like they're 
talking right too you, and to no one but you. FISHYCLAP, on the other 
hand, seems to make me think more of lots of strings and crescendos, 
and my life doesn't seem like it's about strings and crescendos, my 
life is laughing children and zippers. So on some level I guess it's 
hard to connect with these songs in the same way we used to.
	Anyway, I feel like I was on to something there, make your 
own conclusions.
-- 
Brian Pennington, aka Mick McMick | cellophanesky at mac.com | ICQ# 39021436
Sandcastle Records: <http://www.indiepages.com/sandcastle/>
the Cellophane Sky:<http://home.earthlink.net/~cellophanesky/the/index.html>
"Better a tear of truth than smiling lies." - Duncan Browne
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