I don't know if I have ever mentioned this, but I like Lenny Kravitz like A LOT. I first got into him around 1998 when I saw the weird music video for "If you can't say no" from MTV. Then I read about him from a magazine and I was amazed by the fact that he plays most of the instrument on all his albums himself and I even started playing guitar because of him. I have all the albums and I think that I have even all of the singles except the newest ones and the ones on vinyl.
But now I started to listen analytically his albums after almost a year not listening to a single song... If disregarding the lead vocals and guitar, production is really really varying in quality on song by song basis almost on all of the albums starting from the second album.
In general the production has this really LOFI vibe to it, but they really aren't LOFI. And the production doesn't straightly suck either (except "Fields of Joy (reprise)" that has this really annoying phase cancellation effect and a beatles panning with drums on the right and vocals on the left), but more of a bland of sometimes really weird choises, like total annihilation by putting the drums thru a distortion and a bit crusher in "Take Time", but it also makes the songs sound really diverse when even the drums sound different on all of the tracks. The "Circus" album is most wholesome regarding the soundscape, but you can clearly hear that he started to use ProTools on the next album, "5". And he really did excel on that album, in my opinion it is his magnum opus.
There is still this certain type of "Jimi Hendrix like" approach to all of the mixes: The lead vocals REALLY in your face and the guitars are really loud compared to all of the other elements and in addition there is a lead element like acoustic guitar, piano or a synth, you can pretty much only hear the snare, hihat and bass without massive amounts of concetration in addition to those mentioned, but then there are somethings that I just can't understand. Like for example the kick drum. It pretty much has really muffled attack on almost any song (except in the first track of Baptism, "Minister of Rock 'n' Roll" it is really good soundin' and sounds actually healthy, it's also one of his best songs in my opinion btw), but otherwise it's just like bass and low mids, and it usually sounds REALLY boxy, like cardboard box inside another one. Listen to the American Woman and Again for example:
And the Minister of RnR with some Final Fantasy footage:
Well, it has the BOOM that Tad Donley likes
uke: But it still hasn't stopped him selling 40 million records by making semi-shitty sounding records production wise on todays "industrial standards", meaning brickwalled grid tight autotuned inhumane performances :Smug: it's the songs that sells. This brings me to think sometimes, "why bother, really?"
But now I started to listen analytically his albums after almost a year not listening to a single song... If disregarding the lead vocals and guitar, production is really really varying in quality on song by song basis almost on all of the albums starting from the second album.
In general the production has this really LOFI vibe to it, but they really aren't LOFI. And the production doesn't straightly suck either (except "Fields of Joy (reprise)" that has this really annoying phase cancellation effect and a beatles panning with drums on the right and vocals on the left), but more of a bland of sometimes really weird choises, like total annihilation by putting the drums thru a distortion and a bit crusher in "Take Time", but it also makes the songs sound really diverse when even the drums sound different on all of the tracks. The "Circus" album is most wholesome regarding the soundscape, but you can clearly hear that he started to use ProTools on the next album, "5". And he really did excel on that album, in my opinion it is his magnum opus.
There is still this certain type of "Jimi Hendrix like" approach to all of the mixes: The lead vocals REALLY in your face and the guitars are really loud compared to all of the other elements and in addition there is a lead element like acoustic guitar, piano or a synth, you can pretty much only hear the snare, hihat and bass without massive amounts of concetration in addition to those mentioned, but then there are somethings that I just can't understand. Like for example the kick drum. It pretty much has really muffled attack on almost any song (except in the first track of Baptism, "Minister of Rock 'n' Roll" it is really good soundin' and sounds actually healthy, it's also one of his best songs in my opinion btw), but otherwise it's just like bass and low mids, and it usually sounds REALLY boxy, like cardboard box inside another one. Listen to the American Woman and Again for example:
And the Minister of RnR with some Final Fantasy footage:
Well, it has the BOOM that Tad Donley likes
uke: But it still hasn't stopped him selling 40 million records by making semi-shitty sounding records production wise on todays "industrial standards", meaning brickwalled grid tight autotuned inhumane performances :Smug: it's the songs that sells. This brings me to think sometimes, "why bother, really?"
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