Scritti Politti vocals

[Qlevel]

Thought about putting this in the thread that was just posted about airy/breathy vocals, but I'm going for something a little different. I'm working on an 80's-influenced song and want to add heavily-layered, faux-female BGV tracks of my own voice. Think Scritti Politti (examples below), Michael Jackson, Lindsey Buckingham solo, etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IR0fE2c6fHg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6iVqg9qa0Q

I can do a fairly decent imitation of the style naturally and would like to stay away from pitch shifting or vocal morph type of effects if possible, but I'm looking for some tips on how to add that extra breathy sparkle, a.k.a the 80's LA big-budget hi-fi production sound. Being in a home studio, my choice of vocal mics is limited (TLM103, AT4040, Rode NT2-A, MXL 2001, and some other cheapos) but I have a wide array of software and processing. I'm not used to altering vocals this much, so any ideas would be appreciated.

[goose42]

From what I understand, the Aphex Aural Exciter extends crazy high frequencies all over those records. Anyone confirm?

[The Scum]

Another 80's trick was to play those tracks back through Dolby or DBX noise reduction, set to encode (or turn the decoder off on the BGV tracks).

It's a combination of high-frequency boost, and heavy compression (usually countered with expansion and high frequency attenuation on playback). Makes stuff sound glassy. Painful and bizarre on cymbals, but useful on background vox.

[Mr Explosion]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9roZutCTyec

In this case I think it's mostly in the harmonies, even live and even in 2012 they sound like that. Anyway, thanks for reminding me of this great band