examples of good "cold" sounding records?

[Substrated]

Hmmm, i like the thread. Been listening to interpol and joy div alot lately. Somehow interpol is "rich" yet distant and has a "stark" quality as well. I gues I attribute it to his vocal delivery and use of verb. Joy div, sort of has the whole cold package, vox delivery, drum sound, bass and the use of 80's echo delay as well as general technique of everyone involved. If you haven't read the Joy Div thread archived under "best of" sticky sub "methologies" I recomend it!

[yourmomsp]

i find the interpol dark, but it still sounds pretty full...joy division is bit colder, almost nihilistic

[ALifeofArcticSounds]

I've got to chime in here. Modest Mouse pre Moon and Antarctica.

[Disasteradio]

I would put the Chills' "Pink Frost" as one of my favorite records that fit this description.

hear hear ! on a related note, I forgot to tell y'all: whilst in Dunedin on tour I came across a carcar grooming place called "The Clean". classic.

Colin Newman's "A-Z" was the first thing off the top of my head when I thought "cold". beats me why. I'll listen to it again today, methinks.

[JES]

Awesome thread. My 1980s nominations:

Clan of Xymox, especially the 2nd album

Tones on Tail.

With all the shit about everything sounding "warm" = good, it's easy to forget there's some awesome sounding "cold" music out there. Gonna go get my old digital reverb and wash out some music now. . . .

Best,
--JES

[dokushoka]

Massive Attack:
100th Windo

[DryCounty]

Re: 80's reverb -- anything by Echo & the Bunnymen.

Great records, but very dated and very cold IMO.

[syrupcore]

cool to read all the posts and see how subjective cold is. I hope it continues. For instance to my ears, Low's Curtain Hits the Cast is a really warm record. super stark but warm and comforting.

for me devo, Kraftwerk, moloko, IceT original gangster. It's hard for me to think of modern, non synthetic cold music. I can think of stark, detatched, thin, distant, and/or minimal music but cold's harder to pin down. Kid A has all the trappings but it's a pretty warm record.

now I'll shut it.

[bobbydj]

cool to read all the posts and see how subjective cold is. I hope it continues. For instance to my ears, Low's Curtain Hits the Cast is a really warm record. super stark but warm and comforting.

Yeah - I do know what you mean about CHtC. I'm sort of in two minds. Like, Over the Ocean is warm - but Mom Says is a bit brrrr. Which suggests that it's a content thing rather than production/sound dealie. Maybe?

[uptown jimmy]

Great question, and here's a few of my favorite cold classics:

Def Leppard - Hysteria
Donald Fagen - The Nightfly
Human League - Dare
Scritti Polliti - Cupid & Psyche '85
Boston - 1st album
Kate Bush - Hounds of Love
XTC - English Settlement
Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues
Seal -1st album
NIN - The Fragile

Uptown Jimmy

[Zeppelin4Life]

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication...just listen to that digital distortion on the chorus...now thats cold

[howiemarx]

PIL's Metal Box
brrrrrr.....

[radiantbrian]

side 2 of 'Remain in Light'
any Throbbing Gristle
Silver Apples' song "Water"
Lungfish 'Indivisible'
Sonic Youth 'Evol'

these songs seem 'cold' in intent versus 'cold' because of distasteful 80s production, which i guess you could say is 'good cold'.

[Rodgre]

Scritti Polliti - Cupid & Psyche '85

I should start an appreciation society for this album. I thought it was one of the best dance/pop records of the decade, and I thought the production and programming were amazing. It probably influenced much of commercial dance/pop music for years to come. Hell, Miles Davis covered a song from it!

Of course I got my ass kicked on a regular basis for being seen listening to this cassette whilst I attended vocational high school. (I later threw them off the scent by putting an "Appetite For Destruction" label over the tape)

I too am surprised and intrigued by some people's definition of "cold" when describing records. I had an immediate understanding of what the term meant to me when I read the first post, but I still can't put it into qualifying terms to define it to anyone else. To that end, I would tend to disagree with some of the other choices in this thread because I have a different personal definition of "cold", or else that certain records don't affect me the way they do everyone else.

I'm certainly not instantly equating typical 80's production with "cold" although most of the records I would categorize are from that decade. Joy Division is such a benchmark for that sound, to me, that it's easy to mistake it's musical bleakness and gloom for what makes it sound that way.

That said, I can't apply the same feelings to all other "gothy" records of the time. Those Martin Hannett records had such a harsh and metallic quality. They sounded "industrial" in the true sense of the word. Like machines in a empty grey warehouse with a cold wind blowing through the broken windows. Desolate. Yeah, the mood of the music obviously has a lot to do with those feelings, but I get a similar feeling from "Pink Frost" by the Chills, like I said. It's a sort of far off vocal, a lot of reverb, and not very powerful sounding.... solid statey thin sounding guitars, and thin drums. It's a bleak lyric as well. Listen to other early Chills records as well. There was a solo guitar/vocal/keyboard version of "Dan Destiny and the Silver Dawn" that I heard on the radio once that was one of the coldest sounding records I've ever heard.

It could be those New Zealand studios too. I adore the Verlaines' Bird Dog LP (one of my all time favorites) and that has a few "cold" moments on it, production wise. Not completely, but it's there.

I was a huge Cocteau Twins fan also, and I would equate some of their earlier stuff to be very cold. Especially the first couple of records, but a particular mid-period single (and beautiful heartbreaker of a song,) "Pearly Dewdrops-Drops" is a particularly frosty listen. Icy keyboards, the reverby vocal, and the bleak melody progression. Listen to This Mortal Coil's It'll End in Tears record. The cover of "Kanga-Roo" is just incredible, and terrifically cold. Icy keys and lots of verb, once again.

Stuff like post '84 Cure, and Echo and the Bunnymen, teardrop explodes, etc, don't sound cold to me. Earlier Cure, like "Other Voices" is as frigid as they get.

A song that I would call "cold" merely for it's musical vibe, production aside, is "One of Our Submarines (Is Missing)" by Thomas Dolby. That song has the classic 80's Cold War hauntingness that many of the new wave-era bands drenched themselves in. Even records like Sting's Dream of the Blue Turtles has some "cold" moments, in songs like "Fortress Around Your Heart" which I consider cold, merely on the musical arrangment. He could have done it solo acoustic and it still would have been "cold" to me.

This has nothing to do with Martin Hannett, so I feel like I'm straying. See, I told you I had a hard time putting it into a qualifying description that a "cold" record is specifically "THIS".

Great thread!

Roger

[yourmomsp]

undoubtedly the music and instrumentation itself is a big determinant of making a song cold... i guess the original intent of post (other than just to get other ppl's perspective on what "cold" means) was to say, if i already have these set of songs that i feel sound cold, what kind of recording approaches can i take to further capture/emphasize that coldness. i think after these posts, i have a good idea about things i can try out, digital reverb, cutting the mids, or boosting the mids, etc... maybe trying out a set of mic pre's with a kind of cold color? or use of microphones.... that kind of stuff...

going back to kid dakota...anyone else listen to their stuff...and agree that their stuff sounds "cold?"