field recorded music albums?

[zunehdfan]

what i mean is, do bands, preferably rock or folk bands--bands that use folk instruments like electric or acoustic guitar and banjo, publish field recorded albums?

are there any good albums that were recorded in a cave, or a field, or outside on a windy day, or in a structure on a windy day, or anywhere where the fact that the recording is taking place outdoors or being affected by the outdoors, as opposed to in a recording studio, is discernible?

are there albums where you can hear that the musicians outside? are there albums that are recorded outside that affect the sound of the songs, in a way not necessarily detrimental to the songs?

honestly, i don't care if i can hear that the artists are outdoors. if it sounds like they're in a studio, fine. i just want to hear an album by a good rock or folk artist that was recorded outside. i guess i'll look at the best sounding live thread.

might pick up the little feat debut off of what someone said in there. i think i am becoming too enwrapped in an ideal of an idyllic album. i would like to find folk albums that are pastoral, i guess vaguely in the sense of a fleet foxes record, but better, for heaven's sake.

[lee]

Tom Waits recorded Chocolate Jesus, from Mule Variations, outdoors, at a farm I believe. You can hear the rooster call. Also, I've heard that the vocals for the Radiohead track You and Whose Army were recorded in a bomb shelter.

I found a parking lot around where I live in Detroit that has the most surreal reflections. A very low, reflective, and expansive ceiling with smooth concrete underneath. When you're in there it sounds like you're in a video game. The shuttering echo decays after, what seems like, a minute. Crazy. I've been dying to record in there, the problem is that it is outdoors, next to a busy street. Lots of car noise.

[iC]

AMAZING BINAURAL by Tchad Blake:
http://www.papabear.com/store/caves_cd.html

just get everything from these guys:
http://www.sublimefrequencies.com/

and not folk or orck, but recorded underground in a water cistern:
http://www.jazzloft.com/p-47620-the-rea ... erang.aspx

[masonpitzel]

I've heard that the vocals for the Radiohead track You and Whose Army were recorded in a bomb shelter..

Actually, the vocals were recorded in a different but just as interesting way:

The Wire, 2001:

Elsewhere, Radiohead's 'vocal science' bypassed state of the art digitalia for antiquarian technology and the sort of ad hoc boffinry redolent of John Lennon and George Martin's techniques at Abbey Road during the late Beatles era (Yorke confesses that Revolution In The Head, Ian MacDonald's book detailing the recording of every Beatles song, was "my bedside reading all through the sessions for the albums"). On 'You And Whose Army?', the muzzy vocal - which sounds like Morrissey sliding into a Temazepam coma - was an attempt to recapture the soft, warm, proto-doowop sound of 40s harmony group The Ink Spots. "We hired all these old ribbon microphones, but it didn't work because you need all the other gear, like the old tape recorders. So what we ended up using is an eggbox. And because it's on the vocal mic, and the whole band's playing at the same time, everything on the track goes through this eggbox." Radiohead also used a device called the Palm Speaker on 'You And Whose Army?', creating a halo of hazy reverberance around Yorke's vocal. "The Palm Speaker is something else that Monsieur Martenot invented, to go with the Ondes," explains Greenwood. "It's a bit like a harp with a speaker in the middle of it. The strings are tuned to all 12 semitones of an octave, and when you play a note in tune, it resonates that specific string and it creates this weird kind of echo that's only on those pitches."

[iC]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_World_ ... n_album%29
the track small hours has geese and lapping water "singing along" with the reamped tracks over the valley.....this should be in the "Are We Still Rolling" book, no....?

[evan]

Not rock albums, but interesting on-location albums: Deep Listening Band's Troglodyte's Delight recorded in a cave, and Stuart Dempster's Underground Overlays From The Cistern Chapel, recorded in a giant concrete underground water storage tank in Port Townsend, Washington. It has a 25-second decay time!

[vvv]

The first I was aware of (other than the old bloozers) was Michelle Shocked's The Texas Campfire Tapes .

[lapsteel]

The Great Lake Swimmers recorded one of their albums in a silo. The crickets outside get louder throughout the album. I guess I don't remember how it sounds, remember reading about it in Tape Op sometime last year.

[cgarges]

AMAZING BINAURAL by Tchad Blake:
http://www.papabear.com/store/caves_cd.html

I was gonna mention that one.

I'm trying to remember if that S.E. Rogie album that Tchad did was recorded outside.

Also, Doudou N'Diaye Rose's Djabote album is astonishingly cool. I actually got to play with him once. AMAZING sabar drummer.

A few songs from Stone Temple Pilots' Tiny Music... album featured drums recorded outside. ("Big Bang Baby" was one of them.)

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[iC]

I'm trying to remember if that S.E. Rogie album that Tchad did was recorded outside.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

i don't think Dead Men Don't Smoke Marijuana has any natural ambient sounds...(i.e. children playing, goats bleeting, etc) in the recordings.... Binaural, yes, but it seems to be a pretty controlled background ambience.
The Otha Turner & the Afrossippi Allstars records though, are great documents of Turner's musical bbq parties... all kinds of story snippets and dogs and yes, goats:)

[nobody, really]

ever since i recorded an acoustic duo with one omni in a living room, while there was some folks hanging out on the porch outside on a warm summer evening, with crickets and whatnot..... what a magical sounding song that was! ten times better than if it was 'perfectly' recorded in a soundproofed studio. now i realize that i look for those instances of accidental? ambiance in studio records like a treasure-hunter.