Air "Talkie Walkie"

[w_]

Anyone else been listening to this? WOW. It sounds so good, not to mention great songwriting. Produced by Nigel Godrich, highly recommended.

[dwelle]

mr. godrich mixed it and did some production. another lovely air record. i dig those french dudes...

[skinnyemo77]

Air is awesome, however, Nigel Godrich, his work with Radiohead stands alone. Almost like George Martin and The Beatles. He has nothing left to prove to me in terms of fantastic production value.

Kid A, OK Computer, Amnesiac, Hail To The Theif --- even if you don't dig the the songs on the record, the production value of them is just masterful.

[dumbangel]

I haven't received the last TapeOp issue, so i don't know how much it covers their recording methods and their gear, but anyway, each time they release a new album one or two French audio magazines list their recording gear and methods pretty well. If you need to know something...

BTW, I stopped liking Air after Virgin Suicides. I find their later stuff too cheesy and mainstream. Or maybe i just can't stand their accent because i'm French myself! The only thing recent i dig is what they did for that Italian writer last year. I don't know if you've heard of it.

[w_]

Khai, by all means, give some more information. The new album seems amazingle clean, any ino on pre's or if they go to tape or hard disk?
The TapeOp article is pretty short (2 pages) and the answers they give are very very concise, not a ton of information given. The article on Mellow, who I have yet to hear, is a lot more informative however.

[tiger vomitt]

Air is awesome, however, Nigel Godrich, his work with Radiohead stands alone. Almost like George Martin and The Beatles. He has nothing left to prove to me in terms of fantastic production value.

Kid A, OK Computer, Amnesiac, Hail To The Theif --- even if you don't dig the the songs on the record, the production value of them is just masterful.

i think radiohead is fuckin cheezy and i dont dig their productions either. i realize i am in a complete minority on this. some of the sounds are ok but they just dont use them musically IMO. they just corny to me.

air is a cool band tho, actually i just like 10khz legend. but i like it A LOT, since it first came out.

[Rick Hunter]

Air is awesome, however, Nigel Godrich, his work with Radiohead stands alone. Almost like George Martin and The Beatles. He has nothing left to prove to me in terms of fantastic production value.

Kid A, OK Computer, Amnesiac, Hail To The Theif --- even if you don't dig the the songs on the record, the production value of them is just masterful.

i think radiohead is fuckin cheezy and i dont dig their productions either. i realize i am in a complete minority on this. some of the sounds are ok but they just dont use them musically IMO. they just corny to me.

air is a cool band tho, actually i just like 10khz legend. but i like it A LOT, since it first came out.

Different strokes... I love radiohead. They are the reason I started playing guitar. Anybody could.

[w_]

Not to turn this into a Radiohead thing but... I'm with Tiger Vomit on this one. I really, really liked Radiohead until Kid A came out. OK Computer was just fucking mind blowing. Then Kid A comes along and it's like, yes, good sounds, decent songwriting, but it just seemed completely unoriginal. Listen to Neu!, Boards of Canada, Autechre, Can, etc., and you can see exactly where they got their ideas from. And obviously, no one is 100% original- my problem is they just wore these influences way too much on their sleeve.
This, coupled with the media licking their ass about how they were 'saving rock' and creating a 'completely unique sound' really pissed me off (not Radiohead's fault). I mean, a group like Nine inch nails, who are far from original, were combining synths, guitars, and electronic music 10 years earlier (in a much more interesting way, too me anyway) but all the hipsters dismissed them because it was angry somewhat over the top music. Not to mention what Eno, Devo, Bowie, etc., were doing with synths and guitars... but I digress.

[dumbangel]

Wes9, I'll post every informartion i have about Air's gear and recording methods in about six days. (I'm moving out and i need time to take magazines out of their card box, sorry).


A few words about Radiohead.
There's been so much praise about Radiohead in the last 5 years that i started to really find it unbearable. They certainly are the most overrated band in the world. It's not even a good band actually. Even before Kid A (I actually prefer Kid A to the earlier stuff but that's another story). I just can't stand Yorke's complaining voice and his "my misery is such a serious thing" way of moaning. That's just corny. He's always described as genuine and i guess he is more or less, but in his own immature way. The minimum of self irony that's needed when you're complaining about life and your own personal relationship to it is just absent and that makes the whole thing sound very stupid. The video where he is filmed drowning in a aquarium is a perfect visual illustration of that lack of emotional intelligence and typically rock self indulgence and narcissism. As to the music and the arrangements themselves, i've never been really impressed. It sounds like the sequences of chords are always leading the way over the main melody. Typical of poorly inspired melodists. They choose chords and then find an average melody they lay on top of them. Also i don't like Nigel Godrich's productions most of the time, except on a few records like Mutations. This guy makes everything sounds squashed (each time i play Beck's Sea change i have to turn the volume down) and often too clean and precious sounding. And on Sea Change, he should have been a little bit more discrete. Why does he have to show "there's a genius producer here" on so many songs? It sounds over-produced very often. Neil Young's Harvest is so much more natural sounding in comparison that it could almost appear like an old Alan Lomax recording.
The only thing i like about Radiohead is they're openly critical of Tony Blair which can't be a bad thing, and they use the Ondes Martenot.

[w_]

. Why does he have to show "there's a genius producer here" on so many songs? It sounds over-produced very often.

ha... On the liner notes of the new Air album there are a bunch of small photographs and one of them is of a sign by a parking space outside of the LA studio where they mixed/recorded at and the sign actually says
"Nigel Godrich, God of producers."

[soundguy]

I dont have an opinion really about radiohead, but all I know is that everything that I have heard on a radiohead record that I thought was a really cool sound, I first heard on a spiritualized record which predated the radiohead recording in question, whatever it was. Im not suggesting that the good old Nige sat down and just copied the spiritualized stuff, but if you are gonna have the nigel godrich circle jerk, its worth checking out what jason pierce has been doing for the last decade or so...

If radio head has been credited with "saving rock" then I guess rock has actually finally died.

dear nige, 300 dB boost at 12K isnt cool, ok? That just hurts.

dave

[tyson]

Talkie Walkie is an entirely superior album to 10khz Legend, and has a lot more emotional and musical depth (I think) than Moon Safari. The first time I got to the third track, when the vocal edit is repeated for a bit and then the chord change begins, I had to go grab my roomates and make them listen. I do wish they would do some similar work to The Virgin Suicides, though.

Regarding Radiohead - part of the reason they're considered overrated is that the people who don't like them spend way too much energy talking about them and then you get Radiohead fans on defense-overdrive throwing all this hyperbole at them so it becomes completely overblown.

[dumbangel]

300 dB boost at 12K isnt cool, ok? That just hurts.

i agree with that. That ruins the good songs on Sea change.

[pk]

The other AIR album that was refered to earlier is what Italian poet 'Barico'. It's entitled "City Reading Trie Storie Western" and it's fantastic. Even if you don't understand the poetry, the music bed is true AIR, a must for any fan.

[soundguy]

300 dB boost at 12K isnt cool, ok? That just hurts.

i agree with that. That ruins the good songs on Sea change.

I think sea change would be up way high on my favorites list if I could just stand to listen to it...

dave