Sufjan Stevens --Come on feel the Illinoise

[Echos Myron]

Since there's always a good amount of discussion on here about spending big money on gear, I thought I'd post this for those of you familiar with Sufjan Stevens. It's really crazy if you think the album sounds as amazing as I do.

To the best of my knowledge/reading, this is all true -- please correct me if I'm wrong.

Illinois was recorded by Sufjan on a digital 8-track recorder (Roland VS-880, I believe) with, primarily, an Audio-Technica 4033, MXL V69, SM57, C1000 and a Altec 1592a mixer/preamp. He dumped to ProTools (digi001) and then back into the 8 track for overdubs. He mixed it using headphones. Allan Douches used many of the in-the-box mixes from the 001 for mastering.

In addition to writing all of the songs, Sufjan played almost all of the instruments.

That dude is an awesome talent.

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[hauser gabone]

hmm, didnt know it was on a digi 8...interesting.

[mcfl0nuz]

thats my album of 2005...so freakin amazing.

first time I heard the title track the first thing I thought was 'this guy is like todays brian wilson'...

fuckin brilliant.

[the velour fog]

good album, but i didn't find it as engaging as the michigan album.

[bannerj]

HBach,

Where did you find this out? Is there any other articles on this somewhere?

I understand that he still rented a pro-studio...he just used his own 8 track.

[hauser gabone]

yea, i'd like to read this article...
thats also the worst name for an album i've ever heard..

[pedrohead]

it sounds so amazing, i'm floored if that was how it's done.

can't seem to muster that much 'air' out of any vocal i've ever done.

[earth tones]

Only 48 albums to go in this series. A writer is on another level when a long-term contract can be arranged amongst him/herself. Does he actually travel to the state, or write in the state his album is based on?

[theistheman]

Album's fantastic, but the hi-hats sound really bad to my ears. When I first got it on mp3, I thought I had bad mp3's, but when I got it on vinyl, it sounded the same.

But that's a small complaint. It's pretty damned good. I think the title is hilarious as well.

[AmateurComputerologist]

This album is unbelievably good. That's all I have to say.

[cwileyriser]

From Onion A/V Club July 2005: "I have a portable 8-track. An old, outdated Roland?the 880 EX. And then I use Pro Tools to edit. So I record a lot of it at home. And for this record [Illinoise], I also used a studio in Queens. "

http://avclub.com/content/node/23410

And from Dusted: "I think this [Illinoise] is the first record I recorded primarily in one place, and that was a studio in Queens, in Astoria, here in New York. I still used my antiquated 8-track recorder, which is a piece of junk, but that?s because I didn?t want to use an engineer at the studio, I wanted to do everything myself. So even though I was in this great studio, I wasn?t using their preamps or their ProTools setup or anything. "

http://www.dustedmagazine.com/features/383

[dumbangel]

The interesting thing about him is that he doesn't use compression while tracking apparently. I guess that's one of the many reasons why he records so much so fast. That's also probably how he manages to accumulate so many layers of instruments without making things sound too stuffy.

[b3groover]

Did he pay DC Comics to use the image of Superman?

[Aeroplane Audio]

Did he pay DC Comics to use the image of Superman?

No. That's why the CDs with superman on the cover almost got pulled off the shelves.

but they didn't, cause Asthmatic Kitty (which i believe is the label that Sufjan runs) just didn't want to bother recalling all of them, essentially.

However, if you were to go to the store now and pick a copy up, ou will find that superman has been replaced with a bunch of balloons (i think)

[b3groover]

Not surprising. I mentioned this in the Deerhoof thread, but I can actually dig what Sufjan is doing. Deerhoof sounds like a bunch of 12 year olds to me... but what do I know?

Sufjan kinda reminds me of some of Mike Oldfield's stuff from the 70s.