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but i do miss ross robinson today!

I feel the same about David Allen, Michael Hedges, and Phil Thornalley.

Quote from: japanesebaby on October 23, 2008, 11:10:16

but i do miss ross robinson today!

I feel the same about David Allen, Michael Hedges, and Phil Thornalley.

well, mike hedges did the best production for cure (again!) in 2005 (i.e., the best production they have had in the last 16 years), with the 4play re-recordings of songs from the first 4 LPs.
3 musicians, a wonderful sound, wonderful versions, and that was it.
simple as that.
but apparently not.

and i still think it was a totally different story with ross robinson (from the one happening with 4:13 dream) : you can say & criticize what you want about this album, at least there was an aesthetical choice, a rather radical one, and i can definitely respect him & robert for that. it may not have suited every song on the album, but some like lost & this morning gained an emergency & a tension whe didn't hear since the best B-sides from wild mood swings (despite huge differences in the production).
had the 2004 LP been not loudness-wared, it would have been great (the 3 "demos" from these sessions are the best proof of that).
de-loudnesswar (OK, after this one i stop writing neologisms) the new album, it would be exactly the same mud, only lower (which apparently is the case).

It's really a shame that all this time spent working on the album and rescheduling the tour LAST year ended up being kind of marred by the really disappointing sound engineering on 4:13. Porl has so much wah and flanger stuff going on with his guitar work, and Jason has so many cymbal crashes, and even Simon went heavy on the bass distortion, that mixed with the terrible compression, a lot of the new songs sound...mashed up? It's hard to even hear the bass drum on some of the songs. It's too bad, but hopefully the said "dark" album won't turn out that way! If you listen to Disintegration, it is one of the loudest and heaviest Cure albums, yet it creates such an atmosphere by resisting the urge to crank up the volume levels, which 4:13 did not. Whoever was in charge of the sound engineering on 4:13 should have taken another listen before finalizing everything. While I do think the album versions of the singles were better than the "mix 13's", the album versions still had room for improvement, sound mixing wise. It's too bad really

Otherwise, I think the album is pretty good, but it brings it down a little not being able to even process what is going on in the guitar portions of the songs. Theoretically speaking, there is "too much cowbell" 

Quote from: AStaticWhiteSound on November 01, 2008, 04:02:25

Jason has so many cymbal crashes

In 4:13 Dream he has played less cymbals than in the previous albums! in the self-titled Jason abused using LOTS of cymbals, using crashes to keep time, etc.

But this is not new: just watch/listen how he adds cymbals in the intro of Prayers for Rain, A night like this, Open, Lullaby, etc. The guy destroys many classic songs.

Wow, well I don't own the self titled album yet, lol, but that's too bad to hear really! Boris had the capability to overdo it, but he held back and didn't, which made him a great drummer. He used simplicity to add to the beauty of the songs as they were crafted. Just listen to A Night Like This or any of the other really "pretty" Cure songs and you can hear that he is doing it just right. Maybe Jason thinks that he has to use complicated fills to prove that he is a good enough drummer for the Cure, even though the Cure was founded upon simpler, minimalistic beats. Oh well, not much we can do about it now