Highly distorted tracks as a stylistic claim.

Performance & Techniques Music Production
1

Highly distorted tracks as a stylistic claim.

alright guys, a good friend of mine recently turned me on to the track. Upon first listen, I was like, damn the person encoding this needs to check their freaking levels, cause this is clipping like a mofo. However, this was apparently done by the artists, as they come from a noise background. How do you guys feel about this? I personally… cant make a judgement. I will however say, that this track came out of the speaker a shit ton louder than everything else the other night, and I thought my body was being liquified.

2

I was okay with it until the vocals came in–they sound terrible clipped like that and would probably make you wince and cover your ears in a loud environment. Although I leave traktor’s auto gain on nowadays and so the loudness advantage is negated and all you would notice would be the distortion… which is nasty

3

I KNOW! the part with vocals and no high horn line is great, the distorted vocals sound okay. However, with the horn line playing, it makes your ears bleed.

4

i liked the track…personally i thought the stylistic experimenting took away from the track, sounded like they went a little overboard with the compressor

5

yeah, I mean, the track, If I can imagine what it would sound like without the clipping, Is pretty damn good. Its just clipping like a mofo.

Like I said, they used to be a noise band. which means, well, they were just noise.

6

i love it just way it is!

7

I mean, its heavy as all get out.

8

wow… actually looks like i’ll be going to see these guys. They are supporting Major Lazer and Rusko at a local even in march. This should be interesting.

9

Props for trying something different, haha the tracks at their myspace sound like someone recorded them with a camcorder at a concert

I guess this is taking the loudness debate a step further

10

That is just horrible. I don’t give a crap if it supposed to be art, it just sounds awful.

11

i totally dig this tune! great use of pure dirt and awsome vocals. thanks for posting

12

+1 on thats just awful. :disappointed:

13

hahahaha. Like I said guys, I cant really make myself take a stand for this tune. I’m not saying this is “Good”. Its wierd, and I kinda wish that I could hear it clean. However, this is how the artists intended it to be heard (was that a smart decision? fuck if I know, but they obviously dont care).

As my friend who showed me this said, the Dj’ing field seems to be dominated by audiophiles. We are missing the point of just totally trashing shit.

I retorted by saying, “keeping your gain knobs checked to keep the mixer from being perpetually redlined is just a smart thing to do, especially when you are recording the track”

EDIT

Alright, I will say, I absolutely love what the distortion did to their crash cymbal. that is like, the crunchiest cymbal I’ve ever heard. The vocals are bearable, when the horn line is not playing, but at the loudest part of the song, it makes my ears bleed. If they had applied distortion to each part individually, to keep it at an equally distorted level, throughout the song, I think this would have worked a lot better.

14

I know right? So many djs just don’t understand this. Some mixers are designed to be pushed into the yellow a little (an iirc xone mixers are designed to be pushed into the red by ignorant djs and still sound good) but seriously, running a hot signal will just get the guy running the sound board to turn you down some.