Quote:
Originally Posted by Seabass Inna Bun  I'm trying to figure out what 80's production is. 80's arrangements I understand, giving old stuff a listen reminded me just how big synthesizers were. And it took Rush recording Grace Under Pressure to make those awful synthetic drums sound like anything other than a videogame. But 80's production? I guess I'm just a philistine, but Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking and the aforementioned REM albums, for instance, don't sound especially badly recorded. Peter Gabriel's drums sound the way they do - whatever way that is, I've never noticed them especially - because he wanted them to sound that way, I would expect.
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I think it's less about artists who always monkeyed around with interesting production choices like Waters and Gabriel and more artists whose sound changed noticeably during the mid-80s to incorporate the sounds of the time.
In fact, if you look at this entry on
gated reverb, you'll notice that guys like Gabriel and David Bowie basically popularized it in rock,
but they used it well. They wanted the reverb on the drums to sound unnatural. But then every rock act started using gated reverb, from X to Springsteen to Whitesnake, simply because it was the thing to do.
Sure, it was because the artists "wanted it to sound that way," but it sounds very specifically of a time now. If Springsteen were to record "Born in the U.S.A." in the 70s, 90s, or today, it would sound quite a bit different, and the hypothetical 70s, 90s or 00s versions might very well sound a lot more like each other than they would the actual 80s version.
