I actually pulled out the self titled Echo & the Bunnymen album a few weeks ago and gave it a spin. I grew up during my teenage and early 20's years listening to this style of music constantly but ironically have rarely reached for the majority of it over the past 20+ years. I estimated that I hadn't heard this album at least in 30 years, quite possibly more. I saw this actual tour back in 1988 and it was a rather memorable event, although not in a good way (that's a separate story altogether). Still, their actual performance was quite amazing and I wished at the time that I could more focus on it rather than all the drama that was going on in my life.
The first thing that I notice when pulling out one of these albums today is the tempo: it's clearly calculated, something I would have never noticed when I was younger. I guess there was just a "magic" tempo that songs had to be at in those days and literally almost every song seems to be clocked in within 5 bpm's of that beat. At this age, it initially seems rather redundant to me but I seem to get beyond it, adjust, and return to the magic of those albums rather than worrying about tempos.
With mixing, a frequent topic that comes up are favorite mixes, either ones that you model after or perhaps your favorite all time mixes in general. Yesterday, I listened to the remaining tracks that I had missed on the self titled Echo & the Bunnymen album, and then I moved on to the much loathed "Reverberation" album which I actually think is quite good, and then the "Porcupine" album. I was amazed at how much I remembered of these releases even though I didn't think that I had listened to them extensively. Then, to round out the afternoon, I reached for the Smith's "Meat is Murder", an album that more and more puzzles the hell out of me and yet I've grown to really like, and it tends to be the only album of theirs that I ever reach for these days. The Smith's in general are one of the most odd and strange bands, in my opinion. On paper, nothing about that band should have worked, not Morrissey's singing or lyrics or performance, or Johnny Marr's basic writing of songs purely from a riff stand point and hoping someone can sing over it. The whole thing seems preposterous and yet it only takes about 3 minutes of hearing one of their songs to realize that there was something really special about them, this particular set of 4 guys, that completely stood out. Add on top that their second album was called "Meat is Murder", you'd think they would have been the biggest flop ever...and yet quite the opposite. I firmly believe that none of them would have really become successful without the others and it was really just perfect timing and pairing that made them work, albeit for only a short period of time.
The thing that I always return to with these albums, especially the self titled Echo & the Bunnymen album as well as "Reverberation", is that they sound in my head absolutely perfect. I mean, to my ears, these are the mixes that stand out, and more than anything, not to use that word yet again, sound "magical", almost beyond belief. If you ask me, one of the biggest issues with rock based music over the past 10+ years is the horrible mixes and "a thousand instruments" production methods that seem to plague many of the new releases. For example, Sting's "57th and 9th" album...I couldn't even listen beyond the second song due to how this album is both mixed and produced. I mean, these might be decent songs but the way they're put together squeezes all the life out of them that they end up sounding like nothing more than a wall of pointless blaring guitars coming at you from all angles. To be blunt, I can't stand that sound, and it shocked me that Sting would even allow that sort of production since it seems so contrary to his earlier work.
So, for favorite mixes, what are your choices? I have so many but very few post 2005. My tastes do lean in quite a few different directions as well. There are tons of great albums with real magic and yet the production is super low budget, primitive, etc., and then there are a billion albums that are more modestly produced and yet still sound perfect. One that immediately comes to mind is R.E.M.'s "Murmur", and another choice would be Tom Waits' albums from the late 70's and then into the 80's ala "Heartattack and Vine" and "Rain Dogs". The thing that I loved about the mix change in the mid 80's was how incredibly dynamic everything suddenly sounded, such as on Peter Gabriel's "So" or Icehouse's "Measure for Measure", these 2 actually being the first 2 CD's I ever owned. The clarity of these albums is simply beautiful, in my opinion, and whereas Peter Gabriel 3 (aka "Melt") has a more aggressive and stripped down punchiness, "So" was like the perfect soothing clear album that you couldn't forget. Both seem to have perfect production for their style and era.
I also really loved the louder, more aggressive sounds that started mainly in the early 90's, where it more or less sounds like the guitars are incredibly in your face and loud. The Connell's "Weird Food and Devastation" album is a great example of this and has a guitar power to it that's both very live and bone shaking at times. Then, Neil Young ventured into capturing what I'd call a truly "live" sound, or really something more resembling cheap amps ready to burst in a poorly sound proofed practice room, the best example probably being his "Broken Arrow" album. When I listen to that, it makes me think of a band with the volume excessively loud playing on a back porch at a loud party. I actually have no idea how they achieved this sound so perfectly.
So, again, favorite mixes? There's just too many of them to even mention. One would be R.E.M.'s "Life's Rich Pageant", what I still think is one of their very best albums, and the sound is simply sublime. Talk Talk's "It's My Life" and "The Colour of Spring" also both come to mind as well as Big Country's "Steeltown". I simply adore the first three solo albums by Sting and think they're some of the best sounding albums ever. Tears for Fears "Elemental" definitely stands out in my brain as well as Thomas Dolby's "The Flat Earth". Robyn Hitchcock's "Element of Light" is significant for a lower budget production and yet has such a distinctive sound and visual element to it. I could go on and on, and I haven't even touched on jazz, prog rock, new age, world, etc. It's a great discussion that will yield different opinions across the board.
Still, I do maintain that the mixing style and production techniques of the past decade or so tend to really make rock related releases sound flatter than a pancake when what they're trying to do is the exact opposite. My advice is to do exactly what I do...pull out those old albums and study them a bit.