As a Sound Engineer who started my career during the advent of multitrack tape machines, I have spent a significant proportion of my life trying to increase the fidelity of analogue formats. High bias tape, Dolby NR, filters, gates and a whole arsenal of other gear but with the advent of CD Standard digital recording, there was no longer any need. 44.1kHz, 16 bits is enough for the noise floor to be lower than any other equipment in the system.

The proliferation of computers and smart devices, means most modern musicians enjoy access to a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). Often music recorded and produced via these means is tweaked, tuned, time-aligned and corrected. However, these processes also have the potential to make the audio sound ultra-clean and precise and without careful consideration, produce a high fidelity output that may lack a musical quality. These modern mixing practices can rob a song of its raw beauty.

I am privileged to have experienced the shift from analogue to digital recording practices, balancing an understanding of both mediums. I have learned about the processes involved in capturing performances in both domains. Creating purposely noisy records in the analogue domain and pushing way too far into the super bright, often lifeless sound of digital.

Despite it ease of setup and use, perhaps we should not automatically record everything in DAWs just because we can. Consideration should to be given to the recording medium employed. For example, a seventeen track punk album recorded in a damp, leaky basement on equipment with questionable safety features should, perhaps not be presented on the same format as a string quartet performing in a beautifully ambient space. Each example has its own unique features and the recording medium should be considered integral to the process of recording.

As professionals it is easy to believe that all audio should be technically perfect. However, in my experience this is not the case at all. Art is beautifully imperfect, messy and emotional and music should be too. To present it as anything else is to miss the point entirely.

Stu Welsh

Owner & Curator here at Fiercely Indie. Stu’s background is in Sound Engineering and Education. He leads undergrad and postgrad courses at dBs Music, acts as Producer for Live in Session and, is a huge fan of vintage recording gear.

The ideas surrounding ‘the beauty of decay‘ are very much entwined with analogue recording and delivery formats. The oxide layer will wear on a magnetic tape over time and the grove in a vinyl will mechanically wear out, eventually. Record covers develop marks, wear, fingerprints — patina — and although some of us try to minimise this by using plastic sleeves, entropy is inevitable. The great Japanese novelist Tanizaki discusses a ‘sheen’ that can lead to reverie and tranquility:

“Yet for better or for worse we do love things that bear the marks of grime, soot, and weather, and we love the colors and the sheen that call to mind the past that made them. Living in these old houses among these old objects is in some mysterious way a source of peace and repose.”

Tanizaki

The object itself becomes as important to the experience, as the music contained within. The ‘story’ of where it’s been and who has previously played it, means we often anthropomorphise these objects, imbuing them with a life and even a soul. That connection is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to form with a digital stream. Henry Rollins, interviewed in the book ‘Why Vinyl Matters’ proposes that there is no such thing as digital music:

Digital technology can emulate music and that technology is getting better, but there is no Led Zeppelin on a Led Zeppelin CD. There isn’t a nanosecond of music on any music streaming service.

Henry Rollins interviewed in Why Vinyl Matters

Rollins is suggesting that digital is only sampling “reality” in opposition to analogue recording where the oxide particles are so tiny and so many, that for all intents and purposes the signal can be considered continuous and infinitely changeable. However, digital audio does not produce a quantised output waveform, like many people believe it does. These are technical considerations and it is perhaps, more interesting to consider Rollins’ words from a philosophical perspective.

Jean Baudrillard, in his book ‘Simulation and Simulacra’ suggests a “precession of simulacra” where everything in society passes through four phases, the first being a faithful copy of an original and the last is a pure simulacrum bearing no relationship to reality whatsoever.

It is possible to map music across these four phases (sacramental, maleficence, sorcery and pure simulacrum) with the analogue recording being considered a true copy and the mobile phone speaker playing music aloud, usually a low fidelity reproduction of a (data) compressed audio file made from a digital master, approaching the fourth phase of pure simulation.

However, when examining the idea of reproduction we must also consider what makes an original piece of art, original. Walter Benjamin in his work ‘Art in the Mechanical Age of Reproduction’ suggests:

‘… what shrinks in an age where the work of art can be reproduced by technological means is its aura.’

Walter Benjamin

These ideas have stuck with me and continue to inform my thought-processes surrounding the practice of recording, producing and releasing music. The idea that a copy can develop its own unique qualities through interaction, use and wear would suggest that a copy can become an original, albeit in a new form and therefore, transcend the procession of simulacra and develop its own aura. Over its lifetime it develops a story that the original does not have.

The most important factor in all of these ideas is us. In our function as collectors, listeners and consumers, it is we who interact with these mediums, we who remember the stories surrounding them and we who recount them to our peers.

Perhaps the patina we celebrate, is not about the object itself. It is instead, a reflection of the imperfect beauty that lies in us all.

Stu Welsh

Owner & Curator here at Fiercely Indie. Stu’s background is in Sound Engineering and Education. He leads undergrad and postgrad courses at dBs Music, acts as Producer for Live in Session and, is a huge fan of vintage recording gear.

* A minute deviation in the thickness of the oxide layer can cause a huge change in output level (up to 1dB per 1/10,000th of an inch).

To many, the format** that crams four tracks (two each side for stereo playback) into just over an eight of an inch, has had its day. However, what makes the format particularly appealing for small labels, like Fiercely Indie, is that anyone with a decent cassette recorder and a printer/copier can make a limited edition, small run of cassettes in-house. Unlike vinyl, which requires a complex physical manufacturing process, they are currently the only viable analogue format that can be created on-demand.

** The Compact Cassette, or Musicassette (MC), we use today was introduced in 1963 by Philips and remained one of the two most common formats for recorded music from the 1970s into the 1990s alongside both the vinyl record and, later, the compact disc.

All in the Name of Research

This week I’ve been doing (the most enjoyable) market research. Purchasing small, special and limited run cassettes. Listening on my Nakamichi Dragon Denon DRM-550 deck, examining the various approaches and generally learning more about underground cassette culture.

When the drums kicked in on the blue Intravene tape, I was instantly transported back to mid-nineties; just from that beautiful lo-fi, saturated cassette tone. Whether that’s just nostalgia, I’m not sure, but it’s been a long time since I blindly purchased this much music and enjoyed listening to every single track.

Love them or hate them, there’s something about an analogue format which can be used as an outlet for creative expression both in terms of music and artwork. I very much look forward to continuing my research and experimenting with the medium of tape as we release some small run, limited edition Musicassettes over the coming months.

Stu Welsh

Owner & Curator here at Fiercely Indie. Stu’s background is in Sound Engineering and Education. He leads undergrad and postgrad courses at dBs Music, acts as Producer for Live in Session and, is a huge fan of vintage recording gear.