Winter 2012 - Lots to look forward to this winter: the release of Karoline's Stirring Rainbows, mastered by me, produced by Joe Taylor, and mixed in part by Steve Rosenthal, Kabir Hermon and Matt Morales at the Magic Shop; the second album from the Awesome Tapes From Africa series, Bola. Plus I've been having a crazy good time mastering compilations of old dirty blues, beatnik hits, western swing & more for Rockbeat Records.
I finally found a version of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" I can tolerate. Tolerate? I love The Elegants' version! What I don't understand is why every other recording of this simple, straightforward melody is a smack in the face of treacly, saccharine schlock. The kiddie versions, especially, seem to be all MIDI keyboards and condescending vocals. The solo piano recordings are over the top, overly ornamented elevator lullabies, with the exception of the more professional recordings of variations on "Ah vous dirai-je, Maman." (We are talking about a French folk song by way of Mozart here). Notably, recordings of the ABC song, which is, of course, the same melody, do not all suffer from the babyishness inherent in "Twinkle, Twinkle" recordings. There are straight up cool versions of the ABC song. But hand it to The Elegants. They're the only group I've found that can sing "up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky" with soul.
Mastering