SOS

Suzanne Neumann

Recording Venue: Home

Recording Equipment: Tascam MSR16 analogue 16-track biased for Ampex 499, Behringer MX800 desk, Sony DTC750 DAT recorder, ART valve preamps, Rode NT1 microphone, Presonus and DOD analogue compressors, Behringer Denoiser, Ultrafex multi-effects and Eddison stereo width enhancer, Digitech studio quad multi-effects, PC with Digidesign Samplecell II and Audiomedia III cards, Cakewalk Pro Audio 6, Sonic Foundry Sound Forge and CD Architect, Yorkville monitors.

SOS certainly gets around, as our growing mailbag of CDs and tapes demonstrates. This one's from Auckland in New Zealand and features a style of music which seems to be alien to a land plagued by cover bands -- ie. electronica. Gary Legg, who writes and records with Suzanne is fairly keen for some feed back on the CD, so here goes!

First of all, Suzanne has an excellent voice, and it's been recorded and mixed in a thoroughly modern professional manner. The vocals have plenty of presence without succumbing to excessive sibilance, and are right in the listener's face. The microphone used for the process was a Rode NT1, and this has been compressed quite heavily without being made to sound aggressive, using a Presonus or DOD compressor.

Occasionally there are some lapses in the mixes, like the excess of room reverb on the backing vocal part on track one -- which overstates the case where a lower level of reverb would have made the textural point just as well. Track two begins to sound a bit crunchy and wall-of-sound-ish as a result of too many obviously digital sound washes. However, in contrast, mixes like the third 'Mayertime' are wonderfully simple, warm and clear pop electronica with fat, interesting sounds. I think this has a lot to do with the Tascam MSR16 which I reckon was the best recorder that editor Paul White ever owned (although he claims to have disliked the side-effects of its noise reduction).

To sum up, a good CD which I've no doubt they will have improved on by the time this has been published. Let's hope they get some success in the Antipodes at least.

Monday 8th February 2010

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