Listening and listening and listening

I got the first of four tracks for the Nuts + Berries EP back from West West Side Music. Their engineers are wizards. It is louder and bassier than I had expected. I’m intrigued. I’ve listened to it on four different stereos to see how it sounds. It sounds immaculate on my Sony golf balls and pretty good in my car. This thing is very bass-heavy. I compared it to tracks by Bjork and Kanye West and it’s bassier than any of that stuff. I’ve asked the mastering engineer to make a less bassy version I can compare it to. I feel like a wuss asking to have the bass turned down on my electronic music EP but it might be what it needs.

Kanye and New Order

The new Kanye West album “808s and Heartbreak” has a conspicuously colorful border running down the side of the cover:

I think it’s a tribute to New Order, a band that did lots of pioneering work with drum machines like the 808. A lot of the music on 808s and Heartbreak updates the big, booming electro sound from the early 80s. Here’s the cover of their classic 12″ single “Blue Monday”:

Blue Monday

Famously, the sleeve for Blue Monday cost so much to produce that New Order lost money every time they sold a copy — and it was the best-selling 12″ of all time. The cover art was designed by the great Peter Saville, and I think Kanye’s album has a little of the minimalist look Saville is famous for. There are lots of variations on this story, but Wikipedia tells it well enough here.

Shameless self-promotion: The Nuts + Berries EP design by Sara Dillon looks a little like a nod to Saville’s art for the New Order single True Faith, though it was unintentional.