Cale mixes on The Stooges - some kind of review
Posted: 25 Aug 2005 01:49
When I got The Stooges reissue I went straight to Cale's mix of No Fun - my favourite track from the orginal album. I always loved the sound of this album and Cale's mixes are very interesting.
The first thing to notice that everything sounds more noisey, more tactile. This may be part due to some tape-hiss evident at the start, but also seems to be a quality inherent to the instruments themselves. The mix brings out the materiality of the sound. There's also a more 3-dimensional, more architectural soundscape with a more deliberate use of stereo separation than the released version. Cale has placed the (much quieter) guitar and hand-claps on the left and the drums on the right. He's made these two sound sets counter-balance perfectly where they do the job of framing or butressing the central vocal which is supported from underneath by a solid bedrock of bass. At first it seems less powerful than the released version but thats because he's mixed the guitar much lower down at the start, allowing to it fully unleash later in the song. Brilliant.
Its an unusual and subtle mix - much less obvious than the one they released and you can understand why they made a much more upfront mix for commercial reasons.
My only gripe with this re-issue is that we could have had more Cale mixes (I guess he did the whole album!) instead of some slightly uninteresting alternate vocal takes. Apart from that its very very good and also has a taste of what they were like as the more freaky Psychedelic Stooges with the long versions of Ann and Fun House.
Delboy Schwartz
The first thing to notice that everything sounds more noisey, more tactile. This may be part due to some tape-hiss evident at the start, but also seems to be a quality inherent to the instruments themselves. The mix brings out the materiality of the sound. There's also a more 3-dimensional, more architectural soundscape with a more deliberate use of stereo separation than the released version. Cale has placed the (much quieter) guitar and hand-claps on the left and the drums on the right. He's made these two sound sets counter-balance perfectly where they do the job of framing or butressing the central vocal which is supported from underneath by a solid bedrock of bass. At first it seems less powerful than the released version but thats because he's mixed the guitar much lower down at the start, allowing to it fully unleash later in the song. Brilliant.
Its an unusual and subtle mix - much less obvious than the one they released and you can understand why they made a much more upfront mix for commercial reasons.
My only gripe with this re-issue is that we could have had more Cale mixes (I guess he did the whole album!) instead of some slightly uninteresting alternate vocal takes. Apart from that its very very good and also has a taste of what they were like as the more freaky Psychedelic Stooges with the long versions of Ann and Fun House.
Delboy Schwartz