Ry Cooder Pull up some Dust and Sit Down

[bencat]

I have just bought this new CD and I confess in advance that I have always been a huge Ry Cooder fan and own all of his issued CD,s apart from the sound tracks.

Given this I thought I could guess what this would be like and I was surprised how worng I was. This CD is a real return to form for Ry with a very strong set of songs all composed by Ry and good enough to stand toe to toe with some of the calssic tracks he has recorded in the past.

This album moves seamlessly through all the stages of his past including blues , gospel , tex mex and more. His singing (for some never a strong point ) is better than ever and his playing in many cases all of the stringed instruments heard is fantastic not showy not posing just perfect accompaniment to the tune .

I have believed for a considerable time that Ry has been one of the best artists of my generation and this is as strong an album as he has produced throughout his career . The recording quality is excellent and the music is real quality . If you get a chance get a listen.

regards

Andrew

[john & Jake the dog]

Hi, Here's your chance to listen.
http://www.nonesuch.com/albums/pull-...t-and-sit-down

[Ardee]

I'm glad to hear that this CD sounds good. I always thought Ry Cooder took great interest in sound quality so I was surprised to find one of his albums (Chavez Ravine) on the list at Marcussen Mastering. In my opinion this is a list of CD's guaranteed to sound very nasty indeed. As a fan, I hope it was an aberration.

[bencat]

I think Ry has always wanted his recordings to sound good but not being a huge selling artist he has sometimes not been able to control how things were done on his major label releases.

Bop till you Drop is a good example of this the music is really brilliant with some excellent playing and guests such as Chaka Khan . However it was decided that this recording would be the very first Pop Album to be fully digitaly recorded and masterd
At the time digital equipment was in its very first incarnations and no one including the recording engineer involved or the producer had any experience of using this equipment in this case Sony F1 recoder using vifeo tape . The result was having been warned that any peaking in the signal would result in really awful distortion they recorded the whole session far too low so as to ensure that it never peaked. So the LP sounde quiet and muted and the original CD releases were also much quiter than current CD levels and forced you to turn your volume control up to get sensible levels. There was a remastered Japan release in a cardboard mini LP sleeve which addressed this and lifted the whole album level up and sounds far batter but it is now hard to get but worth it if you see one.

So this is often the reason thet some of Ry Cooders Album output has a variable quality of recording Ry knows what he wants to hear but sometimes the commercial pressures make it that bit more difficult for him and other artists to achieve .

[Ardee]

That's interesting Bencat. I do have Bop Till You Drop on CD and although there are a couple of dodgy-sounding tracks I find it OK.

I think there were some very good recordings made with F1, possibly because the engineers at the time appreciated the extra dynamic range and made good use of it. A 32/16 sample rate always sounded better to me than 44.1/16 for some reason and I seem to remember some research which confirmed this view. Something to do with a perceived reduction in quality when the analogue bandwidth is between 15k and about 40k, I think.

[bencat]

Hi Ardee

Sorry I did not mean to imply that Bop Till you Drop was not a good recording I agree with you it most certianly was and the music on it was some of the best recorded by Ry.

However the original LP release did have its problems with low level and real lack of bass. When the bass comes in on The Very Thing That makes you Rich ... it should come in with real power and slam . On the original LP it has no real volume and needs just too much increase in volume for most amplifiers to deliver. This is not because the music or the power is not their it is just recorded too low. The tracks from the Rhino Compilation The UFO has Landed from Bop Til you Drop are remastered with Ry's Son helping with the remastering and if you listen to these then you get the full hit of what the original digital recording really sounded like and the F1 did an excellent job .
It is also rumoured but no one will really comment that the first CD release was made and mixed using the Analogue LP mix version and not the original digital tape and that the engineer had to account for the usual additions put on the LP mix to compensate for the bass boost and treble cut often used to counter the additions and losses for RIAA filter applications.
This happened in many cases of early CD transfers and in some cases still happens now I would really love to see all releases with a full detail of exectly what was used to make the transfer but the music industry either does not care or has something to hide .