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These are dark days for lovers of hi-fi audio; over-compressed and over-bright productions are only on the increase. But occasionally, through the pumped-up digital grey, you get an album that caresses the ears, rather than assaults them. Two recent pop albums up for consideration are Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories and Elvis Costello & The Roots’ Wise Up Ghost and Other Songs. Random Access Memories became instantly celebrated for its audiophile approach; helped by a million US dollar recording budget and pre-release mini-movies describing the lengths the French duo went to ensure the album wore analogue 1970s aesthetics on its sleeve. It was an open invitation to return to the expensive, laborious, big studio approach of the pre-digital Golden Age of record production. Topped off with resurrected disco-era icons. Wise Up Ghost and Other Songs, meanwhile, sounds almost as good, with a non-fatiguing natural spaciousness to the sound and arrangements; a gentle, silken high end; a huge yet tight low end; and impressive dynamic range.
Its admirable sonic qualities hint at similar working methods and budgets to the Daft Punk epic It turns out, however, that nothing could be further from the truth. The man in the know is Wise Up Ghost’s engineer and mixer, Steven Mandel, who proudly proclaims that he “grew up as an analogue person who loved tape”. Despite his love affair, he explains, Wise Up Ghost was “made without a budget, before a record deal was in place, in a rehearsal room, and entirely in the box, in Pro Tools at 24-bit/48k. It’s not something I’m trying to promote, but I guess the record does have a warm sound, and a sense of expansiveness. “
As Mandel relates the full story of the album’s gestation, it gradually becomes clear that circumstances conspired to create something unusual, including the fact that it was made without a budget, and bizarrely, recorded and mixed for the most part in a tiny dressing room-cum-rehearsal space. It could nonetheless have turned out a mess, and this is the story of how, and why, it didn’t.
CROSSOVER PATHS
When news broke of the Wise Up Ghost collaboration there was widespread concern that Costello, a British singer-songwriter emerging from the 1970s New Wave movement, was jumping on the latest bandwagon, and that the world was going to witness a Costello-gone-hip hop car crash. In this day and age of extensive genre crossovers, the eyebrow-raising is surprising. Especially given Costello’s long reputation for eclectic collaborations, including with classical music acts like The Brodsky Quartet, all the way to Burt Bacharach, and Paul McCartney. And this could be one of his best. Costello’s intense, hoarse vocals fit seamlessly with The Root’s relaxed but deep muscular grooves. If anything, both Costello and The Roots sound revitalised, demonstrating a connection that usually takes decades to foster. Though, in truth, it did take a couple of years.
The collaboration originated when the two parties met at Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. The Roots, led by drummer Ahmir ‘?uestlove’ Thompson, have been the Jimmy Fallon show house band since the beginning of 2009, and later that year backed Costello on a version of his song High Fidelity, chosen by Mandel. Another year went by, and Costello was back on the show to promote his album National Ransom, playing an album track with the Roots and Guitarist John McLaughlin. The stirring combination of wordy song and ballsy funk grooves was an indication of things to come.
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