Friday, September 24, 2010

Who Says Distortion Can't Be Beautiful! knøx - mummy (original mix) Mastered @ ZeSoundSuite

I've got a really great track I had the pleasure of working on for you guys today.  When I first heard it I was beyond stoked to get cracking on it because it possessed quite a unique and diverse sonic character.  Unfortunately it took me a bit to get it as I was swamped with other ongoing projects.  When I finally sat down to work and gave the song a few listens I immediately thought and focused on three things.  First and foremost make that kick as mau5 like as possible.  Say what you want about the mau5 his kick is perfect! (Thanks in part to the SSL Stereo Bus Compressor)  Secondly, I knew I had to push the low to mid range pretty hard to bring out the grit that was such a prevalent sound in the track.  Finally I had to sculpt and bump the highs up just enough to bring out all the grimy noise whilst still keeping the epic progressive synth leads in check.  I also added quite a bit of character and extra noise with the URS Saturation plug-in and Digidesign's Reel Tape Saturation plug-in @ 15ips.  Long story short I made the adjustments I saw fitting; EQ, Compression, M/S Processing and preapred the track for limiting.  I knew this had to be loud to sound good, it's just one of those songs that without a lot of amplitude would loose a lot of it's meaning and purpose.  I pushed the L316 hard to the paint and made some final release time adjustments to keep the harmonics relatively in tact.  The result is what you're about to hear, all in all it came out great and still has a lot of the original dynamics despite it's loudness.  The kick is beautiful, the  low-mid range grit grabs your soul and the highs are perfectly balanced keeping the progressive synths bright and comfortable while showcasing just enough of the added noise to bring the whole track together.  Give it a listen, it's beyond a sonic experience!
knøx - mummy (original mix) by knøx

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