Music from the head

The editor -in -chief of the Stereo & Video magazine Mikhail Borzenkov proclaims the Radiohead with the main audio group, and Nigel Godrich is simultaneously George Martin and Rudy Van Gelder of our days.

The good third of the greatness of the Radiohead is described by two words, which most fans of this musical monster do not even know. These two words are “ Nigel Godrich ”. Nigel Godric, a chubby engineer, began to record the group from the album “The Bends” and remained with her forever. Tom York was so worked out with Nigel that all his albums (two solo and one ATOMS For Peace project) recorded exclusively with him. As usual in a musical tradition, experts in the backstage stories use the term “sixth participant of Radiohead ”. Everything is right here. Godrich is actually George Martin and arc Oldham the last in the history of the Great Rock band. And it was he who, by the way, left her without guitars, scraps, screams and other rock and roll things, transplanting musicians for synthesizers and dramas-machines.

This is not to say that Godric is especially obsessed with the sound. The set of its tools is quite simple. Of course, this is a mass of classic, very good and quite obvious technology, from NEVE microphones consoles, and a very modest selection of monitors. Firstly, this is the notorious Yamaha NS10 , about which Godric says that it is impossible to listen to, but you always know exactly what you hear, and secondly, a love of a pair of textbook English mini-monitors AE1 , and the newest release, since the newer, more bright, tweeter and this is not our hero at all in the gut.

Here with this modest set of Nigel Godric and sculpts in his studio the sound of Radiohead and Tom York. He not only writes, but also plays bass, guitars and synthesizers, programs dramas-machines, controls real-time processing. All these mystical transformations of Tom York's voice on the records are phase shifts, turning back in time and the like - this is all a Godchle. He manipulates the voice of York at concerts, usually hiding in the depths of the scene behind a mountain of incomprehensible devices that was accumulated by wires. It seems that this is simply something that the unknown technician is displayed there, but in fact-Godrich sorrows over the sound from the microphone of Tom York, turning the moan of a middle-aged man into an all-out howl of the rock-siren.

This is not only music, but also the sound art, where you can forget about the melodies, but to delve into the game and interpenetration of the timbres.

So they sing on two votes already on the third album. Even on the KID A Radiohead album, Godrich took and did not insert the already recorded guitar parties into the final mix-and turned a more or less traditional rock album into a psychedelic symphony, drowning in reverb, dealers and synthesizing backgrounds. After the appearance of KID A, the journalists rushed to compare Radiohead C Pink Floyd , which was quite justified, since Godrich and the group unexpectedly recreated the style of the epic plate “Meddle” . But where are the old Pink Floyd old people to the seventy -layer sound palette of Godric. On KID A, I still find new layers of arrangements when I launch it on the next High -Eudiosystem. This is not only music, but also the sound art, where you can forget about the melodies, but to delve into the game and interpenetration of the timbres.

Then Godch released the spaces and sobs of analog synthesizers - on the first sololet of Tom York "Eraser" they bloomed with a violent color. As Godch achieves this, I do not know, but I can completely say that to write analog synthesizers as he does, few people can now. In most modern fashionistas, they merge into slurred gurgling porridge, and in few bonded sounds, as a rule, piercing piercingly after numerous shifts in the number - for example, the “Delta Machine” of the Depeche Mode group sounds, where technologically everything seems to be the same, but in the sound - not that.

Nigel Godric in modern pop music-the figure is the same as Rudy Van Gelder in the jazz of his heyday. With the help of unremarkable technology (and, by the way, all the same Neumann microphones), it manages to fix the living tissue of sound, maintain a unique tone of each recorded instrument and make an entry with an unconditionally recognizable handwriting - a characteristic timbreic system, the arrangement of imaginary sound sources and a pleasant baritonal color.

Although Nigel Godric says that mastering is his unloved occupation, he and York are extremely seriously suitable for the release of their records. Radiohead’s releases began to appear on Vinil even before it became excitedly fashionable, but the most important thing is in which vinyl. Neither York's salt melts nor albums of the Radiohead group never reached the standard 33 and 1/3 turnover. This is always a “forty -fifth” - records that, as every DJ and an audiophile is known,, due to their physical features, sound an order of magnitude better than ordinary records, no matter what heavy vinyl are printed. Tom York and Nigel Godric are also one of the few musicians who immediately offered listeners to download not only a flawed mp3 version of their releases, but also full tracks in WAV and FLAC . They perfectly understand that otherwise half that they wrote so carefully, no one will ever hear.

It is understandable: listening to the new album of Tom York in mp3 is a missing and ungrateful thing. This is Oasis and Lady Gaga at least from the phone, and the charm of the sound of York and Godrich will not be revealed, even if you stick your headphones into the laptop, go comfortably and forget about your iPhone for 40 minutes. First you have to get decent headphones, then adapt a digital -analogue converter with an amplifier to a computer. Then download the WAV version, turn on and closely monitor how the phase of the only extracted note is slowly changing, changing, changing ... And so -until the envelope with two vinyls at 45 revolutions will come. Yes, for one sound of the K org MS20 synthesizer with “ Tomorrow ' S Modern Boxes” you can give all the released pop industry for 2014 and never remember it.