Jose Gonza***, In Our Nature - oh dear (production not music)

Posted by: JWM on 28 September 2007

Loving 'Veneer' so much, Mrs JWM and I were waiting with baited breath for the arrival of this new one. Even ordered two formats - CD and vinyl for 'his n hers' preferred...

'Veneer' was pushing the envelope on production though one could feel how the slight ragged quality at times emphasised the urgency of the music. But, oh dear, sadly with 'In Our Nature' the envelope bursts...

The levels on the recording sound so saturated that I was left panicking whether my stylus was knackered; so then tried the CD version to see how that was and panicked that my tweeters had blown.

A check using a number of other albums, LP and CD (including an excellent s/h Coltrane 'Blue Train' from eBay which also arrived today) allayed my fears. But sadly what this also shows is that the production of 'In Our Nature' is really awful! This is no prissy quibbling, I assure you! But real raw ragged distorted sound! And the real pity is that it detracts from the music, which I'm sure is excellent (if I could hear it).
Posted on: 28 September 2007 by u5227470736789524
That is disappointing

I see him live a week from tonight (Oct 5) and was hoping to get the new disc at that time - any knowledge on whether or why a US copy might be any different ?

Jeff A
Posted on: 29 September 2007 by Chief Chirpa
It does sound a bit strange, doesn't it? At times, it's like the 'stylus' on my cd5x is covered in fluff.

It's really obvious if the volume if anything above seven o'clock... so it's really obvious most of the time. But it doesn't spoil the sound of the album for me - especially as I haven't had it on too loud. I expect if you crank the volume up it would be almost unlistenable.

Not a bad record though, but the Massive Attack cover is just all wrong.