Modern Records, Maverick Methods, by Samantha Bennett, illuminates how recordists working between 1978 and 2000 influenced the direction of popular music by applying what she calls a ‘tech-processual methodology’. Not satisfied with the analogue vs. digital debate promoted in many sources, Bennett uses her own term, ‘maverick methods’, to describe how ‘the majority of recordists blended technologies from both domains into their workflows, which also featured individualized production techniques’ (p. 10). Bennett's work establishes ‘a mode of analysis that not only deals with the sonically discernible production, but also the context(s) of technology, recordist agency and workplace’ (p. 134). After several chapters that weave together a complex history that utilises interview and ethnographic sources, Bennett applies her methodology to well-known tracks by the Beastie Boys, Madonna, U2, Fatboy Slim, Blur and MGMT. The overall result is a rewarding text that provides a richly detailed account coupled with nuanced interpretations.
The text includes an introduction, seven chapters (including brief summaries), a conclusion, an extensive notes section and a bibliography. Chapter one, ‘Constructing Records: Sound Recording and Production Technologies at the Turn of the 1980s’, recounts the development and use of the Fairlight CMI and the Synclavier in ‘elite recording houses’ by high profile 1980s artists like Madonna, Dire Straits and Michael Jackson; digital tape recorders like the Sony PCM-1600 and Mitsubishi X-800 ProDigi; and digital effects processors including Lexicon 224X or 224 XL, Eventide Harmonizer and AMS RMX-16 Digital Reverberator. While chronicling studio gear might sound dull, the chapter details specific tracks and albums (as many of the chapters do) that relied on these technologies, and in doing so explains how, for the first time, these machines were placed ‘in the very foreground of popular music recordings’ (p. 35).
‘The Sound of Technology: Machines and Formats that Transformed Mid-Late 1980s Popular Music’ addresses the importance of SSL and Neve mixing consoles, and discusses how Def Leppard's Hysteria (1987) and Robert ‘Mutt’ Lange's work on that album served as a prime example of 1980s ‘large-scale mixing console production’ (p. 39). Discussing the LM-1 (LinnDrum), she states, ‘the ubiquity of the … machine amongst commercial record production was such that it defined the sonic character of chart pop music of the decade’ (p. 40). The chapter continues with brief profiles of MIDI synthesisers (Yamaha's DX-7 and Ensoniq's Mirage, to name a few) and samplers like the E-Mu's Emulator and the AKAI MPC-60, and sequencers. Bennett explores the ‘presence of [live] performance’ on U2's 1987 The Joshua Tree as an example of a ‘significant record of the era that could be interpreted as an active stance against technological intervention [such as sampling], which, arguably, led to greater success’ (p. 49, original emphasis). Despite bands and recordist who did not fully embrace digital technologies during the mid-to-late-1980s, the ‘commercial music mainstream [was] dominated by the sound of pre-programmed sounds [like the LinnDrum], digital synthesis and large-scale record construction’ (p. 54).
The early 1990s served as a ‘tipping point’, of sorts, in the ‘accessibility, utilization and application’ of technologies like the ADAT (Alesis Digital Audio Tape), Otari RADAR and ProTools. In Chapter three, Bennett provides many examples of ‘Technological Hybridity’ used during the 1990s such as Glen Ballard's use of ADAT recorders with a vintage AKG C-12 microphone to record Alanis Morrissette's multi-platinum debut album Jagged Little Pill (1995). In Bennett's view, the Otari RADAR, because of its use in recordings by a diverse group of artists including Youssou n'Dour, Enrique Iglesias, The Charlatans and 2 Live Crew in the mid-to-late 1990s, became a device that ‘symbolized technological democratization’ (p. 62). The year 1999 saw the release of Ricky Martin's ‘Livin’ La Vida Loca’ and Christina Aguilera's ‘Genie in a Bottle’, two hit records created within ProTools in combination with other Digital Audio Workstations. Of course, many tracks recorded during the 1990s relied on a combination of digital and analogue technologies, such as the Studer A800 24-track tape recorder. As Bennett points out repeatedly throughout the text, ‘in an increasingly digital recording landscape’, recordists applied ‘analogue, vintage and technological precursors as important sonic differentiators [from the commercial mainstream]’ (pp. 73–4). One thing that emerges from Bennett's text is that many of the ‘hit/popular’ tracks addressed did not follow the production norms of their day.
The fourth chapter examines three categories of what Bennett terms ‘tech-processual unorthodoxies’. The first is ‘unorthodox uses of technology and the apparent “embracing” of faults and flaws’ like in Eminem's ‘Stan’ (2000), a track that uses ‘the presence of vinyl crackle – a past technological aesthetic – … to situate the listener in the place of the protagonist’ (pp. 85, 88). Second is ‘the intentional unorthodox processual application of microphones, appropriation of mixing console features, and other recording devices’ (p. 85) as heard on Fragile (1999) by Nine Inch Nails where ‘drum loops were created by recording signals [from live drums using] ambient microphones positioned in [Trent] Reznor's studio live room … played along to a programmed loop sent through a PA system in a variation on an echo chamber’ (p. 88). Third is the foregrounding of ‘technological anachronisms, those being sound recording or music technology devices belonging to past eras’ like Radiohead's use of the Ondes Martenot in ‘The National Anthem’ (Kid A, 2000) or the use of a 12-bit Roland W-30 (1989) synthesiser by Liam Howlett on Prodigy's 1997 album Fat of the Land. As Bennett remarks, producers and musicians still incorporated ‘performance-capture-based’ production methods, and that ‘maverick methods were more a result of the state of technological and workplace flux’ (p. 91).
Chapter five examines how the recordist's role changed with evolving technology by profiling the ‘tape-op’, the diversification of recordist's skill sets in the 1980s, and artist-producers such as Trevor Horn and Krafwerk, and DJ's including Jam Master Jay, Prince Paul, Spinderella and Moby (p. 98). Throughout the text, Bennett incorporates existing interview material and her own ethnographic work with numerous recordists to support her ideas, and these sources become a centrepiece for Chapter six. One common trope while discussing recordists includes ‘traditionalist’ vs. ‘technophiliacs’, but Bennett's text reveals that ‘recordists exhibit far more complex and … flexible tech-processual standpoints’ than are apparent on the surface. She classifies the positions on the ‘utopianism-pessimism dichotomy’ as: ‘music first’, exemplified by recordists such as Phil Ramone, George Martin and Rick Rubin, who were concerned with the ‘dehumanizing effects of certain sound recording and music technologies’ (pp. 115–16); recordists like Steve Levine, Trevor Horn and SAW who championed new and improved technologies, loosely classified in the ‘utopian, or impression of utopian’ camp; those who were pessimistic or sceptical about the possible hindrance of digital recording technologies to their workflow; those who were resistant to new technologies owing to risk aversion; and those who were ‘rebelling against sound engineering and/or recording and production protocol (p. 130). This chapter uncovers the differing attitudes about emerging recording technologies shared by many influential recordists.
The showpiece of Modern Records, Maverick Methods is Chapter seven, where Bennett deftly demonstrates how her tech-processual analytical methodology richly illuminates six tracks. Her methodology ‘examine[s] the contribution made by technology and process to the overall aesthetic’ of the tracks (p. 135). In her analysis of ‘(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party)’ (1986) by The Beastie Boys, Bennett remarks that one reason that this and other Def Jam tracks were successful, especially with white rock audiences, was the fact that these ‘records featured a sonic familiarity consistent with the commercially successful rock of the then recent past’ (p. 139). One of the aesthetic decisions that classifies this production as a ‘maverick method’ is the choice to include looped samples that sound like live performances – ‘the illusion of continual performance that have in fact been compiled from [tape] loops’ (p. 182). ‘Ray of Light’, produced by William Orbit in 1999, ‘is a perfect example of maverick methodology’, remarks Bennett, because Orbit used then out-of-date technologies (Atari ST running an old version of Cubase, and many ‘old’ synths, including a Juno 106, and a Yamaha DX-7) along with digital sample sequencing while helping Madonna to craft her sonic reinvention. The analyses of the remaining tracks are rich in details often overlooked when reading about popular music. Bennett's analyses place the recordists and their processes, the gear and the studio itself on the same level as the performance.
The introduction of digital technologies did not automatically replace analogue systems overnight. In some cases as Bennett points out, new technologies required steep learning curves, and the integration of new gear into recording workplaces took time, ‘resulting in two decades of technological hybridity in popular music recording and production’ (p. 173). Ultimately, this text provides a nuanced history about how technologies including the ADAT, the LinnDrum and ProTools entered the recording workflow, the varied attitudes towards these technologies by those working in the recording industry, and how recordists applying ‘maverick methods’ shaped the sound of popular music over a 20 year period. Modern Records, Maverick Methods is a rewarding work, and will make a great supplement for courses related to music production, popular music history, music industry history or the business of music.
