I took a chance and picked up two recordings from Mapleshade: Fallen Angels "Rain Of Fire" and Michael Carvin "Drum Concerto At Dawn". They wisely included the best song (almost always the 1st track) on the record for the Fallen Angels as an MP3 on the website and I really dug that one. Since I love the sound of drums in a room I figured the Michael Carvin disc was a fairly safe experiment.
The purist recording approach is definitely cool. The first thing I noticed was the dynamics of the sound. The drum fills sounded like they do at a live show - loud! Very cool. It sounds pretty much like a buncha guys playing in a living room. The lack of compression makes for a more natural volume balance, especially on vocals. If the singer is belting it's loud and if he's crooning it's quiet, and maybe even masked by the rest of the music. On regular recordings the whispers and the screams are both at the same volume level! Yeah, it makes for increased coherency, but it isn't as dramatic or natural sounding as this.
Apparently the 'Angels are some "psychedelic" band from the 60s, but personally I am not sure what is psychedelic about this at all. The first couple tunes are good but I found my mind trailing off after awhile. That's not the worst thing in the world, it could possibly be a Grower. "All in All" has some clever lyrics that brought a grin. They call this a rock band, but there isn't a whole lot of rocking going on IMHO. Not to say that it's bad, but it's pretty tame stylistically. I can't fault Mapleshade for that, they ain't exactly gonna go from recording an old man playing the blues on a worn out six string to AC\DC in one day! heh!
The Michael Carvin disc is pretty interesting as it is entirely a guy playing a drum kit with some occasional vocals. I am not a huge fan of jazz style drumming, but there's no doubt this guy has chops. But the best part is the sound of the kit - unlike any drums I've ever heard on record. No gates, no mics hung directly over the skins, no compression...and the guy's forte seems to be subtely! There's a good portion of the disc where he is tapping the drums really lightly. One tune fades away gradually into the tape noise, just when you think he's can't play any softer it gets softer! A great test of your system's noise level and ambient distractions! I haven't played it real loud yet, but I can imagine that you could calibrate this disc so that you are getting a 1:1 Real World Volume ratio happening.
My dream is to have a killer metal band record at Mapleshade. I think it would kick much ass to remove all the direct, separate-take EQed compressed, effected hype and just capture that fucking loud-as-hell in-the-room din of a real band. Maybe not how I'd wanna listen to EVERY album, but it would be a first. The Melvins would be a good candidate I think. Or better yet, the Fucking Champs! Well, they already sound pretty damn awesome as is.
