Deerhoof – The Magic

So, so muddy and compressed. Pop-y, 3-minute psychedelic songs Deerhoof is my favorite kind of Deerhoof. This is a band that deserves better than the mastering efforts they got for this record. Hopefully in the future, a good album mastering will be as accessible as digital recordings are. I've bought a few too many indie vinyl albums that sound really mushy on a turntable, even if the music is amazing.

I have a black vinyl version of "The Magic" that sounds pretty awful. It sounds like there wasn't an effort to master the album for vinyl, so the soundstage is pretty flat and boring for such a dynamic band. And on top of that the mixing suffers from heavy compression. Deerhoof's 3-minute experimental pop songs are some of my favorite music of the last 20 years, and they're one of the most inventive jam bands from SF since the Grateful Dead. I hope in the future that they get the vinyl remasters they deserve for their best albums.

Incidentally, I've never bought their stuff on CD before. Maybe I should see if their digital music is easier to listen to in comparison to their poorly produced vinyl.

Anyone else's copy of this skip in the very first track?

The purple/white star burst looks terrible in the picture. I hope mine looks better than that. I wish I had gotten the regular clear edition. That one seems guaranteed to look nice. Also Satomi apparently chose the vinyl colour.