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Armin van Buuren's productions
Question: does van Buuren produce his own stuff, or does he have a horde of studio monkeys doing his bidding?
As much criticism as he cops on here for his DJing (which I'm not particularly enamoured with after the last few performances I've seen either), I think some of his productions are very enjoyable, both in a musical and a technical sense, while some others are quite poor musically.
I have a wave copy of Shivers which I'm listening to, and the mastering and clarity of sound is just unbelievably good, even on the shitty computer speakers I'm using. Trance is perhaps easier to separate sounds into discrete, non-clashing frequencies than other genres, but I'm still very impressed.
I find that a lot of producers manage to achieve great clarity but over-compress/overproduce their tracks in the process. It's personal preference, as some also like their tracks a little muddy (fuck you John Fleming and fuck you also, Wizzy Noise), but I think van Buuren has achieved a great middle ground with his work.
Musically, I can understand true trance lovers hating him with good reason, and I strongly dislike some of his stuff also. However, the main complaint I hear about "modern" trance is the lack of subtlety and lack of ability to actually "entrance" the listener.
Although Shivers does have vocals, the bassline is extraordinarily hypnotic and smooth in the first half of the track, but then perhaps becomes a bit overblown and epic during the *ahem* long breakdown. I really like the vocals though, and this is coming from someone that generally hates vocals in any electronic genre bar house.
To summarise: I don't think Armin is as shit as everyone likes to say he is, and even if you hate his music and his annoying PLUR attitude, you can appreciate his audio engineering skills.
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