Tuesday 19 July 2016

Phil Collins - Only You Know and I Know (1985)



In 1985, Phil Collins was not afraid to dive right in to the world of FM. I am still trying to determine if the bass part of Sussudio is FM bass or not. Honestly, I have no idea what it is. But with this track there is no question. This is a pure FM Bass patch and it is front and center!

It's fantastic to hear Collins' unbelievably unique vocal style and production with this ever so familiar bass in the background. But aside from the bass and the vocals, it is always worth taking notice of the production of the drums in a Phil Collins track. the unusual compression techniques they utilized were pioneered by him and his Genesis (the band) cohorts. 

They did all kinds of weird stuff, like used the talk-back mic compression for communicating with the recording engineer from the performance room to layer the drums. And they would compress ambient mics from really far away from the kit and use noise gates to cut off the trail. It may sound weird now, but this is kind of the wild west of modern recording.

You can tell, because that digital as hell FM bass is sitting right there in the mix with all this weird stuff, haha.

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