Il Forum di doyourealize.it

http://pitchfork.com/features/articles/7925-this-is-it-ten-years-of-the-strokes/

"When we finished Is This It, we had to go to Sterling Mastering Labs to master 'Hard to Explain' and the B-side for the first single release in England. I pushed play and, to my surprise my little 8-track basement computer recording sounded absolutely stunning. At that moment, Steve stood up with the head mastering engineer from Sterling and said, 'Guys, this is some of the most unprofessional sounding music I have ever heard. This is not going to sell, and you are really doing damage to your career by trying to release music that sounds this way.' My heart just sank because I had just celebrated the fact that it sounded exactly the way I wanted it to. I wanted to cry. Then the mastering guy, Greg Calbi, stood up and said, 'That's right. They're not going to understand your music in Kansas anyway. Why make it more difficult by having that distortion on your voice? Be sensible.' I picked up my computer, said I disagreed, and left the building carrying the thing."

While there are unmistakable sonic similarities between the two records, Room on Fire mostly does what second albums are designed to do: further define the band's sound while simultaneously exploring its boundaries. Yes, the tinny production and callbox vocals remain, but it's hard to imagine how Valensi's synth-mimicking guitar lines on "12:51" or the smooth Motown shuffle of "Under Control" would've fit on Is This It. Room on Fire is varied yet always careful never to stray too far from the territory the Strokes had already staked out as their own. It mostly sounds like a natural progression.

Hammond felt the issues went beyond mere numerical length. "It's not just about the number of songs. It's that, when you listen to it, it feels heavy. I had never felt that with us." Meanwhile, Valensi's concerns lie squarely with the production. "My worry is that the album won't age well. You know how you listen to certain albums from the 90s and they just sound so 90s? That's the problem in going with state-of-the-art, cutting-edge technology. The top of the line shit always gets dated because there's another trick that comes out in a couple of years."

Casablancas took a less hands-on approach with Angles. He recorded his vocals remotely-- at Electric Lady Studios in New York-- and sent his parts to the band as electronic files. Likewise, during the recording phase, most communication between Casablancas and the rest of the band took place via e-mail, and, according to Valensi, most of the singer's ideas and suggestions were written "in really vague terms," leaving the others without much to go on. Casablancas' literal distance was quite deliberate, and to hear the singer tell it, the strategy was something he'd hoped to do from the beginning. "When I'm there, people might wait for me to say something. I think it took me being a little mute to force the initiative."
vs.
While Casablancas' disengagement may have been by design, Valensi found the whole experience deeply dissatisfying. "I won't do the next album we make like this. No way. It was awful-- just awful. Working in a fractured way, not having a singer there. I'd show up certain days and do guitar takes by myself, just me and the engineer. Some of the third album was done that way, but at least we were on the same page about what the arrangements and parts were. Seventy-five percent of this album felt like it was done together and the rest of it was left hanging, like some of us were picking up the scraps and trying to finish a puzzle together."

AFX wrote:Gli Strokes hanno fatto sempre album brevi.

AFX wrote:

AFX wrote:
"Call Me Back" mi pare il punto debole. Sicuramente è meglio di First Impressions in generale