Butch Walker built his reputation with hard-hitting, self-produced rock albums marked by a bright, polished sound. When he set out to make Afraid Of Ghosts, an LP partially inspired by the death of his father, he decided to forget about perfection and aim for a more visceral, acoustic feel. The songs on Afraid Of Ghosts were written over the course of a year, then recorded with Ryan Adams and his band in a four-day burst of creativity. It’s the first time Walker worked with an outside producer. Walker will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new feature on him.
Walker: It’s a sweet and simple system with a Basis Audio 1400 Turntable with a Benz Micro L2 cartridge, and a Pathos handmade, integrated Amplifier and preamp. The Speakers are DalI Helicon 800’s. There’s something that never replaces the feeling of having to put a record needle on the groove of a slab of vinyl, and hear it through a really nice set of speakers. It’s just honestly, the way recordings were meant to be heard. Well, musical records anyways. I’m old fashioned and like to listen to a lot of older classic records (call me nostalgic in my later years), and they don’t ever sound as good when compressed into a shitty digital file and then played on stereos and software players with all of these “enhancer” effects you can add. These days, everyone just turns all of that stuff on because it just makes things sound louder. Not “better.” Hit this button for “goddamn bass boost”! This one for “treble enhancer”! Or this one for “3D motherfucking heedfuck destroyer”! and settings like that. Or even worse, the one that is killing music dead in the water? The ability to “skip” to another song before even hearing what the singer has to say for three whole minutes of your day. Records force you to sit and listen to an album as a body of work, in it’s entirety. This is a very difficult exercise for the general public nowadays because we have ADD from too many options, so we change our mind half-way thr…….. oh look…. a squirrel is on a skateboard in this video someone just texted me. I’ll be right back. I wanna “Like” this video really quick and post it on my photo blog. Wait … No.
Video after the jump.
