Interesting Dredg "El Cielo" Tidbit

Hello,
I saw Dredg in Lincoln, Nebraska on Sunday night. They played for about 50 minutes. Their live show is AMAZING! They have so much equipment and really make use if it on stage.
Anyhow, I was talking to Drew (bassist) after the show, and I asked if there was any posibility of their new album "Catch without Arms" coming out in SACD. He said probably not because it was not as atmospheric as El Cielo. That got us onto the topic of MC discs.
Anyone who has listened to the El Cielo SACD knows what a great mix it is.
He told me that the band was not entirely happy with the mix. Apparently they had very little to do with the 5.1 mixing. He said if it were up to them there would have been much more use of the rear channels and such.
Would have been cool to hear how the band wanted the mix...
Ryan

Nova74 said:

Hello,
I saw Dredg in Lincoln, Nebraska on Sunday night. They played for about 50 minutes. Their live show is AMAZING! They have so much equipment and really make use if it on stage.
Anyhow, I was talking to Drew (bassist) after the show, and I asked if there was any posibility of their new album "Catch without Arms" coming out in SACD. He said probably not because it was not as atmospheric as El Cielo. That got us onto the topic of MC discs.
Anyone who has listened to the El Cielo SACD knows what a great mix it is.
He told me that the band was not entirely happy with the mix. Apparently they had very little to do with the 5.1 mixing. He said if it were up to them there would have been much more use of the rear channels and such.
Would have been cool to hear how the band wanted the mix...
Ryan

Click to expand...

MORE?????? Wow, I find it uses the rears well. It's one of my faves.

Damn, did you ask him WHO mixed it? They did a good job! There is no credit on the liner notes.

Nova74 said:

I asked if there was any posibility of their new album "Catch without Arms" coming out in SACD. He said probably not because it was not as atmospheric as El Cielo.

Click to expand...

Thanks Ryan for asking ! I saw them in Paris this summer but did not get a chance to talk to them.

Damn, you should have asked who did El Cielo surround mix !
This is something we have been wondering for a while (see https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4387 or https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3203)

I'm pretty surprised they're not that happy since this one of the best 5.1 mix I've ever heard.

The stereo mix was done by Tim Palmer (who mixed for instance Porcupine Tree's In Absentia in stereo), by somehow I doubt it's Tim Palmer who did the surround mix.

However, I have a friend who is going to have an interview with them for the biggest hard rock magazine in France, and I'm going to tell him to ask who did that mix

If you have other MC questions for Dredg, feel free to pass them on here.

YmSeb said:

However, I have a friend who is going to have an interview with them for the biggest hard rock magazine in France, and I'm going to tell him to ask who did that mix

Click to expand...

I ended up doing the interview myself, so I did not forget to talk surround music with those guys ! (It was Mark, the guitarist, and Gavin, the singer)

So finally the "mystery" is solved : the guy who mixed El Cielo in 5.1 is... MARK O'DONOUGHUE.

This engineer has quite a nice resume (check out on allmusic.com), and he's usually Tim Palmer's mixing assistant.

El Cielo was mixed in surround by Mark at the Skywalker Ranch (yes, this is what you think), and I told Dredg how good his job is.

They agree it's good, but although they were able to express their opinion about the mix, they weren't really involved in the process, and there are things they would have done differently if they had had time. But like they said to me : "It would have been endless !"

It wasn't their idea at all to do a surround mix for the album. They told me that it was their label, Interscope, who wanted to pick up two or three discs from their catalog to experiment surround mixes and put out some SACD's. The label thought that the music of Dredg was quite fitting, and organized everything.

FYI, the band members don't even have a home theater themselves, so they aren't into surround music at all, even if they are proud to have this SACD out.

This led me to the topic of Catch Without Arms. They don't intend to mix it in surround, not only because this album is more straight-forward, but also because it would be up to the label to decide (just as it was the case for El Cielo), as they are themselves not really totally into surround music yet. El Cielo SACD was an experiment from Interscope, and it's unlikely they'll do it again.

Yes, this is too bad, but when band members themselves will feel more concerned about surround music, they'll surely push for it, as they are actually interested in it ; it's another way of expression and as they are definitely incredibly gifted artists, they can't miss this opportunity.

Thanks for the tidbits!! Mark did a great job, in my opinion.

Too bad we won't see anymore 5.1 from them.