No. 0521 min read
Recording Mantoloking with Steve Fisk. Yes, in Kansas.
The Sexy Accident made Mantoloking at Black Lodge in Eudora, Kansas, with Steve Fisk.
You can admire how a K-pop[1]Ref. 1K-pop en.wikipedia.org single is put together without deciding you want to hear it again. I like hearing those damned handoffs, one voice passing cleanly to another. A transition changes the texture instead of leaving you hanging around, and when the chorus comes back I have something to recognize.
I spent fourteen years in billing mediation at Sprint[2]Ref. 2Sprint en.wikipedia.org. That's a long time to develop opinions about several people needing to get their part right at the same time, so I have some appreciation for the work involved.
When I call music engineered, I mean it as a compliment. Somebody had to coordinate all that work, and it seems pretty insulting to assume that somehow removes the people who did it. Somebody still has to sing and dance and make the result feel like a performance. You cannot hand an audience a delivery schedule and expect applause.
The idol trainee system[3]Ref. 3idol trainee system en.wikipedia.org puts the preparation right out where you can see it. Aspiring performers train in singing and dance, often for years, without a guarantee of debut. Arrangements vary by company and contract. This isn't one school with one curriculum, and every artist doesn't have the same experience.
But young people put a great deal into this before knowing whether they will get the opportunity they're working toward. They can learn a great deal from training and still have very little bargaining power. I want to know who gets to say no. And who pays? What happens when somebody leaves? I don't need gossip about a particular performer to ask.
I can't hear whether everybody got treated fairly just by listening to the finished record, however clean it sounds. I'd need to know what happened while they made it.
I can appreciate a precisely made transition and learn something from it. I still don't want a singer to have to endure whatever it takes to deliver one. Sometimes it's the goddamn schedule that needs fixing.
