The Raveonettes - my current production reference sound

ewal

Not the only one, but The Raveonettes are a favourite production reference of mine alongside more obvious shoegaze/alternative/dream pop references. I love the lo-fi, analogue sound as if an old recording studio is being pushed beyond the limits. However I know they use modern DAWS to make their records, so I should be able to aspire to something similar.

This tune was on my playlist yesterday and I was thinking about what I was hearing and whether I could do something similar using the gear I've got. What am I hearing:

- Main guitar is probably a JM - think he uses very heavy strings (14s) but I don't think they'd be critical to the sound. He is known to use the RV5 a lot and a Rat going 'straight in to the desk' (or DAW). So should be pretty easy to replicate.
- Basic drum machine going in to some sort of dirt - easily done too?
- Mix swathed in a liberal dose of dark hall reverb? I'm not really good at recognising reverbs. The style of music makes you think spring reverb and I know they use the spring reverb setting in the RV5, but that doesn't sound like spring to me?

Anyway... Just thinking out loud - any secrets or tips to getting that lo-fi, 60's punk influenced sound?

Supportact

If you have a TC Electronic Hall of Fame there is a Toneprint on there designed by Sune Rose Wagner. As I remember it's a clangy lo fi Spring sounding reverb. 

But I think you're on the right track, lots of reverb and saturation on everything. Maybe tremolo on some tracks. Obviously a lot of it is heavily influenced by 60s groups and production, Phil Spector, early punk. 

I like the Raveonettes and saw them live a few times. They had some really simple but catchy tunes which I think is the appeal for me. 

ewal

I love a simple but catchy tune!

I think I'm entering another 'define the sound for this project' phase.... I'm going to play around with Reaper project and track templates, using them as the constraint to encourage completion for the collection of songs I'm working on. If I can't get a tune to work, then it goes in the archive for the moment.

Chromeflats

Love the Raveonettes. They use stacked reverbs quite a lot, eg plate into hall, for a Phil Spector-ish 'wall of sound' feel. Also reverb into distortion pedals. Even their heavier songs can use little distortion, eg. Aly Walk With Me is multiple stacked reverbs into Rat or Boss HM(?). Drums are very simple, often just bass, tom, snare with no overheads, or just some tambourine etc. I've seen Sube use Deluxe reverb amps with either strat of Fender JM. Sharon uses some hollow body bass. For me, a bit part of their sound is the vocals, with their voices sounding v similar and blending well, which is obv hard to fake! Their earlier albums at least were made with deliberately reductive rules eg. all songs in BBM, less than 2min, no hi-hats. I think one of their albums featured Mo Tucker and Martin Revv, so they wear their influences on their sleeves.

Chromeflats

Grr, autocorrect - first album was written entirely in B flat minor. Second in Bflat maj.