Sound Design Analysis

XX

The xx is an indie band from England that uses an electronic sound mixed with

natural instruments. The first thing I noticed about the mastering and tracking of this

album is the amount of emptiness/silence at the end of the songs. Every song has right

around four seconds, sometimes much more, of dead air at the end. “VCR” the second

track has almost 9 seconds of dead air at the end. I’m not sure if there was an artistic or

creative purpose behind this but personally I think it disrupts the flow of the songs.

Perhaps the mastering engineer thought it would ease the transitions between songs or

add anticipation for the next one. In an interview, the producer of the project Rodaidh

McDonald was talking about the difficulties The xx had in the past with producers and

said “I guess they'd seen a lot of space to add a kind of stamp on. There was a lot of

empty space in the xx's music, even then, in the 'Early Demos'. But we just found that

the best stuff was the most sparse. The intimacy of the early demos was the important

thing.” The man who interviewed McDonald said this about the music “The sense of

space and silence is just as important as any musical sound.” After reading this it does

seem like the blank spaces are intentional and is what the band wanted. Personally, I’m

not a fan of this. I understand trying to fight the loudness wars but leaving seconds of

silence at the end takes it too far.

The xx truly did fight the loudness wars with this album. There seems to be a lot

of dynamic range. All the vocals are soft. The guitar almost always has a lot of reverb

on it taking out a lot of the punch. The beats are all computerized which normally means

they’d be very prominent and loud but in this case they’re just used to keep a rhythm,

not to drive the song. Even though there is computerized beats and a massive amount

Sound Design Analysis

of reverb, I would say this is a LA style mixed project. There’s little FX on the vocals

keeping them natural. I would expect the band to sound just like this when they’re live. It

doesn’t seem to be compressed much at all which is probably why the dynamic range is

so wide and sweet. Something cool about this album is finding pieces of the first song

appropriately titled “Intro” in the other songs. For example “Shelter” uses the same

guitar FX as “Intro”. This really helps the album all blend together and feel like one piece

of work... even if it is separated by seconds of silence.

According to XL Studio’s website this album was actually recorded in the studio’s

control room because the live room hadn’t been built yet. Maybe that is what kept the

album genuine. It was easier for the artists to control because they were there in the

control room as it all happened.

I was already a fan of this album before this assignment but it was cool to really

analyze it. I wish there would be more panning. I think the artists wanted to keep all the

sounds as natural and authentic as possible and that is clear all throughout their mixing

but they have such intricate sounds and airy tonality in their voices that it would have

been cool to hear all the elements in their own space.

Sound Design Analysis

Frost, Matt. "Rodaidh McDonald: Recording The Xx." Rodaidh McDonald: Recording The Xx. Sound on Sound, 1 June 2011. Web. 1 Mar. 2015. <http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun11/articles/the-xx.htm>.

"XL Studios - Official Website - About the XL Studio." RSS. XL Studio, 1 Feb. 2015. Web. 1 Mar. 2015. <http://www.xlrecordings.com/studio/about/>.

Owsinski, Bobby. The Mixing Engineer's Handbook. Clifton Park, N.Y.: Delmar, 2013. eBook Community College Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 1 Mar. 2015.