Ken Scott – hi fidelity and all that
A few months ago I read Ken Scott’s biography: “Abbey Road to Ziggy Stardust etc.” It was a very enjoyable read about the career of one of the 1970s great analogue engineers/producers. Before reading the book, I had no idea just how many Ken Scott albums that I had in my collection, and how many of them I really enjoyed. Scott started his career at EMI Abbey Road, moved on to Trident and eventually emigrated to Los Angeles – where his career appears to have stalled. In the 1970s, Ken Scott was THE man.
A Ken Scott production is a true work of hi-fidelity art, and even if you don’t like David Bowie, Jeff Beck, Billy Cobram, Stanley Clarke, Happy the Man, Devo, Kansas, Dixie Dreggs, Supertramp etc. (and of course “The White Album”), any LP engineered by him is a hi-fi demonstration record. Unfortunately, his biography essentially ends in 1980 (not really sure what he did between 1980 and 2000 – not a lot of production – it seems. I presume that his style of work – large-scale, slick and open, reverberating drums, lots of headroom, separation and 3-dimensionality – presumably just went out of fashion. Listening to anything recorded in the 1980s is a real struggle now: if you look at my list of albums of the year for that decade (below) it betrays a huge dislike of the overproduced synthetic sound that characterized the decade. Things improved for a short while in the 1990s until Oasis arrived and dynamic range compression transmuted from the radio to our CDs. There have be so few well produced rock records over the past 20 years, it is frightening. Even blues and jazz (with the exception of european labels such as ECM and ACT) became unlistenable.
Listening to Jonathan Wilson’s “Fanfare” and all of Steven Wilson’s output, I am transported back to the era of the super-engineer where records really did sound good. My current listening is: Gene Clark (“No other”), David Crosby (“If I could only remember my name”), Jonathan Wilson (“Gentle Spirit”), Roxy Music (“Roxy Music”), Denis Wilson (“Pacific Ocean Blue”), Bruce Springsteen (“High Hopes”).
Here is a list of my favorite Ken Scott albums – the year of release and what he did on the record. All strongly recommended:
- 1979 Night of the Living Dregs The Dixie Dregs Engineer, Producer
- 1978 Crafty Hands Happy the Man Engineer, Producer
- 1976 School Days Stanley Clarke Engineer, Producer
- 1974 Crime of the Century Supertramp Engineer, Producer
- 1974 Crosswinds Billy Cobham Engineer, Producer
- 1973 Birds of Fire Mahavishnu Orchestra Engineer
- 1973 Spectrum Billy Cobham Engineer, Remixing
- 1972 Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars David Bowie , Producer
- 1972 Transformer Lou Reed Engineer, Mixing
- 1969 Beck-Ola Jeff Beck Engineer
- 1968 The Beatles [White Album] The Beatles Engineer
- 1967 Magical Mystery Tour The Beatles Engineer
After these it was all re-issues and compilations.
audioexchange 