Ongoing History Daily: The analogue efforts of Arcade Fire

Arcade Fire is one of those bands that loves the sound of old analogue recordings. And they demonstrated just how far they’re willing to go with how they made their album, The Suburbs. To be honest, it’s really hard to make a fully-analogue album today, but the band wanted to come as close as possible to realizing this vision.

First, they acquired a 1940s-era mixing console that ran on vacuum tubes. No transistors anywhere. They hooked up a 24-track tape machine to that console and recorded all the songs for the record. Once a track was completed, it was pressed onto 12-inch vinyl. That vinyl recording was then turned into the digital master of the song.

Did all this effort make a difference? Only your ears can tell.

The last post involved some Jack White facts.