View the article online at eqmag.com:
http://www.eqmag.com/article/toca-producer-colin/feb-08/33401

Or click the thumbnail image below for a full size scan of the article from the printed magazine:

There are a few inaccuracies with the article which I’d like to note here. The article implies that I was the sole “producer” of the music whereas in reality the production should be credited mostly to the band members themselves. Generously, the band had fought their label to get me credited as a co-producer due to my heavy involvement in the production of their songs, but the label wanted to credit themselves instead… as a result, on the record itself I actually only received mixing and engineering credits. The article also uses two of my photographs and captions one of them as “Ceschi Ramos recording guitar…” when in reality, the person in the photo is a friend of Ceschi’s who isn’t even in the band!

Some of the quotes are also sort of funny and not really what I said. It’s really weird to read something like this because it’s ALMOST what I said but run through some sort of weird filter. The article says the album was mixed on a laptop, but that is obviously not the case. The entire thing was done on two different HD2 Accel systems and what I was trying to convey was that the track counts were so large (sometimes over 150 tracks!) that the systems were being maxed out and that I had to go through a difficult learning curve working without a console.

Anyways, I’m very flattered to be included in the magazine and I hope that you enjoy reading the interview. I wish they would have given more credit to Ceschi, Tommy, Xolo, David, Danny, and Max, but I guess because this is a recording magazine they were only interested in the more geeky aspects of making of the record.

Toca album gets love on BEST OF 2007 lists

Toca was voted 1 album of the year by 90.5 radio dj and musician Chaps on UGSmag.com

here’s what he had to say:

1. Toca - Toca
Well here we are at number one and we have what some might say is not a hip hop album at all. Well I think it may be one of the most important, groundbreaking, innovative hip hop records ever made. Toca consists of David Ramos. TommyV, Xololanxinxo, Ceschi, Max Heath and Danny T. Levin. This crew has a surplus of musical talent and vision. They all lend their talents and the end product is a musical roller coaster that cannot be captivated by any genre. The diversity of this album is unparalleled. As soso says, if the Clash made music in 2007 it would sound like this. This album is a musical masterpiece, time will tell its importance and influence. tocatheband.com

http://www.hiphopcore.net/articles/63-article-top-2007.html

Toca was voted 14 best album of the year by one of France’s biggest online hip hop magazine Hiphopcore.net
Toca was also mentioned in the top 5 by a number of other musicians including Epic, Factor, SoSo and Scott Da Ross.

http://www.treblezine.com/columns/108.html

Toca voted number 3 album by Chris Pacifico of Treble online zine

http://lifeonwax.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=553&Itemid=58

LifeOnWax.com nominated Toca for Rock artist of the year! Unfortunately we lost to a little known indie rock band called RADIOHEAD.

Thanks to everyone who has acknowledged our album around the world…we worked hard to make it and appreciate your support!

Link.

Dynacord DRP-20 Digital Reverb Review

The DRP-20 is a true stereo in stereo out digital reverb which debuted in 1989 at $2400. It features a distinctive white face place with some massive grey handles boldly protruding from the front. The handles alone are really reason enough to check this thing out as they makes any rack look that much more serious! Programming the DRP-20 is about as easy as it can get: there are large, clearly labeled buttons for all the primary functions and a very solid feeling knob for scrolling through parameters. The LCD readout is reminiscent of a Speak and Spell but it allows enough characters on the screen that nothing ever needs to be abbreviated and the font size is large enough to be clearly read from across the room, even in low light. There is the usual input meter as well as dedicated input and output knobs with an included “hi gain” input mode for plugging an instrument directly into the unit. The front panel features a dedicated “mono in” and “mono out” specifically for instrument use. This is a nice bonus for live use or if you just want to quickly audtion a sound with an instrument without having to reach around to the back of the unit to access the primary inputs and outputs.

The sound of the DRP-20 is truly unique. Users expecting something similar to the usual Lexicon or TC sounds will be pleasantly surprised by the Dynacord’s darker, smooth, and “moodier.” tone. The high end sounds like it starts to roll off quite a bit (but gracefully) at 10khz. The result is a decay that goes “chaaaaaa” instead of “ssssha” when you run a snare though it. All the expected ambience, hall, room, cathedral, and plate algorithms are present and each offers highly usable presets. The parameters are very intuitive to adjust and the changes that they make are obvious and powerful. The stand outs for me are the longer algorithms such as the plates and the cathedral as they provide a wonderfully rich decay which you can really crank up for Massive Attack-esque vocal effects. The character of the pre-delay on all of the reverb algorithms is one of the favorites of any unit which makes the DRP-20 a perfect candidate for blending sounds into another effects box. Also included are some very fun, but usable gated reverbs, delays, flangers, phasers, a beautiful chorus as well as Dynacord’s famous Leslie spinning speaker simulation.

In use, the Dynacord is clearly a “character” piece and not at all a “jack of all trades.” This does not mean that it isn’t useful, though. On the contrary, it excels on sibilant vocals and higher voices that would make other reverbs too shrill sounding. In a rock mix where you have the guitars panned out towards the edges of the stereo field, the DRP-20 provides a perfect ambience that helps tie the guitars down to the rest of the mix without making the edges of the mix overly bright. I found drums to really be hit or miss with the DRP-20. In some songs, it was just perfect on the snare, easily beating out other, more expensive boxes, while in other mixes, no matter what I tried, the Dynacord’s decay would just disappear in the mix no matter how I tried to “tweak” it. The unit’s self-noise also leaves a little bit to be desired, largely due to the fact that Dynacord didn’t feel the need to include balanced inputs (they later released the DRP-20x which would add balanced connections.) The chorus and Leslie algorithms are a great bonus and add a believable character to Hammond samples, electric pianos, guitars, and even vocals.

The Dynacord DRP-20 is really a “must have” for reverb aficionados. It’s distinctive sounds can really help add personality to a mix and certainly won’t fall victim to the “same old reverb” trap. While sort of a hit or miss type of piece, when the DRP-20 is the right box for a job, its really right and it easily deserves the same level of admiration that its German cousins have enjoyed.

Sound Samples:
Each sample features a preset with no parameters changed from the factory settings. Included are the dry sound sample, reverb return (wet signal), and the dry and wet signal combined.

Guitar Dry
Guitar Wet Only
Guitar Wet + Dry
Vocal Dry
Vocal Wet Only
Vocal Wet + Dry
Snare Dry
Snare Wet Only
Snare Wet + Dry

Its funny, there have always been comments by music fans, musicians, and the press about how Radiohead act so self important. I never really thought that they did really act that way. I always felt that they genuinely believed in what they were doing and worked hard at it. In Rainbows, though, to me, is Radiohead finally acting self important. In lieu of the tremendous depth that their songs usually have, the band has opted for cheap production tricks. Like much of Thom Yorke’s solo album, In Rainbows features “cut and chop” production pasted over lackluster songs. Radiohead have confused their “innovative” song writing and production with a poorly executed production style that is being (and has BEEN) done by so many other, lesser known (less “important”) artist. As much as Thom Yorke wants to be Squarepusher, he’s just not. He’s a songsmith, an emotive singer, and a master of building tension in music. Where is the tension on In Rainbows? In Rainbows sounds closer to Nigel Godrich’s collaboration with Sir Paul than a Radiohead record, with its close miked to death sounds, forced loops, and half hearted song writing.

Radiohead’s innovation this time is giving away free music. But that’s the thing, its not worth paying for! I would’ve felt ripped off had I paid for it. Just like the Flamming Lips post Yoshimi, Radiohead have blown their wad since Kid A. I know that sounds harsh, but try this experiment:

Make a playlist of the following songs:
Planet Telex
The Bends
Airbag
Paranoid Android
Everything In Its Right Place
Kid A

Those are the first 2 songs off The Bends, Ok Computer, and Kid A. Within just TWO songs on each album, the band INSTANTLY create unique worlds that you just want to lose yourself in. Those are wonderful headphone albums that can just make you see the world around you differently. In Rainbows is just another “Zero 7″ hipster cocktail party background playlist for luxury loft apartments somewhere in New York…

Let’s examine rock’s residing “authority” on all things tasteful, Nick Hornby, review of Kid A.

“You have to work at albums like ‘Kid A.’ You have to sit at home
night after night and give yourself over to paranoid millennial
atmosphere as you try to decipher elliptical snatches of lyrics
and puzzle out how the titles … might refer to the songs. In other
words you have to be sixteen.

“Anyone old enough to vote may find that he has competing demands
for his time - a relationship, say, or a job, or buying food, or
listening to another CD he picked up on the same day.

“I suspect that people who have been listening to rock music for
decades will have exhausted the fund of trust they once might have
had for ‘challenging’ albums. ‘Kid A’ demands the patience of the
devoted; both patience and devotion become scarcer commodities once
you start picking up a paycheck.”

- Nick Hornby, The New Yorker, Oct. 30, 2000.

In his review, Hornby continually BLASTS a rock band for daring to break away from the cliches and make something truly new and challenging. Ironically, Kid A was panned as the “electronica” album that “sounds like that Aphex Twins band.” But was that really what it was? I listen to a lot of “out there” music and have yet to hear an album that sounds anything like Kid A. I honestly think Can’s Tago Mago is the closet reference, but then again, Kid A has better song writing, more compelling lyrics and far more emotive vocals. In other words, Kid A did what Bjork used to do: pull from past “avante garde” innovators and meld their unappreciated qualities with those of current “next big things” in music while laying all that on top a perfectly made bed of well crafted songs. Kid A was a rock record! It had TONS of guitars on it! Its just that the band had found such unique ways to use them that no one recognized them! You know, like how people in the 1960s, like Jimi Hendrix, used to do. In Rainbows doesn’t have ANY of that, just beat of the week production tricks…

I have a HUGE collection of Radiohead bootlegs and I’ve been fascinated, over the last decade and a half, at how their songs have evolved and particularly, how well those songs have worked in all their different forms. The all acoustic version of Subterrean Homesick Alien is still brilliant. The Pixes like rushed live in Berlin version of Airbag has a perfect immediacy to it. The soulful renditions of “Nude” worked just as well as the sparse solo acoustic ones… I could go on. But the songs on In Rainbows CAN’T be stripped down because there are no songs underneath all the studio trickery. I dare say that they’re BORING even WITH all the studio trickery! The minimal versions are ever WORSE. The first live version I heard of Arpeggi nearly put me to sleep!

Just like the Flamming Lips, Sigur Ros and Beck, Radiohead have cornered themselves. Their desire to continue to be “innovators” has overtaken their desire to do what they each do best… and what Radiohead do best has NEVER been cut and chop cheeze, its been writing moving music and putting it out in bold and raw forms, not neatly packaged “look how clever we are” free records.

While everyone keeps coming up with theories for why the music industry is in a slump, blaming piracy, Radiohead is about to prove that you can’t even GIVE half assed music away… even with a publicity stunt… Let’s face it, Britney is doing a MUCH better job of that, her record went to number 1.

Interfacing:

The Rumour offers stereo analog in/out operation, or, SPDIF in/out. You can only use one input source at a time, but, you can mix analog in/digital out or vice versa. The SPDIF, of course, is limited to 44.1khz and 44.8khz sample rates, but, that is fine for me as I always work at 48khz. I chose to connect it to the SPDIF outs of my Digi 002 with the analog outputs being routed to 2 returns on my console. This made me nervous as my 002 is in turn clocked via SPDIF from my Metric Halo 2882. Fortunately, things have worked perfectly. The beauty of this set-up is that I can minimize conversion (only one stage now!), I get a stereo send into the Rumour (where as my console would mostly only have mono sends) and I can automate send levels to the Rumour via Protools! This is a very slick set up and has worked wonderfully with my workflow.

The front panel of the Rumour is simplicity itself. The buttons are large, easy to press and well labeled. The LED has big enough fonts that I can read it from a fair distance and all the banks are on a de-tented knob. Other than that, there is another knob for scrolling through parameters and a larger one for changing values. If you’ve ever used a hardware reverb before, you’ll really not need to look at the manual at all, and if you haven’t you’ll STILL figure things out pretty quickly.

Sonics:

Let me first say that the converters on this unit sound pretty damn good. And by that i mean pretty…DAMN…good. The algorithms have all been lifted from the highly regarded KSP-8, there are just less of them. The plates are truly a standout and rival ANY other reverb that I have heard in my life. They are very special and, combined with the great converters, would be enough to make me happy (considering what the Rumour costs). But it doesn’t stop there. There are some wonderful ambient and small room algorithms that I’ve found to be killer on drums and percussion. They are very “believable” and won’t having you missing convolution too much. The halls are very cool, but, to be honest, I haven’t found myself using one yet. That is not to say that they are bad, just the other algorithms seem to steal the spot light away from them, at least for now.

In Use:

I’ve now mixed 3 songs for a very demanding client where I employed the Rumour. I really enjoy its ease of use and choosing reverbs is now a fun process! As I quickly scroll through presets, everyone listens attentively and make comments such as “oooo, that one sound nice.” I am generally able to find something I like within 3 minutes, then, from there, generally all that is needed are some quick adjustments to the decay time, predelay and LP filter. Ah, just like the good old days! 
The algorithms really impress me with their ability to seemingly “glue” sounds together. This is something many of the IR’s in Space Designer seemed to lack. I should also mention that I’ve discovered that about 8 of my most used IRs in Space Designer were from The KSP-8/Rumour! That is a testament to how good they really sound! 
Last night I mixed a mid-tempo rock song with a piano in it that was screaming for a dramatic reverb. I can honestly say, had I not had the Rumour, I would have REALLY struggled to make it work. I was able to call up a gorgeous, incredibly smooth and open sounding plate that gave the piano just the right sense of drama and space. In fact, it sounded so good, it ended up being splashed all over the drums, including a large amount on the kick. I haven’t wanted to put reverb on a kick drum in well over a year!

Conclusions:

For a street price of $500, the Rumour goes head to head with a lot of software reverbs. I think its an easy choice as it offers you a nice set of stereo converters, faster operation, its better “future proofed” and more flexible. And if you comparing it to other hardware units in the same price range, don’t. There isn’t anything even close! In fact, the Rumour competes with some very high end units that cost over 4 times as much! It sounds so great and is so easy to use that it’ll make you look like a genius.