Remakes/Re-recordings: Do ya like em?

[ghost 2687]

Remakes are nothing new, but the trend of remaking songs I don't think really started to get popular in the vkei scene until around the mid 2000s. This was around the time Dir en grey would remake hydra on their Dozing Green single, 12012 released a series of "complete" versions of past mini-albums that featured re-recorded songs, lynch. released their remake album The Buried, and there are more that I can list off.

 

Sure, bands were remaking songs way before this period, but something in that moment around 2005 seemed to trigger a spark within bands to put a new shine on their tried and true classics. Since then it's pretty common to see bands include remakes as bonus tracks on singles or limited editions of their albums. Or, if you're ambitious like Mucc you completely re-record your first 2 albums.

 

But that had me wanting to ask people here, do you like hearing remakes? Do you think they're worth a band's time? 

 

My honest thought is that I, more often than not, don't care for the remake. In most cases I feel that a remake loses a part of the character of the original and sounds overproduced. Or, there's hardly any change in how it's played so it's not all that interesting.

 

I think some of my favorite remakes are the sin versions of tsuuzetsu and homurauts that Mucc put out, hydra 666 by Dir en grey, and the bonus remake tracks from 12012's self-titled. What are some of your favorite remakes?

[Rize 1593]

In my opinion, I always prefer the original one, so the first-take recording.

for example MEJIBRAY has a song called "KILLING ME" (First single) re-recorded 2 extra times, one in the Emotional Karma album (2012) and the final album in their best-single album SM (2017). And both of them are feeling too much forced like in vocals and in instrumentals.

but I do have to say, in some cases like re-recording from demo releases are sometimes slightly a little better, like Royz their demo and Diaura's demo release. The quality is somehow better. ^^

[Kuro 45]

I barely care for re-recordings except for I get the re-recorded version first. At least usually. There still might be exceptions. One is Gazette's Taion from Traces Vol. 2. In the end even every song from that album even though it took me years for half of the album to grow on me.

 

But most of the times it's really depending on which version I got to know first.

[Ultra Silvam 217]

I tend to treat re-recordings and originals as two different songs.  It doesn't bother me when bands re-record their songs as long as it sounds somewhat different or the production is better.  But I honestly can't think of an re-recordings that are carbon copies of their original anyway.  I feel like it's always worth their time because it's probably less effort than writing a new song, and it's something they can put on their new album/single.  However of course that doesn't mean it's worth the fans time or money...

 

My favorite remakes are Etsu to Utsu and Kyoka Suigetsu from Kiryu's 2007-2017 album.  I don't listen to the originals of those songs anymore.  Etsu to Utsu was my favorite Kiryu song after it came out and I never thought they would top it, so I was pleasantly surprised when they did with the re-recording.  

I also love most of the songs from Liphlich's first acoustic album, and I think that's a great example of remaking songs with purpose.  Obviously a lot of changes had to go into making those songs acoustic and I don't think they were remade just to sound better or new. 

Edited October 22, 2020 by Ultra Silvam

[Tanishi 598]

It annoys me when bands re-record songs for an album and they end up worse than the originals. I don't mind if they're put as B-sides on a single or on a separate release and I like the rare times when a re-recording is better than the original.

The first example that comes to mind is DIAURA's Incomplete best of. Yo-ka grew heaps as a vocalist and I like all the remakes on it better than the originals.

MUCC's 2017 remake albums are good too, Gallo's Lucifero, Lar~Mia's S/T, and The God and Death Star's After the Addle Apple come to mind as well

[Axius 2019]

For me this really depends on the band. For example, Vivid and royz didn't need re-recs of anything. The re-recs actually sounded worse in my opinion. For bands like Awoi, sadie, mejibray (In some cases), Diaura (in some cases) needed re-recordings for songs. Some people might argue against this and be like no  the original is the best then you have special cases where like for example: The Original ver. of Mejibray - killing me sound worse the the remaster. But then you have songs where its the complete opposite. I loved grimiore's re-recordings of there mini i feel as tho those brought me to like the band more. Some bands do that then i end up liking it better or maybe a different vocalist does the same songs a bit different. These things tend to happen and highly depends on the line up for me. 

 

I like it when bands make a 2nd or 3rd press of a release. It shows more how the band progressed and shows those songs that you might have liked from a single to shine more as opposed to an album. 

Edited October 23, 2020 by Axius

[Seimeisen 4406]

Re-recordings are a mixed bag. Some of them are great, some of them are dog shit!

 

I think the only band who has hit it out of the park with re-recordings is and cali≠gari (not counting the TURN minis, those are... a different realm). The complete re-recordings of 10 and Bluefilm are far superior to the originals, as is マグロ 2017. lynch. and girugamesh have also done very well with their re-recordings (although for lynch., their album version re-recordings were not very good, like JUDGEMENT and ADORE).

 

Everyone else (I can think of) has been mixed...

 

MUCC did fantastic with 新痛絶 and 新葬ラ謳; some of the songs were better than the originals, though there were a few others that were sub-par. On the other hand, their other re-recording album, the one that shamelessly appropriated BUCK-TICK's 殺シノ調ベ, was dog shit.

 

My problem with a lot of re-recordings isn't so much the vocals, it's that the guitars are severely lacking and just sound weaker IMO, like on DIAURA's INCOMPLETE, グリーヴァ's re-recording mini (they should have just released the full demo of Bondage, I will never forgive them for not doing that), and a lot of SUICIDE ALI's re-recs. I'm not a recording engineer and I do not play guitar, so I'm not really sure how I can explain this better. Although there are definitely some re-recordings where everyone does a piss poor job all around.

 

Rant time: the GazettE's TRACES VOL. 2 is an exhibit to present in these arguments: talent ≠ intelligence; the GazettE are some of the stupidest fucking people in music; bands should stop self-producing their albums unless they're Converge. Production-wise alone, it could have sounded better, but it didn't, because they wasted production money on special instruments and completely forgot that garbage-in is garbage-out, and because they were monitoring it with fucking EarPods and probably laptop speakers as well.

 

I guess if your band name is all lowercase, you're more likely to make great re-recordings :thonk:

[nekkichi 6043]

idk I hate most of vk retakes, they consistently bring nothing worth of quality, but this might the only exception to the rule where I'm 100 % on board with the upgrade:

—>

 

2 hours ago, Seimeisen said:

the GazettE are some of the stupidest fucking people in music; bands should stop self-producing their albums unless they're Converge. Production-wise alone, it could have sounded better, but it didn't, because they wasted production money on special instruments and completely forgot that garbage-in is garbage-out, and because they were monitoring it with fucking EarPods and probably laptop speakers as well.

lmao the highlight of this thread so far fr

[LIDL 692]

Neither for me, they are always either hit or miss. Especially with certain bands or artists.

Also, it is the nostalgia thing. I might able to appreciate the new old songs when I hear it, but I don't ever consider it as the same song anymore. 

 

I enjoy remastering better than these two options. 

[ghost 2687]

9 hours ago, Seimeisen said:

because they wasted production money on special instruments and completely forgot that garbage-in is garbage-out, and because they were monitoring it with fucking EarPods and probably laptop speakers as well.

I hate that they started producing music with the lowest common denominator in mind. For their Beautiful Deformity cycle I remember reading an interview where Ruki talked about buying the "right" kind of mic or something and that he wanted to consider the fans that just listened to music through their phone speaker or something like that. People who listen to music that way deserve to have their ears taken from them anyways.

 

On 10/22/2020 at 3:27 AM, Linh-san said:

for example MEJIBRAY has a song called "KILLING ME" (First single) re-recorded 2 extra times, one in the Emotional Karma album (2012) and the final album in their best-single album SM (2017). And both of them are feeling too much forced like in vocals and in instrumentals.

I think I get it. I felt that way about re-recordings for Girugamesh's "Goku" and "Gokusou". The production was heavier and they added a lot of flourishes which was nice, but they also updated the sound with their style at the time so it sounded too electronic and clean. So, the originals will always be the one I listen to even if it's more lo-fi and simpler.

 

On 10/22/2020 at 5:09 AM, Ultra Silvam said:

I also love most of the songs from Liphlich's first acoustic album, and I think that's a great example of remaking songs with purpose.  Obviously a lot of changes had to go into making those songs acoustic and I don't think they were remade just to sound better or new. 

I always appreciate acoustic versions or different takes. These tend to work out better imo because, like you said, a lot has to change to make it work so bands gotta be more deliberate with the writing. 

 

On 10/22/2020 at 10:53 AM, Tanishi said:

...grew heaps as a vocalist and I like all the remakes on it better than the originals.

I wish bands like Screw actually did a few remakes. Some vkei bands early on had some ROUGH vocals when they started out. 

 

9 minutes ago, LIDL said:

I enjoy remastering better than these two options. 

I'm a fan of remastering in most cases too.  Less tampering with the original.

[Ro plz 1290]

There’s bands that really do their best to have remakes sounds good. I know SADIE gets a bad rap on here but they really knocked it out the park with BLEACH.  The production and overall composition of those older songs are ridiculously crisp. Dir en grey’s The UNRAVELING  is another example of it being well done too. 

 

Full on Re-recordings, 9/10 times I wonder why bands even bother. I prefer they do a really stellar modern performance of said old song. There’s an ambiance from that live setting that often doesn’t translate well in the studio. 
 

Example: 

 

The GazettE has shown recently that they know how to bring new life to old songs. They had no business putting out that bullshit that was Traces Vol 2. They could’ve easily threw those old songs on a set and performed their asses of on em...which i Hope they do soon.  

[Paraph 826]

I hate most of Dir en grey's remakes of songs from single to album tbh. I did enjoy Vidoll remaking a bunch of their older songs when Hide joined, tho.

[hopefully_benign 56]

I hate it
If an artist wants to re-record a song for fun as a bonus on some release, it's whatever, I don't care.

 

But re-recording an entire album is the worst thing an artist can do. Albums crystallize the youth and hunger of a band at a certain point in their career.

If you make a few great albums and then start sucking for the next decade or two, who cares, at least your good stuff still exists. But the popularization of re-recordings means even that golden era is subject to its own kind of entropy.

 

Re-recording an album to "improve" it (read: make it shittier with antiseptic production, brickwalled sound and noticeably aged vocals, usually) is cultural vandalism, I think. So what if the old version was lo-fi? An album sounds the way it does for a reason, it has quirks and an atmosphere that reflects the time it was made in. Just like modern production/recording trends will badly date a lot of what's released now in the future.

 

There's an elegance to something just being the way it is. Why do you have to muddle things by throwing another version out there?

 

Learn from your old "mistakes" (which usually aren't even mistakes--artists are notoriously bad judges of their own work) by adjusting the way you tackle new material, and improve that way. Re-recording albums is simultaneously the worst kind of backward-looking indulgence in nostalgia AND irreverence to legacy. It's somehow bad in two diametrically opposed ways at the same time.

Edited October 31, 2020 by hopefully_benign

[Nowhere Girl 189]

On 10/31/2020 at 5:23 AM, hopefully_benign said:

cultural vandalism

Hit the nail on the head.

[Kabukichoatmidnight 269]

I dont really find much value in re-recordings, very rarely do they really make any considerable difference or even come out better than the originals so personally I wouldn't tread that territory. Only if the song has drastically evolved or is on a really old recording with crap quality and needs a remake does it make any sense to me.