Walk on by

I had meant to discuss Adam Curtis's fascinating and fun documentary The Trap: what happened to our dream of freedom but to be honest I spent most of it counting the music and going "got that". And anyway the most powerful artistic experience that I had this weekend was from a Dionne Warwick record . I just bought some kind of 60s greatest hits (by Dionne Warwicke as the record has it) and the first song is "walk on by". I've never been a fan of the song itself particularly. But oh the production. And her voice wrapped around you, warm and full. Kind of quite the opposite kind of performance to the shrieking divatrons catterwauling through their autotuners. Oh so hysterical with the soul they got baby, sounding like a Japanese robot doing vocal warmups while grudgefucking an overweight golf-playing samariman. And filing its nails. You ain't got soul baby. If you don't know what I mean have a listen to the vocal histrionics in that cover version of "Lady Marmalade" that was used to promote that sparkly turd "Moulin Rouge".
I digress, I digress
I concentrate less, and less
Let us speak no more of such things. But "walk on by" in its original production and arrangement is beautifully sublime. The mix makes no attempt for everything to sound as loud as everything else. This is an edit. There is a really loud guitar chop at the beginning, barely audible acoustic guitars and her voice. The piano kicks in for the chorous and the famous piano figure is played quieter here than in other versions: they were aware it was facile and didn't overplay it. The orchestra swells, swooning backing vocals drift in and out of the mix, suddenly it all drops out and her voice is present in the room, with a more live room reverb than all the other sounds - she is there with you, suddenly intimate and shocking. The whole thing glides on to the end, with the drums really only kicking in during the fade out. This sounds like nothing that could be played live. It is pure electroacoustic music. A product of recording technology being used inventively to create something new rather than echo something else. Mature use of technology. And you need it on record. A mature technology. I don't know what it would sound like on mp3 and don't want to know.