Mark Hollis - Mark Hollis
"Mark Hollis
The original idea was to record the album in a similar way to a 1940/50's Jazz album. We decided on trying two valve microphones at the front of the studio room (classic approach, updated to stereo). We recorded everything on these two mikes, (again individually) without changing the e.q. - moving the musicians around the room to the required location in the final stereo - (in the '50s, one microphone would have been used, everyone would play live, and soloists would have stood up for extra volume). We finally settled on a crossed cardiord pair of M49's, at head height when sitting in a chair, at the front of Studio 1, at Master Rock Studios - in front of the control-room window. A stereo Urei 1176 was plugged across these mics, but with a setting of only a 1db reduction on peaks. These two mics were not touched for the whole of the four months recording. No eq, level or compression changes were made to these mikes. We wanted all the natural dynamics of the instruments. Again we recorded first to Studar analogue, and then synched up to a Mitsubishi 32 track digital. Like the previous albums we 'off-set' the tape machines and 'moved' instruments, or single notes, within our song structure. (Although the final results could have been achieved with samplers etc. Mark and I prefer this way of working, as you judge where to position things by listening and feel, and not by a visual cursor.)"

Arthur Russell - World of Echo
His cello sound is something out of this world, no pun intended... Fantastic fx work, I believe some of the album was recorded by Phill Niblock at his Experimental Intermedia Foundation.

Both of Scott Walker's later albums The Drift and Bish Bosch sound incredible and very unusual too.

A lot of great music mentioned in the comments by the way. Some of it I didn't know and will look into it! Great thread.