Kyuss - Welcome to Sky Valley (1994)

The album

 Kyuss is an American stoner band, mainly active in the 90s. For me, their best album is certainly “Welcome to Sky Valley” (1994); an album which I personally consider a cornerstone of rock, although it certainly is not well known.

This album has been recorded in studio by Joe Barresi and has been mastered by the well-known mastering engineer Eddy Schreyer.

The band composition here is very classical: bass, drums, voice and guitars. The genre, as mentioned above, is stoner, a kind of rock that usually alternates long and powerful guitar riffs rich of a warm overdrive, with more melodic and psychedelic parts, often characterized by hypnotic bass lines and mellow melodies.
The psychedelic mood is especially evident in the longest pieces of the album, "Space Cadet" and "Whitewater", which are the best songs from my point of view. The remaining songs instead show the most "muscular" attitude of the band:

• A distorted and always present Fender Precision Bass, able to build solid but also interesting and articulate sound walls
• Powerful and defined drums
• Guitars that build simple, effective and powerful riffs, with a warm and vintage sound
• A voice that alternates loud rock parts with sensual and soft melodies

Everywhere in this record releases the magical atmosphere of the place in which it has been recorded: Palm Desert, California. A region characterized by large natural and wild areas.

The sound

I have decided to include this review within the site Warm Mastering because of the sound of this wonderful CD. This album has many important qualities from the sound point of view, making it a great reference for those who want to produce powerful and warm rock songs.
First, this album is not influenced at all by the loudness war; this is the tendency, born from 90s, to produce releases with a very high output level. Here the output level is high enough (for the period) but not excessive. From the waveform analysis, it seems that no digital brickwall limiter or digital clipping has been used in the mastering stage.
The compression in the audio mastering stage is inaudible. Maybe the mastering engineer in this case has used only analog limiting / saturation, perhaps saturation from magnetic tape (tape saturation). A right choice, because the sound always appears very compact, analog, warm, but at the same time "live". There are no harsh sounding peaks; at the same time, transients are powerful enough, the kick and the snare emerge from the mix quite well in every song.
The album presents great balance not only relating to the dynamics, but also regarding the tonal balance and the stereo image.
Tonally the sound is perfect, warm, rich, detailed and deep on medium-low and low frequencies; it is also particularly balanced on medium-high and high frequencies. That “cold” sound, sometimes associated with digital productions, is entirely absent . Indeed in this album the detail and broad frequency spectrum of digital perfectly blends with the softness, warmth and balance of analogue. This album has no trace of the "classical" problems so often present in the modern rock / pop productions, like an excessive presence of sibilance and mid-high and high frequencies in general, which today are boosted simply to give the listener the impression of a higher level.
There is also great balance even regarding the stereo image. Guitars dominate the sides of the stereo image (side channel); bass, drums and vocals are present in the middle (mid channel), as in many classic rock album recorded from late 70s onwards. The volume of mid and side components is always in balance, giving the listener the impression of a great compactness and a surrounding sound. The instruments are very "in the face" in rock parts, while in the softer parts there is greater ambience. This helps making the album nicely varied and never boring, because it allows the listener to "rest" from time to time.
In summary, an album valuable both artistically and in terms of sound. I think this is an important reference for those who want to create a warm, analog sounding rock album with a medium output level.