Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication [2LP VINYL]

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With less audible distortion on this release compared to Californication, my ears were instead drawn to how much of a mess the band sounds when they have no dynamics to breathe with. The choruses especially sound like a band trying to fit both themselves and their instruments into a telephone booth. Interestingly enough, the vinyl release of this album was also mastered by Vlado Meller, but doesn’t seem to be subject to the clipping of the original release! 5 What this album needs is a complete remix from top to bottom, just imagine how good it could have sounded. Sadly I doubt we will ever know. For me Californication is an album which I play along to, and when my brother and I get out the guitars to have a jam, the Chili Peppers staples, "Californiation", "Otherside", "Scar Tissue", "Road Trippin'" and "This Velvet Glove" are what we regularly turn to (usually spliced in with some choice moments from Bloodsugar...). It is a record which, when played correctly by two trained and highly professional musicians such as me and my brother, can have enormous bonding qualities, and I like to think that it has brought we two siblings closer together.

Red Hot Chili Peppers – Californication (Vinyl) - Discogs

A similar-looking compression was also applied to One Hot Minute a few years prior. I would argue that use of it complemented the messy aesthetic of One Hot Minute's production. The production on Californication is far more basic and straightforward though, so creating relentless distortion through compression or clipping doesn’t really fit, in my opinion. One Hot Minute, mastered by Stephen Marcussen, is the first Red Hot Chili Peppers album that can be described as a participant of the loudness wars.I attempted to make this album more dynamic and fix up its compression, bringing the dynamic range of the album from 6 to 12! I am probably the least confident in my removing of the distortion in this album though, mainly because selecting the parts that are distorted with “Perfect Declipper” is much more difficult when these sections aren’t horizontal, and when they seem to be the result of production, rather than mastering. I still hear bits of clipped vocals at points during “Universally Speaking” and “Midnight”. I also edited the songs from the deluxe edition of the album, the songs from “By the Way” single, and two alternate official mixes of “Universally Speaking”!

Red Hot Chili Peppers – Californication (2020, 180g

During my music technology studies, I clearly remember my university lecturer talking about both records and how he’d gone from being a huge fan of the band in the early 90s to woefully disappointed by the release of 1999s Californication. Californication” and “Universally Speaking” also feature different mixes than their album counterparts on Greatest Hits, but I already noted and edited them in their respective album sections.It’s important to note that the dynamics are not being restored with the “Perfect Declipper” program that I use, but rather, they are being approximated. While one may not be able to “declip” an album as one would be unable to “unbake a cake”, I find the results here to be a convincible attempt at doing so. Only in the most extreme examples have I heard the program produce odd artifacts that would appear unintended in the album’s mix. I think it’s also important to note that dynamic range compression is not an inherently bad thing. It can tighten up performances, add grit, and help remove dynamic outliers that would take you out of the mix.