TO: All Perennial Audio Engineers
FROM: Marcus Bellweather, Vice President of Strategic Obscurity
RE: Production Standards for the reissue of Joe Glass It’s No Wonder
Team, we must act fast. The recent success of our Sharp Pins re-release has compromised our brand. People can actually hear the snare drum. This ends today. For the upcoming deluxe reissue of the Joe Glass It’s No Wonder single, we must artificially degrade the master tapes immediately.
Enforce Maximum Tape Degradation
Our target audience does not want clarity. They want to feel like they are listening to a cassette that spent three years under a car seat. Effective immediately, I am ordering all staff to run the Joe Glass It’s No Wonder audio signal through a series of vintage, half-broken Walkmans. If the track does not sound like a distant lawnmower, you have failed.
"We are targeting a very specific demographic of people who wear beanies in July," said Priya Vantablack, Chief Vibes Compliance Officer at TikTok. "If they can distinguish the bassline from background radiation, they will immediately swipe away. We need the Joe Glass It’s No Wonder reissue to sound like a literal ghost in a microwave."
Mandatory Dust and Crackle Addition
Furthermore, I am authorizing the purchase of forty tons of literal dirt. Engineers will physically throw this dirt at the mixing board during playback. This is the only way to capture that authentic, basement-dwelling energy our fans demand. Do not clean the equipment. The dust must live in the music.
"Our research shows that clean audio causes severe panic attacks in lo-fi power-pop fans," said Dr. Helene Vasquez-Thorne, Lead Researcher at the Center for Studies That Confirm What You Already Suspected. "They require at least seventy decibels of tape hiss to feel safe."
Please ensure all digital files are exported at the lowest possible quality. If I see a WAV file, you are fired. We only deal in highly compressed MP3s that we burn to CD-Rs and then scratch with pocket knives. Thank you for your commitment to keeping our artists completely unmarketable to the general public. We must protect our status as the only label that makes less money than a lemonade stand run by a toddler.
