Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication [2LP VINYL]

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Another unofficial version of the album was an “Unmastered/Unsequenced” version that was leaked in 2011. Despite what its title may imply, this release faced a ton of compression on its signal, resulting in distortion comparable to the original retail release. Left is before, right is after. Both versions are made the same loudness, so you can more easily see the differences. Oddly enough, John Frusciante remixed “Can’t Stop” and “Universally Speaking” for their single releases to bring the guitars and bass more to the forefront, and the vocals of “Can’t Stop” sound even MORE compressed 3 than they were in the album mix. The single mix of “Universally Speaking”, which was also used for the band’s Greatest Hits album, still has the vocal distortion present on the album mix. The 2014 remaster of By the Way is pretty much identical to its original release, except it has a slightly different mix of “Universally Speaking” that is missing a few guitar lines and plays at a very slightly slower speed.

Californication (1999, 180g, Vinyl Red Hot Chili Peppers – Californication (1999, 180g, Vinyl

Universally Speaking”, by contrast, has an odd, clipping-like hiss over the top of its vocals, but features a waveform that looks like this: In an official aversion of Californication’s clipping, the 2012 vinyl release of the album (as well as the 2020 repress) does not seem to have the clipping distortion of its previous counterparts. This is generally viewed as the best version of the album for that reason. Mixes of “Californication” and “Easily” in these vinyl copies differ slightly from their original release, with the former having organ present in its first verse, and the latter having vocals on its final instrumental passage. 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.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. While all previous Chili Peppers projects have been highly spirited, Californication dares to be spiritual and epiphanal..." - rollingstone.com, Greg Tate, June 24, 1999 Just like with One Hot Minute, I made dynamic edits of Californication as well, and I really think I was able to fix up that crazy distortion on the album! I also included edits to many b-sides and two official alternate mixes from the album as well.

Californication - Reissue - Cut by Bernie Grundman | Steve Californication - Reissue - Cut by Bernie Grundman | Steve

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.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. The Red Hot Chili Peppers are a particularly good example, as their 1991 classic Blood Sugar Sex Magik stands in stark comparison. Here, the dynamics are superb, the mastering compression is mild, and in my opinion, it’s one of the best recordings to come out of the 90s. It suffers from the same inconsistency as all their albums do - nobody would have missed songs like "Purple Stain" or "Right On Time" - but this is the closest they've come to a solid, consistent listen. Californication is the Chili Peppers' most commercially successful studio release with over 16 million copies sold worldwide and more than 5 million in the U.S. alone. As of 2002, the album had sold over 4 million copies in Europe. The album produced several hits including "Otherside", "Californication", and the Grammy-award winning "Scar Tissue". This is a zoomed-in version of the song “Parallel Universe” from the “Unmastered/Unsequenced” CD-R. Notice how the peaks are flattened, but not horizontal. Horizontal flattening would imply the signal was clipped.

Red Hot Chili Peppers – Californication (2021, Vinyl) - Discogs

The CD and 24-bit version streaming on major platforms were easily the worst the bunch. Everything just sounds terrible.Anthony's vocals clip audibly and frequently. It is shrill beyond belief, and still headache inducing even 23 years later.While the 2014 digital remaster of Californication has as much rampant clipping as the original release, it features a slightly different mix of “Savior”, one with “all in the hand” vocals during its outro. (I couldn’t find a posting of this mix on YouTube, so this is the passage in question on my “dynamic edit” of the release.) While I don’t hear the clipping distortion on the vinyl sections of the video, an assumption the video presents, that higher DR values (as determined by a program) means that the vinyl IS more dynamic, is a bit erroneous. The imperfections of vinyl can create the illusion of higher dynamics when in fact it is derived from the same compressed master. This is a great detailing of that concept (made by the same video creator, funnily enough). 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