This discussion reminded me of a tune I recently heard via Rupture's blog, Ichso by Ricardo Villalobos. An interesting tune, listened for the first time the other day, it starts with a nice slippery rhythm and sound-ish beat and some drifting melodies, could be a backwards guitar, or anything. This goes on for about five minutes before, basically without warning, he drops in a much louder, techno kick and bass. Speaking of volume knobs I had to rush quickly to mine to turn it down because I had it up quite loud already. I found the use of this kind of a dynamic shift pretty shocking in a 'club' record and it did get me thinking about the potential and power there. Since we undisputably are in a 'squash limiting' era most people, like me are really not expecting major dynamic shifts in their music, so when you use one it's startlingly powerful. It also has the added tricky effect of, by starting quiet, getting people to turn up their amps, gains, what have you, as I did, before you hit them with some major loudness. As a producer, especially one who works with 'big system music' I see a pretty interesting opportunity here to differentiate oneself from the pack by re-incorporating strong dynamic shifts into tunes.
