R.E.M. - Automatic For The People (1992)

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R.E.M. - Automatic For The People (1992)

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Automatic For The People is the eighth album by the American alternative rock band R.E.M., released in 1992 on Warner Bros. Records. While R.E.M. had intended to make a harder-rocking album after dealing primarily with acoustic based sounds on its previous record Out of Time (1991), the group eventually abandoned that goal and created an album that was musically subdued and dealt with mortality. Automatic For The People reached number two on the U.S. album charts and yielded six singles.
After promotional duties for their previous album Out of Time in May 1991, the members of R.E.M. began work on their next album. Starting the first week of June, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills, and drummer Bill Berry met several times a week in a rehearsal studio to work on new material. Once a month they would take a week-long break. The musicians would often trade instruments: Buck would play mandolin, Mills would play piano or organ and Berry would play bass. Buck explained that writing without drums was productive for the band members. The band, intent on delivering an album of harder-rocking material after Out of Time, made an effort to write some faster rock songs during rehearsals, but came up with less than a half-dozen prospective songs in that vein.
When it came time to make demos, the musicians recorded them in their standard band configuration. According to Buck, the musicians recorded about 30 songs. Singer Michael Stipe was not present at these sessions; instead, the band gave him the finished demos at the start of 1992. Stipe described the music to Rolling Stone early that year as "very mid-tempo, pretty fucking weird, more acoustic, more organ-based, less drums". In February, R.E.M. recorded another set of demos at Daniel Lanois' Kingsway Studios in New Orleans.
The group decided to create finished recordings with co-producer Scott Litt at Bearsville Studios in Woodstock, New York, starting March 30. The band recorded overdubs in Miami and New York City. String arrangements were recorded in Atlanta. After recording sessions were completed in July, the album was mixed at Bad Animals Studio in Seattle.

–from wikipedia

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R.E.M. - Automatic For The People (1992)

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