Jack Flash Jr wrote
Not sure the days of great studios are gone... we just don't know the 'new' great ones yet. The movement is being spearheaded by Jack White in Third Man, Levon Helm's barn recordings (not distributed yet I think??). Some of the best 70's recordings didn't needed a studio... Zep IV. Eels recorded a lot of El Hombre Lobo in a flat...
I'll be glad to be wrong.
Levon has a whole thing going on in his barn, regular all-star shows. I wonder he cut his own albums there though. A lot of the stuff that gets recorded there probably won't get released because of difficulties with licensing - many of the participants already being signed to a label.
Zep prove my point in a way, because what they'd do is take a mobile studio out to some big country house that they hired because it had a great acoustic. Jimmy Page talks about this on "It Might Get Loud" - how they got a fab drum sound by sticking Bonzo's kit in the stair well and using the naturally occuring reverb. Part of the magic of "Buena Vista Social Club" was that it was recorded in a very old-fashioned, great sounding studio in Havana. In the USA that building would have been ripped down and replaced by condominiums a long time ago. In communist Cuba it survived.
People make records in small spaces these days, and can do because there's so much technology readily available at affordable prices. But the "ambience" often has to get added in later. It doesn't sound quite the same somehow. But it's a good thing. I see a lot of small, independent labels around now - many of them set up by an artist just for releasing their own work. It allows them much more control over the various aspects of their business and career.
You do still get some fab recordings. Linda Thompson's comeback album and it's successor sound marvellous - very natural and airy, with great sounding acoustic guitars. So.... yes... maybe I'm fretting over nothing.
