Samples and Found Sounds: Summer’s Cauldron

XTC: Summer‘s Cauldron

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In nature, crickets and birds do not chirp precisely on the beat. That they do here is most likely the fault of producer Todd Rundgren. This approach to music making perfectly fits this paean to the natural world. Elsewhere on the album Skylarking, Rundgren’s production gets a little heavy-handed for my taste. But here on the song that opens the album, everything works just right.