In the Home Theater forum Micah asked why some modern recordings were not recorded well [it's actually the mix which is at fault]. A few replies brought up the war that is being waged against critical listeners in the name of loudness.
It isn't hard to build a list of over-compressed releases--it is just about everything in the pop/rock/rap genre these days. What I'm more interested in is recent releases (last 3 to 5 years) where the producer went the other way, and instead of compressing the mix into a fatiguing assault on the ears, went for a massive dynamic range. Mercifully, "classic" musical genres have remained neutral in this war, so I'm not so interested in these--they can generally be assumed to be good. I'd rather learn of recordings in the style of pop or rock (do feel free to also list rap, electronica, or other more recent styles too).
I'll start the list with an album my second-youngest brother (the real musician in the family) recommended to me: "Me and Armini" by Emiliana Torrini released in September of 2008. While it is mixed a little hot, with peaks pretty much maxing out the 16-bit depth, the lows drop down far enough to really make those highs kick.
As an example the track "Gun", which is a simple vocal track accompanied by a slightly over-driven electric guitar. When the volume on my mixer (listening in my bedroom studio) is set so the peaks hit -0 dB on the meter; the continuous rumble from the guitar's distortion lays at -12 dB. So each string pluck jumps that range, and smacks you in the chest. The bass drum on the title track, "Me and Armini" is recorded with so much detail that you can almost see the back flexing with each kick.
The nearly the whole album is produced this well. The exception is the track "Dead Duck" (I'd be curious to see the production credits), it suffers from the 3 dB of dynamic range which is pretty typical these days. Several of the tracks also exhibit tape hiss which is a tell in itself as to the production environment which could still release a nice, dynamic album in today's battle field.
