On the many different versions of Californication

The initial CD release of Californication features what can only be described as unfortunate mastering. It is, to put it kindly, brickwalled to hell and back. This means that not only have the dynamics of the audio been compromised, making every moment sound the “same” regardless of their volume, but that there also exists a heavy sheen of distortion across the whole record, especially in its busier parts. This is partly a result of work done by the mastering engineer, Vlado Meller at the request of the band and Rick Rubin, but also results from decisions made during the recording and mixing process.

This is not news. The album’s horrible sound has been the subject of much debate and focus. It is frequently referred to as one of the worst sounding albums of all time, and is the poster child for the “loudness wars”. But, it did sell 16 million copies worldwide, so maybe they knew what they were doing... it's hard to say.

Regardless, almost as soon as Californication was released, an “unmastered” version of the album leaked to the internet through the vast underground trading circle that existed at the time. This was most likely sourced from a CD-R of rough mixes that the band made during the album’s mixing process at the Village Recorder in Los Angeles. It’s exact provenance is unknown, though as you can see on the postings here, it appeared not long after the album did; there's even the suggestion that it's the version that Flea prefers, though that is unlikely. The CD-R also features what may be an alternative tracklisting to the album: I Like Dirt is the opener, much like it was when they played it live initially; Parallel Universe is second and Road Trippin' is last, just like they are on the final album. For the purposes of this page I will refer to them as the “rough mixes”, but this version is what you’re listening to if you’ve downloaded an “unmastered” version of the album within the last fifteen or so years.

While some musical differences exist, such as the added verse on Savior and the extra backing vocals during the outro of Easily, which will be explored more below, the main difference between the final release and the rough mixes is the level of the music. Simply put, the rough mixes are much “quieter”, and feature less digital distortion, which lets the music “breathe” a little more. This sort of thing can be visualised simply by looking at waveforms: below is the retail (that is, what you get when you buy the CD) version of Around the World on top, followed by the rough mixes version on the bottom. The tracks have been converted to mono for ease of display.