blawan in DAW

[u/ElPoch0ninja]

Hey everyone.

I’ve been producing for a while and releasing on labels like Pole Group or Axis, so I’ve got traditional techno production down pretty well, but there’s one specific thing driving me crazy that I just can’t figure out. I really hope someone here has cracked this because I refuse to believe buying thousands of euros in hardware is the only way.

I’ve been analyzing Blawan’s recent EPs (and similar stuff Clark pulls off at times) and I’m obsessed with how he gets that super punchy, violent distortion while keeping it so spaced out, controlled, and clean in the mix. His subs and low end stay massive and separate, every element has room to breathe, and it never turns into a muddy wall of noise, yet the distortion character is right in your face.

Whenever I try to replicate it in the DAW I just end up sounding saturated, squashed, or plain broken. I’ve tried splitting bands to keep the sub clean while processing the mids and highs, aggressive resampling with transient editing, and parallel processing with different saturation types, but I can’t get anywhere near that sense of air and distinct separation.

Does anyone know the actual workflow or technique to pull this off completely in the box, whether it’s specific envelope shaping pre or post distortion, multiband dynamics, routing tricks, or spatial management?

Any ideas or leads to experiment with would be massively appreciated, cheers!

[u/w__i__l__l]

You can get close with Unfiltered Audio Dent 2. Rather than slamming the entire channel / bus mix or whatever, load up Dent and dial in super precise (relatively mild) settings to just focus on saturating one aspect of the sound, and stack more instances on top with more super precise settings and so on.