Sasha Frere-Jones: Ariel Rechtshaid and the Art of Production: The New Yorker Ariel Rechtshaid, a wiry thirty-four-year-old producer who has been nominated for a Grammy as Producer of the Year, has no signature sound and doesn't work in any particular genre more than others. Rechtshaid, who is from Los Angeles, has a perversely simple method - he lets artists sound the way they want, and then he puts his thumb on the scale and makes them sound a bit more exciting. His work on Vampire Weekend's "Modern Vampires of the City," Sky Ferreira's "Ghost" E.P., and HAIM's "Days Are Gone" earned him his nomination, though this is an insufficient accounting of his career. It is not hard to imagine why artists get along with Rechtshaid. He speaks evenly and openly, is rarely argumentative, and favors pants that would be pajamas in New York but pass for evening wear in Los Angeles. He's around six feet tall, and his hair is a mass of unkempt brown curls that says, to quote a recent confident Beyoncé hit, "I woke up like this." Disparate as his productions are, they share some qualities. Rechtshaid loves a big mid-tempo drumbeat that avoids either the drag of a ballad or the frenetic rush of a dance tune. His sounds have an odd brightness, so that even intensely personal songs end up feeling buoyant, and - here is where the labels start writing checks - he is exceptionally good at getting the best out of singers. His approach differs from that of producers who make their name with a sound that watermarks each song and can risk overshadowing the vocalist. This is not always a bad thing: many singers have been lucky to work with Pharrell Williams, who has long depended on a recognizable collection of keyboard tones and rhythms built from distinctive, woody clicks.. . .