Burial & Massive Attack

Mezzanine is top ten of all time for me. Just an unbeatable album!

I think I like this so much because I'm an unashamed Burial fanboy, so this is really a match made in heaven for me.

This is going for roughly £1000 atm (on discogs) Just thought I’d let you know 

absurd. i have a copy on my shelves i paid $50 for. anybody want it?

If I remember correctly 3D of Massive Attack did the artwork by hand. I guess the Banksy rumour mill is pushing up the price. 

Here's what I dealt with back then, my write-up copy-pasted from the release comments.

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Hello All,

(tl;dr - vinyl has distorted sound, buy digital and save your money.)

the sound quality of the vinyl has been questioned, and now that a lossless, official digital version has been released I'm finally able to come to a definitive personal conclusion in this matter.

I was one of the lucky to get an order in for the vinyl before it was sold out, and after a while I received my copy (718/1000). I had heard Paradise Circus from a recording of Hobbs' XFM broadcast (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N701JYnjaMs ), and although the recording is not of the highest quality, the track sounds good.

When I first listened to my copy I was puzzled, as Four Walls sounded a bit distorted/saturated, but still tolerable; then I got to Paradise Circus, which was completely distorted/saturated from the very beginning, all high frequencies were missing and the vocals were totally broken by crackling distortion; this vinyl rip sounds similar to my copy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o01fUwIX3PA .

My home DJing/listening equipment consists of two Technics SL-1200MK5s with quality stylii, an analogue Ecler NUO 4.0 mixer, an analogue NAD amplifier and two pairs of decent speakers; I've been a vinyl-only DJ for over 20 years, and I think I'm at least somewhat qualified and able to judge how vinyl sounds.

I opened a dialogue with The Vinyl Factory on this issue, claiming that I had received a defective copy. After some back-and-forth email exchange TVF sent me two extra copies of the vinyl, described as "picked randonly from the small quantity of extra copies" they still had. The subsequent extra copies I received sounded exactly like the original first one: unplayable/unlistenable.

I suggested to TVF I make a lossless recording of my original vinyl for comparison; they declined. I asked for quality verification from the mastering studio and the pressing plant; they declined. TVF adamantly claimed that the vinyl sounds as good as it should, there are no problems with the mastering or the pressing and that the final product had been approved by both Massive Attack and Burial. (I have the email exchange stored for reference/evidence.)

Someone commented below that Burial's sound has deliberate noise and distortion; I agree, those two things make Burial's sound unique and easily recognizable, but at the same time I think that both Massive Attack's and Burial's production values are so ridiculously high that the abysmal quality of the vinyl sound is a travesty neither of the artists would underwrite.

I have now listened to the lossles WAVs of the tracks side-by-side with all three copies of the vinyl I have, and there is a huge disparity between the sound quality of the digital and vinyl versions. The digital files sound crisp, clear and beautiful; the vinyls distorted/saturated, noisy and lacking higher frequencies. It doesn't take an audio professional/expert to make this judgement upon hearing the difference.

Based on this evidence, in my personal and not-so-humble opinion, it is possible that all the vinyl copies of this release are defective as described. Of course three copies are not a statistically large enough sample, but if the ones I have are indeed a random selection from the complete batch, there is a good probability that the whole pressing is of the same quality.

(Full disclosure: I was fully reimbursed for the record and p&p, and got to keep all three copies TVF sent me.)

If all the copies are like mine, the prices people are asking and paying for the vinyl are absolutely ridiculous, and I belive some buyers have been gravely disappointed after purchasing a possibly defective copy. If you're looking to buy a copy of this record on vinyl, please take into account that you may receive a record that is a limited edition and relatively rare, but of questionable value due to bad sound quality. I wholeheartedly suggest purchasing the official digital version instead - the price is a pittance and the product is of high quality.

Cheers, Nuutti.

P.S. I have purchased vinyls from The Vinyl Factory after this incident, and the copies I have received are quality pressings, sound great and I'm happy to have them. My intent is not to disparage The Vinyl Factory, I'm sure they do their best to produce and offer the highest quality products possible, but from my point of view, the story of this release is unfortunate.

(Edit: fixed typos and grammatical errors, added release serial number, tl;dr and P.S.)

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I still have two copies, one with the cover, one in a black paper inner sleeve. They're useless because the pressing's FUBARed, but I bought the digitals when MA put them up for sale themselves, paid £2 for the WAVs. There are the 20 AP copies that are good, but the rest - like mine - are trash. Everyone should know by now that the asking prices are completely off the charts, because you'll be getting a bad pressing unless it's one of the APs. £1100 is so ridiculous it's not even funny.

  On 11/5/2021 at 8:24 AM, dcom said:

Here's what I dealt with back then, my write-up copy-pasted from the release comments.

I still have two copies, one with the cover, one in a black paper inner sleeve. They're useless because the pressing's FUBARed, but I bought the digitals when MA put them up for sale themselves, paid £2 for the WAVs. There are the 20 AP copies that are good, but the rest - like mine - are trash. Everyone should know by now that the asking prices are completely off the charts, because you'll be getting a bad pressing unless it's one of the APs. £1100 is so ridiculous it's not even funny.

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I’d imagine the persons who are prepared to pay £1000 pounds for this won’t be putting the needle onto the groove and playing it. It will be like Gollum and his precious.

  On 11/5/2021 at 8:54 AM, beerwolf said:

I’d imagine the persons who are prepared to pay £1000 pounds for this won’t be putting the needle onto the groove and playing it. It will be like Gollum and his precious.

I'm a collector, too, but I've always been a DJ first - I've always had the intention of playing all the records I've bought. I've played Trapped off my copy of Mask 200 so much that the beginning crackles; I've played Humanoid Must Not Escape from the Joyrex J9 picture disc a lot, too. With this Massive Attack/Burial release I expected to do the same, but the vinyl is completely and utterly useless. I cringe every time I even think of it, I'm scrunching my face right now - this is probably the biggest SNAFU I've ever come across in this particular context. The sheer audacity of people trying to offload this piece of junk with those prices is mindblowing, it's more useless than a Pet Rock.

How did you figure the AP copies are the good ones?

I’ve got one of those.

  On 12/4/2021 at 8:32 PM, endera3rd said:

How did you figure the AP copies are the good ones?

It's mentioned in the release discussion on Discogs, here's the relevant comment:

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Massive Attack Vs Burial - Four Walls / Paradise Circus — JUSTGROOVES

April 22, 2014

referencing Four Walls / Paradise Circus, 12", Ltd, Num, VF034

*** Info on copies with AP ****
This is an email from Leighton at The Vinyl Factory confirming UN-numbered copies which instead have AP hand-written on them. I can confirm that there are some AP copies out there. 20x of these were made, most of which were for those involved in the manufacture of the discs, eg the band, printers etc.
There were also a small amount of these that were available at the Massive Attack show we held in London.

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  On 12/4/2021 at 8:32 PM, endera3rd said:

I’ve got one of those.

That's worth a pretty penny, I got three copies of the general pressing from TVF, all completely useless.