Colo(u)red vinyl fatigue.

It's getting to be a bit much for me. What percentage of the vinyl that you buy is colored? I like the treasure hunt factor but hate feeling like I have to chase after gimmicky "initial copies". Like do 'em all or none, w/ maybe the exception of much later represses. I don't subscribe to the whole colored vinyl doesn't sound as good as black thing either. Thoughts?

Don't really buy into the whole limited edition / collectible shit - I can appreciate nice packaging, presentation, etc. but the actual musical content is what it's all about, (which partly explains my going digital over that last couple of years). Also pretty much all vinyl released these days are physical, analogue reproductions of audio that was recorded, mixed, and mastered entirely in the digital domain, so the notion of vinyl (or a particular color thereof) being somehow superior in sound quality seems a bit daft. But that's just like, my opinion man.

i fucking despise the limited edition/reissue/special edition vinyl craze. you can usually find the same albums in a dollar bin. don't care for colo(u)red vinyl. i have some. yoshimi battles the pink robots is on red vinyl. my copy of SAW vol 2 is black vinyl, but i also have the "limited" brown one which sounds like absolute shit. what's this thread about again?

I have a Kylie Minogue picture disc

Thankfully the chemical brothers remix is on the plain side and sounds quite good....

I thought I had more colored/clear vinyl than the usual black one since echospace (which I try to collect) likes to release their stuff as marbled or clear, but turns out it's just 42% of my small vinyl collection is something else than black.

it's getting a bit annoying. as i've said elsewhere, what i find really stupid is the 'limited edition of a limited edition' kick Boomkat (i.e. Modern Love and loosely associated labels) seem to be on - case in point the last Demdike Stare 12", which was released on (100?) limited initial clear and then a slightly-less-limited (900?) black. my impression is that this is perhaps becoming one of the few ways to keep vinyl profitable - press up 500-1000 copies, tout how limited it is and emphasise the fact that you're buying an instant rarity (as someone here said in another thread), then watch them sell out relatively quickly. this also allows them to bump up the price (if i've understood correctly, coloured vinyl generally costs no more than black?), sometimes to extortion, e.g. Echospace or Hospital Productions.

incidentally, on the subject of the relative quality of the black and brown SAW2s, does anyone know if there is a similar issue in other early Warp coloured pressings? namely B12 - Electro-Soma, which i've been looking to pick up. there's a 'limited' orange version (which is just as common as the regular black), but i haven't read anything about anyone ever finding difference in the quality of pressing.

Didn't oscillik mention in another thread that Warp has a sorry track record with their colored vinyl sounding like shit. I don't believe there is a difference between colored and black vinyl if they are pressed right, though.

i think so. i've also read comments to the effect that early Warp vinyl pressings in general are a bit haphazard...

  On 4/12/2013 at 11:44 AM, Ron Manager said:

it's getting a bit annoying. as i've said elsewhere, what i find really stupid is the 'limited edition of a limited edition' kick Boomkat (i.e. Modern Love and loosely associated labels) seem to be on - case in point the last Demdike Stare 12", which was released on (100?) limited initial clear and then a slightly-less-limited (900?) black. my impression is that this is perhaps becoming one of the few ways to keep vinyl profitable - press up 500-1000 copies, tout how limited it is and emphasise the fact that you're buying an instant rarity (as someone here said in another thread), then watch them sell out relatively quickly.

For the most part, all records pressed in recent years are 'limited' editions. From what I gather, the costs involved for producing vinyl are very expensive for even the 'big' labels these days - hence such massively inflated prices. Boomkat hyperbole fuels the collector hysteria, so they aren't about to quit that particular style of rallying call anytime soon. With the repeatedly touted limited status of every slab of wax that hits the new releases section, I think the onus is more on the consumer to apply restraint/common sense when considering what's on offer.

  On 4/12/2013 at 11:55 AM, azatoth said:

Didn't oscillik mention in another thread that Warp has a sorry track record with their colored vinyl sounding like shit. I don't believe there is a difference between colored and black vinyl if they are pressed right, though.

Some of the AI-era coloured vinyl releases were pretty awful - SAW 2 was, Bytes was, Autechre's first on silver sounded abysmal. Some were fine though - the Fuse LP was perfectly fine on white vinyl, I recall Speedy J's album on orange vinyl was fine too.

Generally speaking, coloured vinyl should be no different from black, if done correctly - bearing in mind that the natural colour for record vinyl is no colour at all i.e clear. Black vinyl is coloured vinyl, just the same as red, white or any other. AFAIK black was settled on as the standard colour because it's the easiest colour to visually make out track spacings and musical content. Crystal-clear vinyl should in theory be the most pure and noise-free, but it's a pain in the balls to cue tracks up and in my experience sounds no better than black.

silver Incunabula really is fucking atrocious. If you look closely at the record I have, there are actually chunks of vinyl missing.

If I had a decent camera, I'd try to take photos to show, but all I have is a phone :(

Of all the coloured releases I've had, the best sounding has been id by Cyclo. and the SND / NHK Split. Both are white.

I kinda wish I had jumped on the Cro Magnox boat earlier so I could've gotten a red one, but I have a black one and I'm happy enough with it

  On 4/12/2013 at 9:33 PM, oscillik said:

silver Incunabula really is fucking atrocious. If you look closely at the record I have, there are actually chunks of vinyl missing.

 

If I had a decent camera, I'd try to take photos to show, but all I have is a phone :(

 

One of the Discogs images:

You can see the metallic colouring suspended in the vinyl - very similiar to the 'bronze' Bytes. Doesn't make for a quality pressing!

I turned down the vinyl cut at the time (having bought all the other Warp releases on vinyl - the silver was the only kind available on the initial release) and went for the CD. Probably not the best financial decision looking back, but at least I could hear the music properly.

Of course, that CD perished a long time ago thanks to disc rot.

  On 4/12/2013 at 9:59 PM, xy_politics said:

 

  On 4/12/2013 at 9:33 PM, oscillik said:

silver Incunabula really is fucking atrocious. If you look closely at the record I have, there are actually chunks of vinyl missing.

 

If I had a decent camera, I'd try to take photos to show, but all I have is a phone :(

 

 

One of the Discogs images:

 

 

You can see the metallic colouring suspended in the vinyl - very similiar to the 'bronze' Bytes. Doesn't make for a quality pressing!

 

I turned down the vinyl cut at the time (having bought all the other Warp releases on vinyl - the silver was the only kind available on the initial release) and went for the CD. Probably not the best financial decision looking back, but at least I could hear the music properly.

 

Of course, that CD perished a long time ago thanks to disc rot.

 

it really is one of the worst quality pressings I have, and it was a major contributor to my aversion to coloured vinyl.

A lot of recent releases have made me warm to them though, so I'm not so wary of them. As long as they're done properly, that is. If they're made like picture discs they sound horrible.

Saw this image the other day - I wonder if anyone makes vinyl with this effect any more?

  On 4/12/2013 at 10:06 PM, xy_politics said:

Saw this image the other day - I wonder if anyone makes vinyl with this effect any more?

 

I remember reading about those on Wikipedia, fucking awesome

I don't care about colored records as much as I do about picture discs. I like it when the artwork is conceived for a picture disc, a la Memories in Widescreen. But records in which they just take the regular cover art and stick it to a piece of vinyl... ew

Never got into coloured vinyl myself. Looks a bit stupid in my opinion. I've got sky blue BOC (IABPOITC) and High on Fires last album on a lovely red hue. That's it I think. Sleeps last reissue of Dopesmoker came in almost every colour under the sun, as a result it seems a bit tacky imo

The only vinyl I buy nowadays is the odd special edition and stuff like photodementia which (at the moment) is vinyl only.

The brown copy of SAW2 is supposed to be attrocious lol

i have stakker's humanoid on 12" in brown marbled vinyl. Sounds pretty good considering its a '93 rave classic. i guess its just down to the pressing of saw2 that makes it subpar

I've had experience pressing colored vinyl as well as black vinyl and there is no discernible difference in quality between the two. I can say with certainty that all the Warp colored vinyl pressings I have are very bad quality, among them SAW 2 and Incunabula. Not sure what went wrong there but those are in no way representative of a properly pressed colored vinyl record.

I have one of these face-melters tucked away somewhere, bought back in my more angsty early teenage years. Was surprised to learn recently that it's actually now worth a fair chunk of change...

^flol

  On 4/12/2013 at 1:26 PM, jasondonervan said:

 

  On 4/12/2013 at 11:44 AM, Ron Manager said:

it's getting a bit annoying. as i've said elsewhere, what i find really stupid is the 'limited edition of a limited edition' kick Boomkat (i.e. Modern Love and loosely associated labels) seem to be on - case in point the last Demdike Stare 12", which was released on (100?) limited initial clear and then a slightly-less-limited (900?) black. my impression is that this is perhaps becoming one of the few ways to keep vinyl profitable - press up 500-1000 copies, tout how limited it is and emphasise the fact that you're buying an instant rarity (as someone here said in another thread), then watch them sell out relatively quickly.

 

For the most part, all records pressed in recent years are 'limited' editions. From what I gather, the costs involved for producing vinyl are very expensive for even the 'big' labels these days - hence such massively inflated prices. Boomkat hyperbole fuels the collector hysteria, so they aren't about to quit that particular style of rallying call anytime soon. With the repeatedly touted limited status of every slab of wax that hits the new releases section, I think the onus is more on the consumer to apply restraint/common sense when considering what's on offer.

 

yes, definitely agree on that last sentence. and at the end of the day, some of the stuff that arrives on Boomkat proclaimed as 'extremely limited' is garbage. people won't buy limited editions if at the end of the day the music is crap. or maybe they will.

i think in general they have heeded what people here and elsewhere have complained about and have cut back on their incessant 'ESSENTIAL PURCHASE!!!' tags, and i feel like they're not quite as in-your-face about limited releases as they have been. they still push certain items hard though. the latest £55 Deepchord reissue has been sat at the top of their front-page 'just arrived' section since Wednesday. in their defence over some of the prices they charge, a lot of this does come down to the label, as they said here in response to a Facebook complaint: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151336088352477&set=a.163811057476.129846.163795037476&type=1&theater

I like my vinyl like I like my coffee, metal and women.

the lorn album from last year was pressed on grey marbled vinyl and the copy i have sounds fine. Maybe there is a different process that not all cutters are used too.

I've got a clear copy of Surfing On Sine Waves and I never noticed anything bad about it but I haven't listened to it in a while. Strangely enough when I bought it, the record shop had written on the clear sleeve "do not play". I still don't know why.