The fascination with music on vinyl has never really died, although in the 1980s and 1990s, seemingly the CD and variations of it would take over markets, and finally lead to the replacement of heavy LP shelves in apartments with much smaller and lighter CD shelves.
Even though the mastering and audio quality of the CD were of a higher quality – as most industry managers argued – many fans and collectors never made the switch from one media to another. Now, for several years on end (in a row), LP sales have continuously increased, and those second hand record stores still around report high demands, especially from young clients.
Those audiences and the die-hard turntable/vinyl fans who simply never stopped buying 12″ records would appreciate the soft cracks or surface noise when starting playback manually on the machine, and would swear that the overall audio properties were purely better, richer and more “authentic,” or “organic.”
Even though almost all masters used for LP pressing since the mid-1980s are digital; they are the same masters used for CD production.)
Overall, fans of analog music appreciation argued that the range of sound was much broader, as CDs would shut off extreme highs and lows, leaving only a massively reduced signal that left your speakers; hence the music would be robbed of all the “fun stuff.”
The other important point of vinylists has to do with the haptic properties of the LP. The liner notes, picture inner sleeves and additional extra artwork are large; really large. Having a vinyl artwork in 12″ easily beats any 4,7″ CD artwork. So does the LP cover, normal or gatefold – size matters when experiencing cover artwork on heavy cardboard.
Vinyl records are usually made from black vinyl, simply because production is cheaper. However, at some point record companies discovered that special, colorful or even heavily designed and limited editions of their artist’s repertoire would strongly increase sales. (Even if owners of audiophile hardware argued that, by comparison, a colored version of the same LP sounded worse than its black brother; this has to do with the chemical properties of the raw vinyl. It seems that black copies carry a fuller sound and provide less surface noise.)
Soon, LPs not only were colored, but they became works of art themselves, using anything from photography, weird designs, or would glow in the dark. A trend that was basically started in the 1920s with (slightly) colored 78s, to have customers return to the label and buy by shellac color. Already in the 1950’s, RCA issued colored 7″ using a color code to easily have the consumer see if a title was jazz, pop, classical or some other genre.
In Extraordinary Records, the three authors Georgio Moroder, Alessandro Benedetti, and Peter Bastine render texts and many photographs on this special subject of later days. For example, Peter Bastine, record seller, disc-jockey, and concert organizer opened his collection (8,000 picture LPs) for book production, as did Alessandro Benedetti, a renowned record collector. His collection consists of more than 8,000 unusual and rare pressings. 1,200 alone are colored vinyl.
The volume holds 500 most unusual works of these wonderful pieces of music history. Moroder, the celebrated music producer from Italy and pioneer of electronic dance-floor tunes known for his collaborations with David Bowie, Janet Jackson and Donna Summer, organized and connected the fine exhibition on almost 500 pages. If you wonder if this would be a super-sized volume; yes, it is, naturally it comes in LP size, 12 x 12″ and is 1,7″ deep. (Actually, it has the same weight as 1,7″ of records – I checked).
The majority of those 500 productions are the “standard” round LP, in its many variations to shape and printing method. Some other types are presented in detail as well. For example, apart from the standard “picture disc,” items like the ultra thin “flexi disc” or the “bone disc.” Those are incredibly rare LP copies (and they actually are “copies”) of European and American original LPs.
These were silently manufactured in the former USSR, when vinyl was somewhat rare and this kind of music from the Western part of the world was not officially available. The “bone discs” hence consisted of X-ray photo prints, that were revived as LPs due to the audio properties of the photo print film or fresh print film, to be sold and traded illicitly. The volume presents some of the strangest examples of the genre.
Furthermore, not just the standard pressings are listed in this title. One of the best kicks record collectors get out of hoarding, is when they come across rare promos, bootlegs, copies with wrong labels, inaccurate colors, test pressings and the like. Those are also included here.
The title is not a brand-new publication, but the latest and updated version of an earlier multilingual edition (English, French, German) originally from 2009, realized in cooperation with (the now defunct) Colors Magazine from Italy.
Altogether, seven chapters are devoted to the unique classes of rare and artfully designed vinyl and its production, point of sale and industry aspects, lavishly illustrated with reproductions on every page. Naturally, the usual suspects are among the vinyl treasures on display, such as picture discs by Grace Jones, Kraftwerk, Prince, The Beatles, and various records by Pink Floyd. However, there is also artwork of more recent titles like the Italian series The Mood Mosaic.
The introduction is the only lengthy section of text, usually very brief captions inform about the respective artist, album, or label, which is wise, as this book is strictly a great and heavy visual pleasure.
Review by Dr. A. Ebert © 2024
Giorgio Moroder and Alessandro Benedetti. Extraordinary Records. Taschen, 2024, 472 p.
12.25 x 1.5 x 12 inches, 6.79 pounds, 472 p.
ISBN 978-3-8365-9500-1
Multilingual edition (English, French, German)
