____twoism

machinea wrote:

oh my god, that's a tragedy!

I've told them about the sleeve and sent the pictures along. They are typically good at responding. I purchased truant/rough sleeper along with the new burial release which was to be sent along later, which I just cancelled. They don't have another sleeve so they just refunded the entire amount.

But this isn't the first time this has happened just not this egregiously. It seems like the slimmer packaging for LP's without double sleeves and for EP/singles is prone to this type of damage in shipping. It was on my Coastal Brake single and one of my Bibio LP's.

Just wanted to share a message from Nils Frahm regarding the vinyl release of his latest work 'Spaces', as in my view, it highlights that this isn't a problem isolated to Warp/Bleep:

dear vinyl lovers,

i am so sorry that we still don´t have the SPACES LP ready.
we are listening to testpressing nr. 5 (!) right now and we still arent happy with the sound. we would like to have a great sounding pressing of that record but even the best pressing plants have a hard time meeting our expectations.

it makes me sad that making good sounding vinyl is so hard these days. please give us some more days, we are expecting them to be ready very soon!

love,
n

Its mainly because hardly any vinyl use to press today is virgin, it's nearly always (on a mass produced level) recycled. The process reduces the quality each time.

The difference is that Nils is actually listening to the test pressings, I can't believe anyone, at least competent, at Warp listened to those awful LPs they're shipping us. I got my second MHTRTC and it has all of the same issues as the first one. And even though I got to read that this is an isolated issue and so on and so on...
Frankly I've given up, I have better things to do than to audit poorly pressed vinyls and write lengthy emails to Bleep with audio and video recordings. I'll refrain to listen to MHTRTC on my headphones and dust off my CD copies.

And btw, I have Felt by Nils Frahm and (unfortunately) it sounds better than any of this represses.

After I contacted Noel Summerville specifically about the Geogaddi issues I received a response in regard to this from someone called James Burton with a Warp email address saying there were looking into it. I received this update today...

"We would like to update you with the progress on replacing faulty and damaged discs from the Boards of Canada repress titles.

We are still working with their pressing plant to produce the replacement discs. It has taken a bit of work to identify and eliminate the causes of problems and unfortunately it now looks like these will not be ready until after the christmas period. Please bear with us whilst we take this time to ensure that the replacements are of the quality you would expect. We will update you again in early January."

Possibly good news for Geogaddi then.

Yeah, just had the same email this afternoon.

That's fine as far as I'm concerned. At least they're being proactive and keeping us updated better now.

right so lets get this straight. the main vinyl issues people have are with:

Geogaddi - Corsair the main issue, any other tracks?
The Campfire - the main issue, dire
Trans Canada - noisy, crackly
Twoism - same issues to Trans Canada

some others report MHTRTC as poor?

i think for some press plants to make claim its getting harder, then how come Geogaddi in general, MHTRTC and espeically IABPOITC are close to fine. Seems to me that each factory have different machines to press and not all up to same standard as others regarding control, different 'ears' too.

they should have got them ALL pressed in the same plant

thepastinsidepressant wrote:they should have got them ALL pressed in the same plant

I'm assuming they spread the work out over various suppliers due to cost/time reasons. Using several different suppliers reduces your leadtime, albeit (as demonstrated) does also reduce your control over quality assurance.

digitaldisc0 wrote:

machinea wrote:

That's poor form from Bleep/their distributors. Hyperdub normally are impeccable.

happened to me once. i sent them a message re: what i got. they said send back. i did, they sent me back two copies + a bunch of extras. bleep is awesome.

issue: the bigger a place gets, the more people they need to get things done. this increases your chances of getting the occasional dud. fire them when they fuck up.

bleep = great

thepastinsidepressant wrote:and espeically IABPOITC are close to fine.

I've had 3 bad copies of IABPOITC and each was from a different source. Two I purchased in local stores, and one mail order. All 3 had distortion in Amo Bishop Roden, particularly at the end of the track, and 1 copy had clicking noises and pops through half of Zoetrope. One copy I never played the B side, so I am not sure if more than one could have had the issue in Zoetrope, although the one that did, had visible defects/marks in the vinyl on that track.

If I got 3 bad copies, I'm sure there are more bad ones out there. I just don't think people are playing Amo Bishop Roden all the way through and paying attention. That noise at the end is not in the song or the original EP.

Thanks I'm going to have to double check that.

I really think this is weird...I never had any problems with any of the vinyls...well okay...some bits and pieces may distort...but I find it hard to explain...it adds some kind of...new dimension to the tracks

Where is my Trans Canada EP Bleep you bastards!

speaking of I wonder how the Skam repress is coming along. They said the end of the year right?

OK, just received my 4th copy of IABPOITC.

So out of 4 copies:

Copy 1: Noise/distortion at the end of Amo Bishop Roden - no visible defects to record
Copy 2: Noise/distortion at the end of Amo Bishop Roden - no visible defects to record
Copy 3: Noise/distortion at the end of Amo Bishop Roden - pops throughout half of Zoetrope - visible marks/scratches to the vinyl in the track Zoetrope
Copy 4: Noise/distortion at the end of Amo Bishop Roden - some static in the middle of Amo Bishop Roden - visible defects/scratches in the middle of Amo Bishop Roden

It's pretty much confirmed that all 4 copies have the same noise at the end of Amo Bishop Roden, which means it would have to be the source/mastering of the track. I did notice that if you are not close to your speakers, you will not notice the noise. I sat across the room and didn't even notice it, but up close, the distortion/noise is evident. I'd imagine it's crystal clear in headphones. This noise is not in the original track.

As far as my other two copies that had additional issues, it's definitely a problem with quality control as brand new vinyl should not have these defects and scratches. This may be why most people who have complained about issues with TCH and Twoism have seen marks in the vinyl, but there are a few people who have clean copies.

The distortion in Corsair in Geogaddi and the distortion in Amo Bishop Roden HAVE to be on everyone's copy, as they are not caused by defects to the vinyl and are within the tracks themselves.

PS: I tried to add photos, but the IMG code does not seem to work right.

Polarbear why did you post those pics and do the same in the tomorrows harvest thread?

nick47 wrote:Polarbear why did you post those pics and do the same in the tomorrows harvest thread?

i didn't do the same.. well that's the problem?

Just got my 5th (and final) copy of IABPOITC and the vinyl looks clean with no marks/scratches other than a tiny dimple. The noise/distortion is still present in Amo Bishop Roden. 5 copies now and still no distortion free Amo Bishop Roden

What a shame, such a beautiful track, perhaps my favorite from BOC, and the ending of the song on these represses sounds a mess.

The black cover is also very prone to top seam splitting. The copies I got in local shops were fine, but 3 of the copies I got mail order all had top seam splits.