5 ms·

Curiosities in Vinyl

52 points by leejo 5y ago

sneak 5y ago
Detroit's Underground Resistance also had a release called Hidden In Plainsight that has two "parallel" grooves, so two independent tracks on the same side. IIRC it was an NSC thing.
- Lio 5y ago
  Yes! Was going to mention the same. Early Detroit Techno was just so damn cool. :D Not sure if it’s just nostalgia for the times but the only that seemed as exciting to me is the early days of Jungle and Drum and Bass. Probably just ‘cause I is old.
- tsujamin 5y ago
  The Untitled Goose Game OST did it recently too for an entire side (https://www.pixelcrib.com.au/products/untitled-goose-game-vinyl-soundtrack https://www.pixelcrib.com.au/products/untitled-goose-game-vi...)
kingcharles 5y ago
This was a neat article. As a side note, here is a list of curiosities in optical: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_albums_with_tracks_hidden_in_the_pregap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_albums_with_tracks_hid...
Anthony-G 5y ago
I think the author eloquently articulated the reason why I still enjoy vinyl (despite not having bought any in the past decade, I have 300 records from the preceding decades): > In a world where the whole philosophy is based on mood swings, limited attention spans, and an expansion pack for everything; putting on a record, sitting down to do nothing else but listen to it? That’s where the real value lies.
- 52-6F-62 5y ago
  100% For me it's also in the ritual of getting up to physically select the item I want to hear, withdraw it, and set it up on the player. It's something you have to do deliberately. It won't shuffle for 100 hours through every option available.
  - jen729w 5y ago
    And, misconceptions about vinyl’s reliability aside, it’ll just play. Nothing can happen. The internet can’t die, Siri can’t think she heard you, Apple Music can’t just randomly stop for no reason whatsoever. You play a record, it’ll just play.
    - 52-6F-62 5y ago
      No advertisements randomly inserted in the middle of a piece of music!
- nonbirithm 5y ago
  Never thought I would hear someone quote Sole in an article linked on HN. Here is the original song (Respect, Pt. 3): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bBVfk4gyZ04 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bBVfk4gyZ04
  - leejo 5y ago
    That was very much intentional, given I mention the very same album earlier in the post :)
- bstar77 5y ago
  I also find it amazing that my 1970's vinyl setup sounds better than my modern setup (multiple homepods). I definitely have a reverence of that tech which helps improve my experience. I also suffer from the paradox of choice... the more options I have, the more skeptical I am of the choice I make and how it negatively affects my experience. When I pull out a record and play it through, I usually love the experience. I can't say that about playing something on Apple Music or Spotify. Same reason why I can't find a game (one of over a thousand) to play on Steam, but loved every minute of the terrible NES games I owned as a kid.
comprev 5y ago
The feel of physically manipulating vinyl is one thing I really enjoy about DJing. Gentle touches to the spinning platter and adjusting the pitch microscopic amounts to perfectly match two different records is a wonderful art.
- Lio 5y ago
  I love the feel of a set of Technics 1200 mk2s. They’re just magic. I have still have my set of 1210s (same design but gun metal colour instead of silver) from 1996. I gigged them pretty hard, schlepping them to a couple of regular bar gigs 2 or 3 nights a week for about 5 years. They still play just like new today, 25 years later. I’ve never even replaced the cue lights. They just got the design right. The right amount of torque, a good arm and really reliable. For comparison I also have a wonderful Technics SP10 I got from a old radio station and a Rega Planar 2. They’re both great hifi decks but a different kind of animal.
AlbertCory 5y ago
If you haven't discovered Discogs and want to buy vinyl records: head there now. Even if they don't have something you want, you can set up a Wantlist so that when it does go on sale, you'll be notified. As a (former) seller, I found that their database has virtually every release and every pressing of every record ever recorded. More or less. If you bought the thing in a retail channel of any sort, they've got it. The buyers and sellers, with very few exceptions, are really nice. Altogether a great experience.
r3trohack3r 5y ago
I remember record collections - they were before my time but the older generation still had them. Music discovery was delightful, you’d comb through a stack of music and find something you’d never heard before, drop it on the record player, and listen cover to cover. Record collections, libraries, etc. all gave me this feeling - of spontaneous, unguided, content discovery. Where you’d find little known content on the shelf right next to a household name. Nobody competing for your attention, nobody trying to “buy” their way into your attention span. You’d discover something interesting, sit down, and lose yourself in it. It’s part of what made me build https://audile.app https://audile.app, I wanted to spontaneously discover music I’d never find through modern distribution channels. It’s just Math.random() on top of Deezer’s catalogue. I tried to treat Deezer as a “record collection” and spontaneously/randomly discover content in the collection in a similar way as picking a random shelf and combing through the stack of records. I think I’m the only one using it, and it’s still missing something, but it’s the closest to scratching that itch I’ve gotten so far.

52 points by leejo 5y ago

Detroit's Underground Resistance also had a release called Hidden In Plainsight that has two "parallel" grooves, so two independent tracks on the same side. IIRC it was an NSC thing.

Lio 5y ago
Yes! Was going to mention the same. Early Detroit Techno was just so damn cool. :D Not sure if it’s just nostalgia for the times but the only that seemed as exciting to me is the early days of Jungle and Drum and Bass. Probably just ‘cause I is old.
tsujamin 5y ago
The Untitled Goose Game OST did it recently too for an entire side (https://www.pixelcrib.com.au/products/untitled-goose-game-vinyl-soundtrack https://www.pixelcrib.com.au/products/untitled-goose-game-vi...)

kingcharles 5y ago

This was a neat article. As a side note, here is a list of curiosities in optical: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_albums_with_tracks_hidden_in_the_pregap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_albums_with_tracks_hid...

Anthony-G 5y ago

I think the author eloquently articulated the reason why I still enjoy vinyl (despite not having bought any in the past decade, I have 300 records from the preceding decades): > In a world where the whole philosophy is based on mood swings, limited attention spans, and an expansion pack for everything; putting on a record, sitting down to do nothing else but listen to it? That’s where the real value lies.

52-6F-62 5y ago
100% For me it's also in the ritual of getting up to physically select the item I want to hear, withdraw it, and set it up on the player. It's something you have to do deliberately. It won't shuffle for 100 hours through every option available.
- jen729w 5y ago
  And, misconceptions about vinyl’s reliability aside, it’ll just play. Nothing can happen. The internet can’t die, Siri can’t think she heard you, Apple Music can’t just randomly stop for no reason whatsoever. You play a record, it’ll just play.
  - 52-6F-62 5y ago
    No advertisements randomly inserted in the middle of a piece of music!
nonbirithm 5y ago
Never thought I would hear someone quote Sole in an article linked on HN. Here is the original song (Respect, Pt. 3): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bBVfk4gyZ04 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bBVfk4gyZ04
- leejo 5y ago
  That was very much intentional, given I mention the very same album earlier in the post :)
bstar77 5y ago
I also find it amazing that my 1970's vinyl setup sounds better than my modern setup (multiple homepods). I definitely have a reverence of that tech which helps improve my experience. I also suffer from the paradox of choice... the more options I have, the more skeptical I am of the choice I make and how it negatively affects my experience. When I pull out a record and play it through, I usually love the experience. I can't say that about playing something on Apple Music or Spotify. Same reason why I can't find a game (one of over a thousand) to play on Steam, but loved every minute of the terrible NES games I owned as a kid.

comprev 5y ago

The feel of physically manipulating vinyl is one thing I really enjoy about DJing. Gentle touches to the spinning platter and adjusting the pitch microscopic amounts to perfectly match two different records is a wonderful art.

Lio 5y ago
I love the feel of a set of Technics 1200 mk2s. They’re just magic. I have still have my set of 1210s (same design but gun metal colour instead of silver) from 1996. I gigged them pretty hard, schlepping them to a couple of regular bar gigs 2 or 3 nights a week for about 5 years. They still play just like new today, 25 years later. I’ve never even replaced the cue lights. They just got the design right. The right amount of torque, a good arm and really reliable. For comparison I also have a wonderful Technics SP10 I got from a old radio station and a Rega Planar 2. They’re both great hifi decks but a different kind of animal.

AlbertCory 5y ago

If you haven't discovered Discogs and want to buy vinyl records: head there now. Even if they don't have something you want, you can set up a Wantlist so that when it does go on sale, you'll be notified. As a (former) seller, I found that their database has virtually every release and every pressing of every record ever recorded. More or less. If you bought the thing in a retail channel of any sort, they've got it. The buyers and sellers, with very few exceptions, are really nice. Altogether a great experience.

r3trohack3r 5y ago

I remember record collections - they were before my time but the older generation still had them. Music discovery was delightful, you’d comb through a stack of music and find something you’d never heard before, drop it on the record player, and listen cover to cover. Record collections, libraries, etc. all gave me this feeling - of spontaneous, unguided, content discovery. Where you’d find little known content on the shelf right next to a household name. Nobody competing for your attention, nobody trying to “buy” their way into your attention span. You’d discover something interesting, sit down, and lose yourself in it. It’s part of what made me build https://audile.app https://audile.app, I wanted to spontaneously discover music I’d never find through modern distribution channels. It’s just Math.random() on top of Deezer’s catalogue. I tried to treat Deezer as a “record collection” and spontaneously/randomly discover content in the collection in a similar way as picking a random shelf and combing through the stack of records. I think I’m the only one using it, and it’s still missing something, but it’s the closest to scratching that itch I’ve gotten so far.