Our Review of The Electric Recording Company’s Release of Forever Changes
Recently we took the Electric Recording Company to task for their botched mastering of Love’s Forever Changes.
At ERC they like to point out they are doing things differently, and boy are they ever. They do not remaster the tapes, they simply transfer the tapes onto disc without any interference from equalizers, compressors and the like.
Naturally, they seem less willing to discuss the sludge-like sound their vintage tube cutting amplifiers bring to every tape that’s forced to go through them before it gets to the cutting stylus. I hope to discuss this issue in more depth down the road.
What Is It, Exactly
For now, let’s try to get to the heart of what this pressing is.
This is not an audiophile record, properly understood.
No member of the audiophile community, those lovers of sound you’ve heard so much about, could possibly put up with a record that sounds as bad as this one does.
Having played two of their releases and knowing how all of them are made, I would be surprised if any of this company’s records are any better than awful.
No, this is plain and simply a collectible.
It exists because it could be made as a very limited edition at a profit.
It exists because it could be made with exceptionally high quality packaging.
The vinyl inside the fancy packaging is only there to make sure that all the elements of a collectible release are accounted for.
All the value is tied up in the collector appeal of the release, none in the vinyl, because the vinyl is junk.