I haven’t bought a record as heavy as this before – in every sense of the word. The vinyl itself weighs two hundred grams. Two hundred grams! Not for Taiga, the feeble, floppy, flimsy 180g pressing. “We’d be as well press it on a slice of processed cheese”, they would say, “carving the groove with a feather”. That wouldn’t do at all. Instead this sequel to Homage To The Square Wave comes carved out of pure concrete, the groove made by the finest of fine diamond-tipped drills.
Not only that, but they got masterer-of-all-things-heavy James Plotkin to do the drilling, showing their commitment to making this sound impressive. “VOLUME REVEALS DETAIL” the cover proclaims, in big shouty caps obviously, and this is no idle statement. In fact, every time I play this record I have to coat the walls in egg-boxes. And give my neighbours 1 week’s written notice. And glue my eyes into their sockets. For this behemoth of a record could rattle the bollocks off a sphinx, but so impressed would it be with their commitment to audio fidelity that it wouldn’t actually mind – peering deep into their analogue drones reveals those mandelbrot-like levels of detail, those analogue serrations, overlaps and juxtapositions. At an almost imperceptible pace, Homage To The Sine Wave pulses, bleeps, rumbles, roars and thumps itself into a locked groove of pure tone and immense power.
Eleh formed to pay tribute to minimalist masters such as Eliane Radigue and Pauline Oliveros but comparisons to sine wave-fixated Touch artists like CM Von Hausswolff and Jacob Kirkegaard, avid explorers of the area between differing tones, are perhaps more relevant. For it is Touch who have snapped them up for their next release.
There aren’t enough of these to go around. If Taiga are out, try Important. Or Second Layer. Or Squidco. Or Insound. Don’t stop until you get one: not only is it the heaviest, but Homage To The Sine Wave is one of the most compelling records I’ve heard all year.
4 comments
August 27, 2009 at 7:48 pm
JW
We looked into this business of 200g and 180g pressings. Personally I like the sense of weight they give to a cover, but apparently it’s a large measure of vinyl fetishism. Every cutting engineer we spoke to said that the sound reproduction was inferior, one step up from picture disc. Who knows?
Touch hasn’t “snapped up” Eleh!… we hope there’ll be a long term development, we are only doing one record at the moment but planning a CD and DVD maybe. It’s great you have been so affected by the Taiga record. Every one has been superb, so if you can trace any of the earlier Important releases thru Discogs I’d recommend them…
August 27, 2009 at 8:15 pm
mapsadaisical
Well, I’m pretty sure that the weight of the vinyl is less important than the quality of the recording, mastering and pressing. I’m also pretty sure that most 180g+ LPs I have sound better than others. However, it could just be that – like this Eleh one – you wouldn’t go to the trouble of pressing it on heavy vinyl unless you had done a bang-up job with recording and mastering. So maybe they are bound to sound great.
I’ve never heard anyone say that they sound *worse* than regular vinyl – although I probably come into contact with less cutting engineers than you do…
I’d love to hear others’ thoughts on this.
August 27, 2009 at 9:40 pm
Biggie Samuels
I have heard some say that those Italian 180g re-issues can sound a bit dodgy but they’ve always seemed fine to me.
Apparently, the only real advantage of heavy vinyl is that it warps less easily. Now I feel bad for certain comments I made here:
http://bubblegumcage3.com/2009/08/24/bj-nilsen-the-short-night-touch-lp/
What can I say? I’m a vinyl fetishist.
August 28, 2009 at 1:48 pm
mapsadaisical
Amongst those who have expressed an opinion to me over on Twitter, the general consensus so far seems to be that :
-180g vinyl does indeed offer no audio advantage over regular vinyl – engineers seem to agree; and
-any perception that it does is due to those records being a self-selecting sample (i.e they would also have sounded great on regular vinyl).
Thanks to @johnxela, @cjherbert, @philip_marshall, @MandrewB and Sam above for the quick feedback on this most important issue!