[craiglester]

Icky Thump.. umm as in The Goodies? or was that Ecky Thump? hmmm

 

[Sherwood]

Ecky thump indeed. A nice catch from our resident limey.

 

[sonick]

Just picked it up, looks pretty cool... Nice gatefold cover. The vinyl is etched as said earlier, rather than a 'picture disk' as the cover of the magazine indicates. And it's a pale opaque red rather than the translucent cherry red of the ELEPHANT US LP.

The cashier at Chapters accidentally gave me two copies of the vinyl instead of one, only realized it when I got to the library. Perhaps I'll hold onto the second one for awhile, and see how "collect-able" it gets (doubtful, seeing how 120,000 were pressed).'

It sounds great! Very quiet with barely any surface noise. Meg's hits on the bass drum feels like punches square in your solar plexus. No distortion in the bass, but it seems like the high quality MP3 rip of the CD floating on the net doesn't exhibit bass distortion on this track either.

The NME single isn't mastered by Steve Hoffman, unfortunately (it would be nice to get a TASTE of the upcoming vinyl), but still sounds pretty damn good. The liner notes say its mastered by Vlado Meller of Sony.

Didn't realize it was gonna be a 2-LP set... gotta go to Chapters again next week to pick up the other one!

 

[blinx]

pig related music site? i have no idea what your are talking about..







lol

 

[sonick]

OINK.

 

[Geoff Rymer]

Anybody know if the UK vinyl is the same version? Just ordered it from Amazon, but might have to cancel and order it from Amazon US if it's different...

EDIT: Argh! Yes it appears to be different (single disc for a start) and Amazon won't let me cancel even though I only ordered it 5 minutes ago. Grrrrrrrrrr.

 

[ken36]

I'm trying to like it.

 

[LawnGnome]

I just acquired a copy of it.

So far I like it, I like that its a bit cleaner sounding than their previous albums. But the bass distortion does give it the dirty white stripes feel. Doesn't bother me thus far.

 

[ducatisteve]

I bought the CD and listened to it a few times through (once while giving the bathroom a scrubdown...thank you iPod Nano), and I do really like most of the songs (a few of the songs are very Zep-ish). The distortion is fine with me, and I don't mind the low end grittiness, but what really irks me are the "solos" in almost every song that consist of random, tinny, staccato high notes.

I give it an 8/10.

 

[Pm@c]

Quote:

Originally Posted by wovenhand /img/forum/go_quote.gif It definetely has it's moments, but why oh why is there such severe distortion? It's not the kind of distortion you want, but more like a crackling sound on every bass drum hit. Anyone else pick up on this? I've listened to it with several different cans + stereo, so it's not my stuff that is broken.

This ruins the whole CD for me. I cant even bare to listen to it because with my DT770's every drum hit is like a super noticable crackle, and it drives me nuts.

Poor job to the recording company... you ruined a good CD.

 

[LawnGnome]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pm@c /img/forum/go_quote.gif This ruins the whole CD for me. I cant even bare to listen to it because with my DT770's every drum hit is like a super noticable crackle, and it drives me nuts. Poor job to the recording company... you ruined a good CD.

If it didn't have the distortion, it wouldn't have the white stripes sound. Listen to every white stripes album, they all have background noise and a gritty sound to them.

Since this one doesn't have the background noise, it needed something to give it the gritty sound.

The more I listen to the album, the more I realize, I wouldn't like it if it didn't distort, because it just wouldn't be the white stripes I'm used to.

 

[Pm@c]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LawnGnome /img/forum/go_quote.gif If it didn't have the distortion, it wouldn't have the white stripes sound. Listen to every white stripes album, they all have background noise and a gritty sound to them. Since this one doesn't have the background noise, it needed something to give it the gritty sound. The more I listen to the album, the more I realize, I wouldn't like it if it didn't distort, because it just wouldn't be the white stripes I'm used to.

Just because the band has a gritty sound to them, doesnt mean the album has to sound like crap. Theres a difference between gritty and having my headphones feel like theres a rattling sound in the driver every time they strike the drum.

I know what you mean about a dirty gritty indie sound, but I dont get that with this album, all I get is that it sounds like its ripped to the crappiest quality it could be. The album would still sound very awesome, and ever better to me, if it was a clearer crisper sound. They can still have all this high pitch solos and crazy riffs like in Icky Thump, but they dont need to have every drum beat make me want to stuff firecrackers in my ears.

And about the distortion, its not really a good kind of distortion. Like seriously it doesnt even sound like its part of the music. It just sounds like my headphones are broken, so I end up having to listen to a different song just to bring ease to myself that my headphones arent broken.

 

[DarkAngel]

White Stripes going for bombastic assault on the senses this time, loud distortion passages and strange instrument sounds (bagpipes?) to go with warbly vocal style of Jack White......not as much structured melody this time out, going for more avante sound, may need repeated listenings for this to fully soak in

 

[humanflyz]

I really like this album much more than Get Behind Me Satan, because this album has that blue-sy feel that I like very much.

As for the sound quality, on my Denon D5000 straight out of my Zen Vision M running the mp3s @ 320k, it's not that bad. Yes, I hear the drum distortion, but it's euphonic as opposed to unlistenable. Although I suspect that on a more revealing system that the distortion would become untolerable. So in this case, the lossy format may actually help.

 

[sonick]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LawnGnome /img/forum/go_quote.gif If it didn't have the distortion, it wouldn't have the white stripes sound. Listen to every white stripes album, they all have background noise and a gritty sound to them. Since this one doesn't have the background noise, it needed something to give it the gritty sound. The more I listen to the album, the more I realize, I wouldn't like it if it didn't distort, because it just wouldn't be the white stripes I'm used to.

You'll absolutely HATE the "audiophile's wet dream" of a master in the Steve Hoffman/Kevin Gray vinyl then, coz it has absolutely no distortion on the bass hits. Each hit of the bass drum is like a kick in the chest. Awesome.

And I agree with the 'good vs bad' distortion. Good distortion is like that of Jack's overdriven amp or the 'noise' of analog tape recordings. Bad distortion is that of improper recording/editing/mastering as is the case with the bass drums on the CD master by Vlado Meller (the same guy who mastered Californication).