ARTS
Back to the future
LPs and turntables are making a return from the dead, as Peter Phillips reports In the last year you may have noticed on the publications stand of your local record store the arrival of a new magazine from the Gramophone stable, entitled Interna- tional Classical Record Collector. It is small of format with a glossy cover, and appears quarterly. The latest issue (spring 1996) is the fourth, dedicated in theory to record- ings of British music, though in practice there is less of this than the editor, Alan Sanders, would have liked because 'British music makes little headway among over- seas record collectors'. A sobering thought, but not one we are wholly unfamiliar with, so why say it again? The reason is that this magazine is dedicated to the sale, new and second-hand, of LP records and the equip- ment they are played on.
You would be forgiven for supposing that LPs, or black vinyl discs as they came to be called, had vanished from the active market, relegated to second-hand stores along with 78s. And, indeed, in a remark- ably short space of time, given their previ- ous omnipresence, this was more or less what happened. Within five years of the invention of the compact disc, almost every record company had ceased to issue their new recordings on LP, alongside cassette and CD, and the manufacturing plants for LPs were closed down. Already the leading companies were reissuing the most signifi- cant items in their back catalogues on CD in what seemed like a final dispatching of LPs and 78s to history. Five years more, and Gramophone has found it worthwhile to start this new journal.
It is not just a question of collectors advertising for old discs: the advertise- ments in ICRC read very differently from those of the specialist second-hand maga- zines. The back cover, for example, illus- trates a state-of-the-art LP turntable with the words 'Massive construction, extension- al damping of major surfaces and lack of vibration from moving parts ensure tightly controlled detailed sound and stable stereo imaging'. These are not the words, nor is this a product, of the late Seventies. Anoth- er advertiser claims — one would have thought this a safe bet — 'the most amaz- ing improvement in LP/record reproduc- tion in decades ... With features like unlimited cartridge-loading possibilities, lowest noise of any phono preamplifier, unique RIAA de-emphasis, true balanced Class A circuitry, it is finally possible to dis- cover what is truly hidden in record grooves.'
If this kind of talk shows that manufac- turers are again putting money and effort into equipment which has been held to be dead on its feet for the last ten years, the subject-matter of some of the editorial arti- cies is even more surprising. There is a British record label called Testament which not only has been reissuing old LP record- ings on CD, for which purpose it was estab- lished in 1992, but which recently has turned to issuing old LPs on new black vinyl, remastered with modern technology. And within the last few months these inverted pioneers have even gone so far as to make the first analogue (i.e. non-digital) recording to take place at EMI's Abbey Road studios in a decade. The writer of the article about Testament opines that 'more LPs have probably been pressed in the last 12 months than in the previous five years, and the EMI factory on the Uxbridge Road at Hayes currently has a number of LP presses in regular operation. The Pink Floyd Pulse album, originally issued on CD only, is now being re-pressed in LP form.'
What, then, are the prospects for this further turn of the wheel of revolution? There seem to be two ingredients. One is a palpable reaction to digital sound. I am slightly surprised to be told that lovers of Pink Floyd are among the audiophiles who have noticed a downside to digital clarity, but this may be no more than proof of how far the problem may yet spread. Among the cognoscenti — professional players and critics alike — there has long been a quiet but persistent murmur against the 'fake' sound of digital technology; indeed, it was a commonplace to hear people complain- ing of digital headaches in the early years of CDs (which just post-dated the inven- tion of digital recording though the two are now inextricably linked). The clarity which they brought to recorded sound was of course a revelation; but it was found that listening to them too intensively was like having one's eyes glued to a television set at close range. One could indeed see every- thing in greater detail but after a while it brought on a reaction.
The problem has not gone away in recent years: what has changed is that fewer and fewer listeners remember what it is like to hear an LP, and so have adapted as best they may. For many, this has been no great hardship, indeed they believe they are alto- gether better off; but the comparison with the old LP has always been there to make and very slowly it seems to be raising some doubts.
A separate element has to do with the current mania for what is so readily called authenticity. It is evident that there is an enduring interest for quite elaborate remakes of old records — what, in other contexts, would be called a boutique mar- ket. The article on Testament gives the clue: 'The market of thick, 180 gram vinyl pressings is now commonplace, as is the use of the sleeve artwork and the label design of the original issue ... The original art work is generally no longer available, so copies of mint sleeves are scanned by the printer. Computer processing removes the original printing screen, coarser than those used today, and sharpens up image and contrast. The record labels are reproduced in the same way, using original examples, as are the early "Stereophonic Sound" stickers which used to be put on the front of early stereo LPs.' In very little time since the invention of the dazzlingly faultless, laser-beam-driven, quintessential technological icon of our era, there have evidently been significant second thoughts about it, which suggest that what people really want is the assur- ance of paying relatively high prices for old-style quality. It has happened with beer, with clothes, with toiletries, with musical instruments, even with cars, and now it is happening with discs. Where it will end is anyone's guess, but, if it catches on in anything like the way it has in the performance of early music, classical record shops are going to have to become authentic themselves and be like they used to be — three times larger.
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