![]() ![]() That’s the amazing thing about Ocean’s album rollout last weekend-he released something that lived in the physical world, too–zine called Boy’s Don’t Cry, that he gave away for free at pop-up shops in New York and other cities. Like the young liberal arts graduate clutching their gargantuan James Joyce tome on the subway instead of just giving in and buying a Kindle, someone who spends the time, money and space collecting vinyl is doing so as an act of ceremony, as a ritual, more concerned with the depth of the listening experience than simply hearing it. ![]() So the real triumph of vinyl’s resurgence wasn’t the boost in revenue (vinyl currently account for less than 10 percent in music sales) or audio quality (maybe for the old shit reissued in 180-gram, heavyweight glory, but not for these digitally mastered, modern recordings)-the real accomplishment of vinyl’s resurgence was that it demonstrated that, no matter how easy and available music was, people still valued the physical experience of having something to hold. I loved The Mars Volta as much as the next dude, but hearing those compressed riffs from the future spinning out of a turntable on a giant Quetzlcoatl picture disc didn’t make the music sound any better. The argument for vinyl’s importance as a superior audio format really only holds if the music is mastered from analog audio tapes, where the uncompressed room noise and ambient noodlings wind up on an audible spectrum. Vinyl’s resurgence in popularity during my college years was well documented, but we saw how silly it was when some of our favorite artists of the 2000s insisted on releasing elaborate picture discs and gatefolds, because the music didn’t always sound better on wax. What’s gained and what’s lost when we expect to absorb albums this way? As a culprit of digital consumption, I’m in no position to act like a purist. ![]()
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