In June, White released Lazaretto, an innovative 12-inch vinyl record that looks like a standard LP, but has been designed with a few tricks up its sleeve, so to speak. A few of the record's features: "dual grooves" on the opening track of side two mean that either an acoustic or electric version of the song will play depending on where the needle is dropped, holographic angles hand-carved into the surface of the vinyl spin with the record, and two hidden songs are concealed beneath the labels, with one playing at 78 RPM and the other at 45 RPM, making Lazaretto possibly the first three-speed record ever pressed.
What would happen? A sound would necessarily result, a series of sounds, music...Feelings—which? Incredulity, timidity, fear, awe—which of all the feelings here possible prevents me from suggesting a name for the primal sound which would then make its appearance in the world?
Rilke imagined the entire world transforming into sound.
Forget record store romanticism. Whether or not you believe that listening to music on vinyl somehow constitutes a more authentic experience than listening to digital recordings, there’s something undeniably visceral about physically manifesting sound, about actually making music. Modern musicians, developers, engineers and inventors using new technologies to make beautiful music together are proving that, when it comes to vinyl, we’ve barely scratched the surface.
source: smithsonian.com By Jimmy Stamp