I’m not the only one in having a critic on the new TAKE OFFENSE 12″ ep from REAPER RECORDS. They actually pressed a 12″ for four songs. This means it’s a one-sided 12″ with only the big half grooved.
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| TAKE OFFENSE Under The Same Shadow GOLD vinyl |
Obviously the songs could have fit on a 7″ I suppose, but the quality of the sound wouldn’t be so great as it is now. Another thing is that a 10″ isn’t a handy format, so eventually I don’t feel cheated.
Another thing I forgot to mention about REAPER RECORDS in yesterday’s post is that they make the testpresses widely available for everybody to grab. I have double feelings about this. The positive thing is that they are totally cool, mostly numbered and with different covers and that they are unlike revelation testpresses not totally impossible to get. Putting them on the market is probably just a consequence of the collector’s demand to Kitzel. But they are made sleeves for them just so that they become more attractive on the other side.
Also the quickness on which they are sold and listed on eBay bothers me, sure thing is that the label can surely use the money to make new releases. But the myth and mystery around them fades and they become just rarest versions of certain releases…
Any thoughts about this?
The thing to keep in mind is that although Kitzel usually offers one or two test presses on eBay soon after a release drops, there are still generally only 10-15 test presses for each release—they're just as rare as test presses from other labels (and often moreso), the only difference is that instead of just giving them to close friends and “cool people,” he makes a few of them accessible to the general hardcore community.