10 Albums That Explore the Multisided Record Phenomenon

When the members of Monty Python were mapping out what would be the comedy troupe’s fourth album, 1974’s Matching Tie and Handkerchief, they wanted to do something unusual to mess with the form and format of the typical vinyl record. They knew it would have the usual collection of sketches borrowed from their television show alongside new material written expressly for the LP. But what else could come up with?

“I suddenly thought, ‘Wait a minute, you’ve got a record and it goes from the outside into the middle,’” Terry Jones recalled in the 2009 BBC documentary Monty Python: Almost The Truth, “‘Why couldn’t you start at a different point and do the same thing with a concentric circle — so you wouldn’t know what you’re going to get on the record?’”

What Jones is describing, and what the comedy troupe accomplished on Matching Tie, is a multisided record, an LP or single with multiple grooves cut into one side of the vinyl. Meaning, simply, the listener gets a different experience depending upon what groove your stylus falls into. On this Monty Python album, for example, side two might start off with a radio documentary parody where information about Medieval farming practices is explained in pop song form, or a skit where two women coo over a grown man, who happens to be the Minister for Overseas Development, as if he were a baby.

While Jones thought he had hit upon a brand-new idea, as he soon found out, record companies have been making multisided vinyl for decades. And it’s a practice that has continued since the release of Matching Tie, mostly used as a promotional gimmick to sell an artist’s single. If Monty Python pioneered anything with their multisided record, it was arguably the first time a comedy album was meant to purposefully confuse listeners as they didn’t tell anyone what they had done to the vinyl.

Cutting two grooves into one side of a record feels like an easy trick to pull off, but, according to Gus Elg, the engineer and owner of Sky Onion Mastering in Portland, Oregon, it requires a great deal of precision. In addition to spacing out the first groove so that a second one could fit between it, the master has to be cut with fixed pitch, which basically limits the size of each groove.

“Most professional lathes have some sort of computer that automatically adjusts for the groove spacing based on the level of the audio,” Elg says. “When the music gets really loud, the spacing increases, and when it gets quiet, it packs the grooves tightly. You have to bypass that if you’re going to cut a double groove record. You need the grooves to be consistent for the whole side so they don’t run into each other.”

In addition to shortening how much audio can be featured on a double-grooved record, it also has an effect on the quality. Tighter grooves mean less dynamic sound quality. “You’re not making a puzzle record for audiophile purposes,” Elg says.

But while they may not sound as good as a normal piece of wax and might be a pain when trying to drop the needle on a particular track or version of a song, multisided records are certainly fun additions to a vinyl collection. Here are some of the more interesting multisided records that have been released over the past 70-plus years.