Björk – Vespertine

Well, this was a fantastic listening experience. Not only in the terms of music, both also the quality of this release. Pagan Poetry sounds truly organic here.

Sibilance on her voice in every song and overall muddiness. Pretty disappointing especially after paying $40 for it. Do yourself a favor and stick to the CD.

Why does the page say barcode is 602547517302 but the photo shows the back cover as saying 5016958046019 ??

Amazon has this on sale, right now, I wasn’t 100% sure which pressing I was getting, but rolled the dice after reading some wide ranging reviews.

Either I lucked out, and won the quality control lottery, or the poor reviewers may be over looking some issues.

Giving a first listen now after a quick dust off with the carbon fiber brush.

Thoughts:

1. The record sleeves that hold the discs within feel like card stock with kind of rough interiors. When I first removed the discs I buckled the sleeve (one hand on sleeve pressed against my torso, other hand carefully handing disc) so I could remove the discs without them brushing the inside. Pretty sure the sleeves are scratching the records as people remove them. There was a decent about of paper dust/debris inside my sleeves.

2. Read lots of complaints about sibilants, especially on cocoon. There are a lot of S sounds sung close to a mic. This track might just be a good test to tell if it’s time for a new stylus or your cartridge is misaligned. My copy is handling the S sounds great. (My Suzanne Vega record, Tom’s Diner, sibilants drive me mad, hard to listen to)

3. This is gonna sound condescending, but album, as recorded, has a lot of weird noises that sound like crackles. Couple tracks in particular. Not trying to question anyone’s fandom, even I had to listen to a few tracks on streaming to make sure my copy wasn’t severely damaged, I just forgot what those tracks sounded like, and they sound very much like a very damaged record.

This album really does sound insanely incredible. I bought on Amazon in case I got a dud and needed to return it.

Edit: as I was writing this I got one skip in my otherwise flawless copy, near the end of Sun in my mouth. But I think I can clean it out.

Most of the tracks on CD versions (except SACD) listed on the DR Database site have peaks at 0.00 dB. In this case, however, the peaks reach 0.02 dB

DR7 -0.02 dBFS -10.34 dBFS 5:29 01-Hidden Place
DR11 -0.02 dBFS -12.60 dBFS 4:28 02-Cocoon
DR9 -0.02 dBFS -13.93 dBFS 5:09 03-It's Not Up To You
DR8 -0.02 dBFS -12.41 dBFS 5:38 04-Undo
DR8 -0.02 dBFS -11.29 dBFS 5:15 05-Pagan Poetry
DR9 -3.16 dBFS -14.78 dBFS 1:42 06-Frosti
DR7 -0.02 dBFS -10.06 dBFS 4:39 07-Aurora
DR9 -0.02 dBFS -12.45 dBFS 4:04 08-An Echo, A Stain
DR9 -0.02 dBFS -13.16 dBFS 2:40 09-Sun In My Mouth
DR8 -0.02 dBFS -10.29 dBFS 5:12 10-Heirloom
DR11 -0.07 dBFS -15.16 dBFS 4:37 11-Harm Of Will
DR9 -0.02 dBFS -12.88 dBFS 6:48 12-Unison

I’m guessing this needs yet another (*sigh*) entry - because this is currently the only entry with the “One Little Independent” label name change, but most noticeably, the inner sleeves on mine don’t have the circle cutout on one side exposing the LP label, and read “TPLP101-A/B” / “TPLP101-C/D” (instead of “TPLP101DMM-A/B” / “TPLP101DMM-C/D”).

Beyond these two differences, I have no way of knowing how these two compare, and am not confident in my ability to definitively say whether or not the other is also DMM, but if anyone else can, I’d very curious and would love to know. Like others have noted previously, it does appear to have some scratches that had me quite concerned, but fortunately, like a portion of the other comments have mentioned, I’ve lucked out and have been pleasantly surprised that somehow they don’t seem to have an audible impact on playback. On the contrary, I’m happy to be able to report that after a few playthroughs (listening especially closely during those few odd couple scratched sections): it sounds absolutely wonderful! So much so, that I almost don’t want to know whether it’s still DMM or not…

Anyways, I suspect these differences are significant enough to warrant a new entry, and plan on re-adding my copy to that once it’s been created (by someone more experienced than I, because there are probably other, less obvious yet important differences, which I don’t trust myself to catch.) In the meantime, if you’re buying/selling, make sure to verify your copy matches this entry - because I almost didn’t notice, and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one!

Certainly the only CD version worth buying and owning for this album, thanks to the addition of a thirteenth song: Generous Palmstroke, which concludes the album magnificently.

lovely pressing, however the gatefold is misaligned, anybody else have this issue? the actual vinyl quality is amazing, especially at the breakdown in pagan poetry, no crackles even after a few plays.

Huge step up from the white vinyl. Every layer and detail sounds beautiful and there is no surface noise. Not that it matters but the black vinyl discs are very heavy compared to the paper thin white. This is the pressing to get.

can confirm pressing had light scratches new. disappointing. however it doesn't affect the sound directly. get a different pressing.