Pre-Order Thread

Woob_woob said:
Charging those prices and not delivering on a top end product is 100% price gouging. I have very little problem with high prices as long as the product is worth it, and nothing that I've seen from Anthology is worth the price it was marked at. Hell, I would have bought Anthology no questions asked if I thought they were able to deliver on their promises.
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If they make the Shorter and Dexter Gordon albums right, I personally don't think it's price gouging but I understand that I may be in the minority on that. The records sound really amazing and are in line with Music Matters in terms of pressing quality for me. Whether or not MM is overpriced is another story, but the Anthology records were in line with what else is on the market of similar quality. All the extra fluff of the "experience" was never priced into it for me. At $38/record, I'm still okay with Anthology despite the awful roll out and lack of promised extras.
 
Woob_woob said:
Charging those prices and not delivering on a top end product is 100% price gouging. I have very little problem with high prices as long as the product is worth it, and nothing that I've seen from Anthology is worth the price it was marked at. Hell, I would have bought Anthology no questions asked if I thought they were able to deliver on their promises.
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The product as advertised would not have been gouging (sort of my point)
 
MikeH said:
The way MM raises their price as stock gets lower is egregious to me. It's so infuriating. I think their regular pricing (especially when it started out) isn't that insane for what you get. I do find the Tone Poets to be of a similar quality though and I have gotten most of those for under $30.

At the rate everything is going though, pretty soon feels like a regular 1LP release is going to be $35-$40. I do think the bubble is going to burst soon and companies like Newbury and VMP are trying to squeeze every dollar out of it before it does.
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The worst part was that they (MM) stopped distributing to other retailers, claiming the reason was that those retailers were jacking up prices. Then within a couple months they deleted that sentence from the letter on their page and jacked all the prices up themselves.

Then they put out colored versions that were around $30 higher and kept touting LOW STOCK so people who didn't care about the color bought the color versions. Then they repressed the black and brought the lower prices back (for a bit).

Completely turned me off from them as a company.
 
Woob_woob said:
Yea that's just you, if I buy a premium priced record I want all the fluff to be up to snuff, and it seems like the music is the only part they got right.
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That's fair. When I compare them to other recent releases that don't have the promised fluff, the price point is pretty similar. Chance and Tyler's recent releases were both around $40 shipped and those likely aren't at the quality of music/pressing that these were. That said, the pricing of 1LPs is getting crazy now, but I felt that the Anthology ones were in line with other Blue Note high quality releases and cheaper than trying to locate previous pressings of these albums in good condition. I totally get why people were underwhelmed by Anthology though and if you went into it expecting to have a flawless experience and expecting to have a crash course into the history of jazz, I can 100% see why you would be mad. And that's all on VMP for their vague promises and failure to deliver on them. One of my favorite promises was "exclusive discounts!" which they are now saying might just be on the next Anthology box set when they implied that the discounts would be on Blue Note records...

Woob_woob said:
Agreed, but the product didnt ship as advertised, and rarely does with VMP anymore.
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And that's why I'm no longer a member and don't see myself getting any future Anthologies. I wouldn't have gotten the first one either if it wasn't Blue Note and I hadn't purchased the previous VMPxBN records and gotten an idea of the pressing quality/mastering.
 
dhodo said:
The worst part was that they (MM) stopped distributing to other retailers, claiming the reason was that those retailers were jacking up prices. Then within a couple months they deleted that sentence from the letter on their page and jacked all the prices up themselves.

Then they put out colored versions that were around $30 higher and kept touting LOW STOCK so people who didn't care about the color bought the color versions. Then they repressed the black and brought the lower prices back (for a bit).

Completely turned me off from them as a company.
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Yea--it's very frustrating. Although I have seen MM still being distributed through some places like Acoustic Sounds unless that's just old stock still. I have quite a few MM pressings now but haven't purchased any directly through Blue Note. I have mostly gotten them around original price on eBay but now with jazz becoming more and more popular again, it's harder and harder to find MM for the original $40 list price.
 
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Woob_woob said:
Every comparison I've read of Anthology to other high end Blue Note releases says the opposite, but ok.
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Have you listened to them? The music and pressing quality is entirely in line with Music Matters. Some of the Anthology albums sound better than my MM pressings or AP or Classic Records pressings which are all priced at $40+ now. The jackets aren't as nice quality but the music itself sounds incredible. It's pretty much the only thing they got right with Anthology. Even the Ambrose album which comes from digital source since it was never recorded to tape sounds phenomenal. People are rightfully annoyed by all of the other things VMP got wrong with this set, but all of that is overshadowing the fact that the music itself is awesome. Years from now, the other stuff about how they had to re-send an album sleeve or the fact that they had the wrong label on the wrong side of an album won't phase me. They will still be among some of the best sounding records I own and that's what is important to me when I pay for something that's at that price point. I fully realize that I may be in the minority on that though. Will I buy another Anthology? Probably not. If I had to do it all again would I still buy this set? I honestly think I would but that's mostly because of the album selection and sound quality. Schizophrenia is one of my favorite jazz albums and finding an older copy in good, listenable condition would have cost me closer to $100 and I love all of the other records in the series.
 
Gruff Rhys → Pang!

11696
11695

shopusa.roughtraderecords.com

Pang!

Shipping to arrive around September 13 the deluxe edition comes on blue-splatter vinyl. Pang! is a futuristic psychedelic world pop album, a cross-cultural collaboration between Welsh musician and Super Furry Animals
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Tracklisting

  1. Pang!
  2. Bae Bae Bae
  3. Digidigol
  4. Ara Deg
  5. Eli Haul
  6. Niwl O Anwiredd
  7. Taranau Mai
  8. Oi Bys Nodau Clust
  9. Annedd Im Danedd


Pang! is a futuristic psychedelic world pop album, a cross-cultural collaboration between Welsh musician and Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys and South African electronic producer Muzi. Having met while recording the track “Vessels” for Damon Albarn’s world music collective Africa Express, Rhys and Muzi decided to continue working on transcontinental music projects together, first on a remix of Rhys’ song “Bae Bae Bae” and eventually on a Gruff Rhys solo album recorded in Wales and produced and mixed by Muzi in both Cardiff and Johannesburg which, at Muzi’s request, consists of Welsh-language songs (with bits in Zulu).

As Rhys recalls, “Sometimes like on Eli Haul, [Muzi] would leave songs alone - often simplifying them further. On occasion he would jump to the mic and join in with some vocals. Some songs he would take a loop of a particularly interesting section, build a beat and rework the song from scratch, and by the song Ôl Bys / Nodau Clust - which we mixed by coincidence following a conversation about Daft Punk and industrial music - Muzi completely takes over, scrapping my bad bossa guitars, only retaining the original’s vocals. In that sense it’s a kind of remix album where adventure is favoured over predictability and where the radical remixes are the finished articles. Pang!”

Rhys also drew inspiration for Pang! from a trip to Paisley Park on a tour for his 2018 solo record Babelsberg: “visiting the gloss of Prince’s democratic music palace confirmed in me that my move into day-glo processed pop with this record was justified and in particular, albums like Around the World in a Day (and in particular the title track) became a reference point for attempting to make psychedelically joyful, internationalist and deeply personal digital pop music.”
 
MikeH said:
Have you listened to them? The music and pressing quality is entirely in line with Music Matters. Some of the Anthology albums sound better than my MM pressings or AP or Classic Records pressings which are all priced at $40+ now. The jackets aren't as nice quality but the music itself sounds incredible. It's pretty much the only thing they got right with Anthology. Even the Ambrose album which comes from digital source since it was never recorded to tape sounds phenomenal. People are rightfully annoyed by all of the other things VMP got wrong with this set, but all of that is overshadowing the fact that the music itself is awesome. Years from now, the other stuff about how they had to re-send an album sleeve or the fact that they had the wrong label on the wrong side of an album won't phase me. They will still be among some of the best sounding records I own and that's what is important to me when I pay for something that's at that price point. I fully realize that I may be in the minority on that though. Will I buy another Anthology? Probably not. If I had to do it all again would I still buy this set? I honestly think I would but that's mostly because of the album selection and sound quality. Schizophrenia is one of my favorite jazz albums and finding an older copy in good, listenable condition would have cost me closer to $100 and I love all of the other records in the series.
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Yea I said the music is the one thing they got right, but if all you care about is the music why not save yourself a ton of money and download flac files since that's the best way to listen to music. The whole point of vinyl is that it's something more and Anthology got that part completely wrong.
 
The Anthology records may have similarities to MM releases at ~$50 each but they have more similarities to VMP Classics releases at $23 each IMO and you even get full listening notes with each of those to boot. Why they can provide that price structure for one strand of their membership and not another is beyond me. The Anthology was a rip off, nothing more, nothing less.
 
Mr Moore said:
The Anthology records may have similarities to MM releases at ~$50 each but they have more similarities to VMP Classics releases at $23 each IMO and you even get full listening notes with each of those to boot. Why they can provide that price structure for one strand of their membership and not another is beyond me. The Anthology was a rip off, nothing more, nothing less.
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I’m going to start this by saying I am not defending Anthology, it was an overpriced train wreck. But this is not a fair comparison. The $23 is as an add on. Normally those are $29 or whatever and wholesale cost lowers due to quantity. Ergo 5000 records cost less per piece than 1000.
 
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