vinyl drag

Vinyl Drag is an experiment. An experiment that takes place on an unsuspecting slab of 12” vinyl.

We all know that vinyl records are vulnerable, and need to be treated with respect. Keeping to this rule I’ve always been mindful of the way that I handle all records that I come across. Now it’s time to see what happens when I don’t follow the rules. Below you will find recordings that serve as a document of degradation. Every week (or so) since October I have been using this page to post an audio recording of a 12" record that has been intentionally abused.

As with all blogs the posts work backwards with the most recent post at the top and the original track at the bottom. Click to hear the original track.
Alternatively, you can click here to be presented with just the audio posts.

Oct 30
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[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

On Tuesday night it snowed here, so I thought I’d take the opportunity and left the poor record outside in the snow for 15 minutes, whilst the snow was still falling. After the 15 minutes were up I brought it in to dry naturally, which I was sure would probably ruin the record a fair bit, and I was right.

Let this be a lesson to all of you record junkies out there. Snow and vinyl do not go well together.

Here is a picture of the waveforms in Logic. The top waveform is of the track dated October 26th and the bottom waveform is of the track that I uploaded today. You can see how the volume levels have drastically decreased in the newer track - after the snow - and how the waveforms go rapidly out of synchronization towards the end which was due to my needle having a hard time staying in the grooves of the snow damaged record.