Just an absorbing read, I wish I’d seen this to get it to you earlier over the weekend:
Compact discs may be more out of vogue than ever, but some albums will always sound best with lasers
The CD Case – Steven Hyden, Grantland.com (8 July 2014)
Nip over to it now and have a good read or pop it into Pocket to read next weekend.
Vinyl records store music in long grooves that a needle bumps its way through. CDs store music in light pits that convey on and off, 0 and 1 to a laser. But now Londoner Aleksander Kolkowski is taking CDs and cutting grooves into them. After he’s done his doings, you can play music off the CD – on a vinyl record player, never again a CD drive.
Not for all that long: this reborn CD doesn’t hold enough music to include a three-minute pop song.
It’s transforming a disposable media storage device made for cloned copying into a one-of-a-kind cult object. In a way, it’s very tongue in cheek. There’s a lot of fetishism about vinyl, but I see this as quite throw-away, really. I do it for free. People bring a CD and I give them one in return. On a few occasions people have asked me to go into commercial production, but that’s not really my intention.
Aleksander Kolkowski speaking to The Atlantic (30 June 2014)
Do read the full article from The Atlantic as it’s got a lot to say about his artistry, his physical technique and about the state of vinyl collection.