FIRST PICTURES / Belly: Star 2LP vinyl
4AD’s limited coloured vinyl reissue of Belly‘s 1993 debut Star is out today and meets all expectations – it’s a thing of beauty…
This limited edition double marbled white vinyl set doesn’t really look anything like the very colourful ‘artists impression’ shown on the news story earlier this week. The two records are basically pinky-white and bluey-white both with fairly subtle ‘marble’ effect.
The records are both 140g vinyl pressings and to answer a question posed by an SDE reader earlier this week, they are both 33RPM, even though the album is spread over two records.
Chris Bigg’s design work looks fantastic, the gatefold is high quality, printed on uncoated stock – as are the two inner sleeves – and even though this isn’t particular cheap, it feels like you’re getting decent value. Particularly because this comes with a CD rather than the ubiquitous MP3 code-on-a-card. Having the optical disc is great, but you’d wish they’d cobbled up the extra budget to put this in a printed card sleeve.
The vinyl sounds great – quiet and warm and it’s a lovely way to get to know (or reacquaint yourself with) this album which is 23 years old at the of the year. The lack of standalone CD edition may be addressed at some point, but we’d love to see more vinyl reissues demonstrate this level of care and attention.
Star, Limited 2LP Gatefold white vinyl edition, is out now.
By Paul Sinclair
7