The arrival of the com­pact disc was thought to be the death sen­tence for LPs. Vinyl was big, impre­cise, and stuck in the past: CDs were the wave of the future. Recent years, how­ev­er, have seen a sur­pris­ing trend. Vinyl col­lec­tors have man­aged to weath­er the dig­i­tal music storm of the ‘80s and ‘90s, while com­pact discs, hav­ing seen bet­ter days, have dropped in pop­u­lar­i­ty. In fact, accord­ing to The Tele­graph, LP sales are bet­ter than they’ve been at any point over the past 12 years. Although it is the hob­by­ist col­lec­tor and the DJ who have buoyed vinyl sales for many years, the recent surge in LP pop­u­lar­i­ty is, in part, due to younger fans who pre­fer the expe­ri­ence of lis­ten­ing to vinyl records over dig­i­tal down­loads. Daft Punk, Arc­tic Mon­keys, The Nation­al, and Vam­pire Week­end are just some of the A‑list bands tak­ing advan­tage of the trend.

But how are LPs man­u­fac­tured today? Pret­ty much the exact way they’ve been pro­duced through­out the past 50 years, actu­al­ly. Many of the LP press­ing plants use restored press­es, bought sec­ond-hand for about $25,000. The video above, made in 1956 by RCA Vic­tor, gives a detailed descrip­tion of the process. After the sound record­ing, the audio is trans­ferred to a lac­quer mas­ter disc.

The play­ing time of the music dic­tates the num­ber of grooves on the disc, and the sound dynam­ics deter­mine the dis­tance between them. As the video explains, the loud pas­sages need more room, while qui­et ones need less. A fine­ly ground and elec­tri­cal­ly heat­ed piece of sap­phire cuts the vinyl with pre­ci­sion. Once it is com­plete, the mas­ter disc is coat­ed in var­i­ous met­als, which, when sep­a­rat­ed, cre­ate a new, sil­ver-faced mas­ter copy. This metal­lic mas­ter can’t be played, and is used to cre­ate a mold, which must be checked for sound qual­i­ty. Final­ly, the mold is used to make a stam­per, which stamps the appro­pri­ate grooves on the records. The record press heats the plas­tic, turn­ing it into a warm, mold­able goo, press­es it, and cools its once the grooves have been stamped. If you got lost some­where along the way, don’t wor­ry. Visu­als help, and the video above should give you an idea of how things hap­pen.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Boing Boing

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A Cel­e­bra­tion of Retro Media: Vinyl, Cas­settes, VHS, and Polaroid Too

Neil Young on the Trav­es­ty of MP3s

World Records: New Pho­to Exhib­it Pays Trib­ute to the Era of Vinyl Records & Turnta­bles

Pink Floyd had to find its way again after found­ing singer Syd Bar­rett had a men­tal break­down and left the band in 1968. The new group became intro­spec­tive, explor­ing a range of effects and sound­scapes that increas­ing­ly trend­ed toward (or invent­ed) New Age music. For exam­ple the open­ing instru­men­tal, “Shine On You Crazy Dia­mond (Part 1)” from 1975’s Wish You Were Here sounds for all the world like Van­ge­lis. At this point in their career, the band seemed like it would be per­fect­ly at home scor­ing sci-fi films, which—given the gold­en age of far out space-glam futur­ism that was the 1970s—I con­sid­er a won­der­ful thing. What this also means how­ev­er, is that Wish You Were Here is an album short on songs, fea­tur­ing only five prop­er­ly list­ed, though the first and last tracks are over ten minute long rock operettas.

Musi­cal­ly, it’s a tremen­dous­ly accom­plished piece of work, lush and expan­sive but curi­ous­ly restrained. The cen­ter­piece, “Have a Cig­ar”— sure­ly a pre­cur­sor of bit­ter show­biz rant dis­guised as dou­ble con­cept album, The Wall—is in fact sung by a ringer, Roy Harp­er. (The only oth­er time the band fea­tured a guest vocal­ist was on the soar­ing, word­less “Great Gig in the Sky” from the pre­vi­ous album, Dark Side of the Moon.) Though the col­lab­o­ra­tion was a fluke—Harper sim­ply hap­pened to be record­ing in the next stu­dio over—his pres­ence seems essen­tial in hind­sight. The band were big fans of Harper’s, an eccen­tric folk singer who has released 22 albums to date. It’s easy to see why. He’s like a psy­che­del­ic British Neil Young, an artist whom, I would argue, some­times has a lot in com­mon with Pink Floyd, such as a will­ing­ness to release albums almost ful­ly com­posed of extend­ed jams.

Wish You Were Here was writ­ten around the song “Shine on You Crazy Dia­mond,” an extend­ed jam bro­ken into two extend­ed sequences that book­end the album. The song is about their trag­i­cal­ly befud­dled for­mer singer, and the album has some of the sad­dest lyrics in the band’s oeu­vre, which I sup­pose says quite a lot (I attend­ed many an ado­les­cent par­ty where someone—yes, some­times that some­one was me—picked up the acoustic gui­tar and led a maudlin sin­ga­long of the title track.) Fans of the band will need no fur­ther per­suad­ing to watch the above doc­u­men­tary about the mak­ing of Wish You Were Here, but if my tout­ing does­n’t sway you, con­sid­er it then a rare oppor­tu­ni­ty to see some of the most tal­ent­ed musi­cians of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry at work, shin­ing even into their very Eng­lish old­er years (though rarely in the same room), with a dig­ni­ty and ded­i­ca­tion that is dif­fi­cult to find in mod­ern pop music. I say this with full aware­ness of how cranky it may sound, but so be it. They don’t make bands like this any­more.

Peo­ple do still occa­sion­al­ly make records like Pink Floyd’s, espe­cial­ly like 1973’s Dark Side of the Moon—which more or less per­fect­ed the sound of space rock—but no one has ever made one so per­fect­ly real­ized. And yet if asked to choose between that album and Wish You Were Here, I could not do it. They are far too dif­fer­ent in their approach­es. In the Mak­ing of Dark Side of the Moon doc­u­men­tary above, Roger Waters char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly says that Dark Side was made at a time when the band “still had a com­mon goal—that is to become rich and famous.” And for all its acid satire of wealth and fame and its often mor­bid themes, it’s the sound of a band full of youth­ful self-con­fi­dence and ambi­tion, where the follow-up’s orches­tral pieces speak of deep­er and sad­der realms.

The songs on Dark Side of the Moon were part­ly fin­ished live as the band debuted exper­i­men­tal ver­sions of the songs in a 1972 tour, and the album’s suc­cess the fol­low­ing year saw the band real­ize their dreams. Pink Floyd became a sta­di­um act overnight. One can imag­ine the toll the Dark Side of the Moon tour­ing took on the band, who—despite their renown for stage spectacles—have always seemed like very retir­ing indi­vid­u­als, except for the fre­quent­ly grandiose Waters.

Waters has tak­en a lot of flack for his part in the long­stand­ing ani­mos­i­ty between him­self and co-leader, gui­tarist David Gilmour, but see­ing him mas­ter­mind Dark Side of the Moon—through ret­ro­spec­tive inter­views mainly—reminds us of what an enor­mous tal­ent he had. Speak­ing of retir­ing per­son­al­i­ties, Waters, for a time the band’s pri­ma­ry lyri­cist, penned the unfor­get­table line, “hang­ing on in qui­et des­per­a­tion is the Eng­lish way” from “Time”—a line cribbed from Thore­au but that could have been writ­ten by Eve­lyn Waugh or Som­er­set Maugh­am, says gui­tarist Nigel Williamson. It’s a “descrip­tion of the Eng­lish char­ac­ter,” says Williamson, that “permeate[s] the whole record, and indeed the whole of Pink Floyd’s career.”

H/T and thanks goes to @BrainPicker for send­ing the top film our way.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Syd Bar­rett: Under Review, a Full Doc­u­men­tary About Pink Floyd’s Bril­liant and Trou­bled Founder

Dark Side of the Rain­bow: Pink Floyd Meets The Wiz­ard of Oz in One of the Ear­li­est Mash-Ups

Watch Pink Floyd Play Live in the Ruins of Pom­peii (1972)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Jon­ny Wil­son, oth­er­wise known as Eclec­tic Method, has made an art of “splic­ing togeth­er music, TV and film and set­ting it to high-ener­gy dance beats.” He has also become some­thing of a dig­i­tal cura­tor of pop cul­ture. In the video above, Wil­son presents:

A video remix jour­ney through the his­to­ry of sam­pling tak­ing in some of the most not­ed breaks and riffs of the decades. A chrono­log­i­cal jour­ney from the Bea­t­les’ use of the Mel­lotron in the 60s to the sam­ple dense hiphop and dance music of the 80s and 90s. Each break is rep­re­sent­ed by a vibrat­ing vinyl sound­wave explod­ing into var­i­ous tracks that sam­pled it, each re-use anoth­er chap­ter in the mod­ern nar­ra­tive.

The audio track can be down­loaded over at Sound­Cloud. If you dig this brief bit of musi­cal his­to­ry, you won’t want to miss some of the relat­ed items below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rick Wake­man Tells the Sto­ry of the Mel­lotron, the Odd­ball Pro­to-Syn­the­siz­er Pio­neered by the Bea­t­les

All Hail the Beat: How the 1980 Roland TR-808 Drum Machine Changed Pop Music

The “Amen Break”: The Most Famous 6‑Second Drum Loop & How It Spawned a Sam­pling Rev­o­lu­tion

On Jan­u­ary 7th, Neil Young played an acoustic solo con­cert at Carnegie Hall and treat­ed the audi­ence to what Rolling Stone calls, “an absolute­ly jaw-drop­ping two hour and 20-minute show that focused large­ly on his gold­en peri­od of 1966 to 1978.” “It was, with­out a doubt, one of the great­est Neil Young shows of the past decade, at least when he was­n’t play­ing with Crazy Horse.” Above, we have a crowd­sourced con­cert film of that entire glo­ri­ous show. It was stitched togeth­er and uploaded to Youtube by Reel­ife Doc­u­men­tary Pro­duc­tions. Find the 23-song setlist here.

via @SteveSilberman

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See Neil Young Per­form Clas­sic Songs in 1971 BBC Con­cert: “Old Man,” “Heart of Gold” & More

Great Sto­ry: How Neil Young Intro­duced His Clas­sic 1972 Album Har­vest to Gra­ham Nash

‘The Nee­dle and the Dam­age Done’: Neil Young Plays Two Songs on The John­ny Cash Show, 1971

Neil Young Busk­ing in Glas­gow, 1976: The Sto­ry Behind the Footage