The Hamrahlíð Choir* – Cosmogony

Lots of surface noise, pops, crackles, you name it. But in the end it's a beautiful picture disc and maybe is more suited for display rather than play.

I think some of these reviews are an instance of someone encountering the concept of a picture disc for the first time. If it not sounding as good as a standard vinyl pressing is a concern, obviously the novelty factor doesn't outweigh the purpose of your vinyl obtainment.

That being the case, a small rant with little to do with this particular pressing: the argument can be made that listening to vinyl is already an experience of relative and subjective loss vs. gain regarding audio fidelity, especially for modern, digitized music where it stands to gain nothing fundamental from the format because it wasn't produced from the ground up in like format. Choosing to listen to a record vs. a digital source requires acquiescing to a certain amount of noise (inherent pops and crackles, no matter how stridently mitigated) and setting yourself up to navigate and learn to enjoy this new floor and ceiling regarding loss, fragility, imperfections, etc. As a hobbyist your norm for sound quickly takes a new form and it becomes your unquestionable norm, but some theoretical someone who finds vinyl a pointless endeavor and sits down to your perfect setup might get distracted by even the faintest amplified dust spark, and would rather get up and go listen to their Beats headphones.

Picture discs are just a different floor and ceiling of weighing sound vs format. This disc in particular is pretty, and as with any album art, creates a certain narrative experience and/or statement when paired with these particular tracks. As an added bonus, you can listen to it and see something this pretty actually produce sound. It's not the best fidelity, that's right--luckily, both these tracks are on standard vinyl albums, or CD, or streaming, or whatever suits you. The point of their inclusion here isn't as the best possible audio presentation, but to gain from the peculiarity of their physical form.

Is there a touch of the extraneous or decadent, given the price? Sure, but this is Björk--she used to release the same single with multiple cover art variants, the same kind of artificial collectibility as Pokémon cards. And it's all relative--by default these are toxic pucks of congo gold, large and sometimes elaborate packages of dyes and gloss, and I'd love to see a record collection that consists of only the utmost essentials, as it's really only reflecting its owner's shaky definition.

It's a vinyl but it's not made to be listened to ... appeals to the eye but not to the ear. I guess I won't ever play it again.

Who curated this from a technical standpoint should find another purpose in life...
1) the packaging is indeed poor. I expected worse reading the comments here, but at least my copy arrived with 0 damage. Pfew!
2) beautifully printed. Really nice to look at.
3) side A slightly wavy / side B flat but quite uncentered; a few visible indents on the recorded edge of side B but apparently not too audible.
4) occasional cracks and pops here and there on both sides but I expected worse for a picture disc. Yes, there is surface noise but not as disturbing as it usually gets with picture discs.
5) the recording starts WAY too close to the edge on both sides. Being a 45rpm and not perfectly flat, nor perfectly centered, nor completely damage free on side B... I seriously feared my needle could get damaged when hitting the visible indents on side B or simply miss the track and slip on the edge... I really don't get this choice when there's PLENTY of empty space on the disc.
That's about it. Hope this helps.

for £25 this packaging is abysmal? feels super cheap , the plastic wrapping is so bad:( the picture disc looks beautiful though

Audio quality is surprisingly good. Some surface noise. Pretty bad packaging tho

I haven't played mine yet, but I do want to complain about the packaging. This isn't cheap for single 45rpm 12", and the packaging is still a thin plastic. If you have this shipped, there is a high chance it will arrive with splits in the plastic sleeve. I immediately separated the vinyl to prevent further damage.

Apart from all the usual picture disc noise, this one actually sounds really great.

Can anyone comment on the audio qualitiy? I heard bad things