Skip to content

A very cool retro CD label…

There's a Portland radio station, KINK FM 102, that has a fair number of live 'in the studio' performances each year. As a result, for each of the last eight years, they've released a compilation CD with the best of those live performances. Money earned from the CD sales goes to SMART--Start Making A Reader Today, a program that helps at-risk youth develop their reading skills. As such, I feel good about purchasing the CD each year; the fact that there are usually a fair number of tracks I like (almost all are acoustic with simple piano and/or guitar accompanying the voices) is just an added bonus.

So what's all this have to do with technology? Well, this year's CD, Kink Live 8, has one of the most unique, creative 'labels' I've ever seen. Below are small images of both the front and back of the CD:

Kink Live 8 frontKink Live 8 back

Click on either image for a larger version in a new window, and you can see the details in the front--it looks just like an old vinyl record (for those of you old enough to remember those). What you can't really see is how much it actually feels like a record, too. The grooves are there, there are smooth areas between each song, and the overall texture is very similar to what I remember of vinyl. The back side is just pure black, and polished to a near mirror-like finish. I didn't even know such things were available, but Froogle quickly pointed out my lack of knowledge on the subject.

That's it; I just wanted to point out a really cool CD label design (and plug a good cause, if you happen to like any of those bands and are in the greater Portland area). It's a nice change of pace from the image- and text-heavy labels that I usually see.

7 thoughts on “A very cool retro CD label…”

  1. Vinyl still captures the warmth of the original performance, its deep rich ambiance is not capable of being reproduced even by a £5000 CD player.
    We tested it, vinyl against CD. The cost of the deck and the power amps £25K, vinyl record dec £5K, we played the CD first; crisp bright music filled the room as the Jazz Sax harmonized with the piano to the Bass fiddle we levied to the vibe it was enjoyable. Next we played the Vinyl having left the pre amp to warm for an hour. Sonorous quantities of colour echoed around the room the supple string sureties of the Bass players fingers rasped to the glorious tune of the saxophonist the music breathed ebbed and flowed and when the bright majesty of the Louie Armstrong's Trumpet echoed into the quartet I found myself sitting in a down town bar in New Orleans, dam I could smell the cigarette smoke and hear the breathing of all who were licensing within. Truly superb a wonderful moment a live performance with the Maestro 50 years after the recording. What is it that Vinyl has that CD can't reproduce even in its most expensive of CD of system players? Or is it in the way we record music today that looses the harmony and rich tapestry of a performance

  2. It feels like a real vinyl, with grooves and everything? Maybe it actually plays on an old record player - have you tried it out?

  3. However, be very careful with slot loading CD players. It isn't the same thickness as usual disks. I stuck this in a Mac Mini and had to disassemble the computer to get it out. It would have been a huge problem if it had been the disk player in my car.

Comments are closed.