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FIRST PICTURES / Nick Drake: Bryter Layter remastered vinyl box set

Nick Drake / Bryter Layter vinyl box set

Nick Drake‘s 1970 album Bryter Layter was issued last week as a special vinyl box set, in the same way Pink Moon was last year.

This new reissue comes in a rigid lift-off lid box with a slightly bizarre front image of a sealed version of the album complete with a ‘Record Tape & Video Exchange’ sticker on the front (not an actual sticker).

Inside resides a large folded replica of a ‘shop poster’ (the item shown in white below) as well as facsimiles of NEMS concert listing sheet and a handwritten set-list. The credits and mastering notes are printed on a circular card representation of the master tape, which is a nice touch, and it is here you will also find a download code for the album in the following formats: MP3 of remastered 24/96 files, FLAC of remastered 24/96 files and MP3 of the vinyl album dubbed from an original pressing “recorded from the Drake’s family gramophone player”.

John Wood who remastered this edition (he was the original engineer) points out that the original masters to Bryter Layter have been lost, so he used his personal safety copy made at the time of the original mixes.

The star of the show is the record itself which features a fantastic textured sleeve. The inner sleeve has an original inner sleeve printed on it. Cute, but why not actually re-create the original sleeve properly, with the correct paper (instead of printing an image on modern paper), OR being an audiophile product forget about ‘recreating’ something old and provide a high quality anti-static inner sleeve to help look after the LP (see Analogue Productions’ Doors reissues)

Quibbles aside, the vinyl sounds very quiet, and the music sounds fantastic, with a lot of detail and warmth. Hard to imagine any Drake fans with turntables will be disappointed with this set. Whether the box element is really necessary is up for debate (there’s not that much in it), but hey, we like boxes around here and the care and attention with the presentation is self evident. Out now.

Nick Drake / Bryter Layter vinyl box set
Lift-off lid rigid box (click to enlarge)
Nick Drake / Bryter Layter vinyl box set
Posters and facsimile of handwritten set list are amongst the contents (click to enlarge)
Nick Drake / Bryter Layter vinyl box set
Card cut-out of master tape (click to enlarge)
Nick Drake / Bryter Layter vinyl box set
Click to enlarge
Nick Drake / Bryter Layter vinyl box set
Superb textured sleeve (click to enlarge)
Nick Drake / Bryter Layter vinyl box set
Click to enlarge
Nick Drake / Bryter Layter vinyl box set
‘fake’ inner sleeve (click to enlarge)

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4 Comments

4 thoughts on “FIRST PICTURES / Nick Drake: Bryter Layter remastered vinyl box set

  1. A strange case of over-texturising the cover by the look of it. The original does *not* look (or feel like) a lousy re-print of a 15th century old master.

    And why the semi-repro inner bags? Original Island inner bags of the era were that same colour with the island records basing st (all lower case) strap-line which were, themselves poly-lined. Which begs the question, why re-invent the wheel? Both my original pressing and 2nd (which was sans the light texturisation of the cover) are in perfect condition with inner bags perfectly intact!

    Odd…

  2. The unpacking video on amazon shows how little is in the box for the money! And look at the way he handles the vinyl :O

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