After weeks of waiting I have finally received my “Blackstar” vinyl. It’s a nicely packaged, heavy weight 180g transparent pressing which comes accompanied with a lovely 12″ matt print book.
Visconti mentioned that the master for the vinyl would sound like a “good old record”. But it doesn’t really, not to my ears anyway. It’s slightly brighter than the digital releases, but certainly not more dynamic. This leads me to believe that a lot of the compression used on “Blackstar” was done during the mixing/recording process, which would seem like a reasonable assumption.
The vinyl does sound good, but still with a very modern sound.
There’s some samples below, recorded from my vinyl and volume normalised against the CD masters. See if you can ABX between them.
David Bowie “Blackstar” Master ABX Results
David Bowie “Blackstar” Master Volumes
David Bowie “‘Tis A Pity She Was A Whore” Vinyl Master
David Bowie “‘Tis A Pity She Was A Whore” CD Master
David Bowie “Dollar Days” Vinyl Master
David Bowie “Dollar Days” CD Master