Jack White started Third Man after his recording contract expired with V2. The White Stripes signed with Warner to record Icky Thump, but Jack White pulled off a shrewd deal to keep the rights to vinyl pressings…and Third Man wasn’t far behind with reissues of the back catalog, plus new releases by bands like The Dead Weather.

If you’re into learning about the entire saga of Third Man, have a look at this excellent interview with one of Third Man’s major players, as published by Collector’s Weekly. It’s a pretty interesting look behind the scenes at Nashville’s prime iconoclast labels/record stores.

Lovely to watch, isn’t it?

My major complaint with most of the vinyl documentaries I’ve seen over the past year and a half is that the filmmakers all seem compelled to spend an inordinate amount of time discussing why vinyl is superior to digital. This is completely unnecessary and really sounds like a sales pitch. But that doesn’t spoil my enjoyment of this production in the long run…

And while I’m feeling feisty, additionally vexing to a nitpicky writer/editor is referring to more than one record album as “vinyls”. People! “Vinyl” is both singular AND plural.

–Joe Wallace

Is this the most expensive turntable ever built? If it’s not, it probably was at one time. But with all that fine, precision German-built analog attention to detail, can it really compare to the ultra-high tech wonder that was my first record player ever?

Really, no amount of $650,000 high-tech inventiveness could ever create the thrill of discovery comparable to what I had as a kid plopping down this Power Records vinyl (see below) down on the Close ‘n Play and hearing the psuedo-Morricone Italian crime soundtrack music blasting out of those crap speakers.

I realize now that the music on the following clip was the gateway drug for my now-insatiable soundtrack collecting obsession when it comes to Morricone, Stelvio Cipriani, Piero Umiliani and others. Strange that you can pin down a lifetime of music obsessions to a single, very obscure record heard as kid:

P.S. The story on the Batman: Stacked Cards vinyl is HILARIOUS. Listen all the way to the end to hear Batman ruminating that a frontal lobotomy could return The Joker back to “normal society”! Hell, yeah–let’s save time and bother and lobotomize EVERYBODY!

–Joe Wallace

So that’s why I keep posting the technically oriented and gear-related items–there are plenty of others out there who relate to this sort of thing every bit as much as the collecting and I am very happy about that. This is a clip on vinyl mastering that was shot at SXSW in 2011 and I’m definitely on the prowl for more of these…

–Joe Wallace

The album itself? Utterly fantastic, especially if you’re a fan of soundtrack sounds by Tangerine Dream.

Hyperbubble is better known for bright, up-tempo robot pop with plenty of genre influences from bubblegum to electronica, but Drastic Cinematic is a departure from that–the soundtrack-y vibe is all through this vinyl record and Hyperbubble lays it on THICK with fat, heavy analog synth rhythms and pulsing beats that call to mind some of the most exciting electronic soundtracks of the 70s and early 80s.

Standout moments on this album include the great-for-driving Night Cruiser, and Blame It On The Bot. And don’t overlook the opening track Vox Noir which has an excellent “Beach Boys gone goth” sound.

If you were a fan of the soundtrack for The Park Is Mine or Thief, you owe it to yourself to own this. Sure, Drastic Cinematic by Hyperbubble is available via MP3 in the usual places, but the vinyl version of this is, in my mind, definitive. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, though I must say for transparency’s sake that the band used some of my photography for the album cover–maybe I’m not so impartial? Either way, if you are a fan of synth soundtrack music, have a listen and you will not regret it.

–Joe Wallace

BoingBoing.net reports on a reissue of the classic synth record Electronic Mind Waves by Elektriktus, courtesy of the Barcelona label Wah Wah Records. This is one Italian synth LP worth whatever expense you must endure to hear…and it’s out again on vinyl, glorious vinyl.

The record is described by Wah Wah as, “8 synth fueled songs that sound very close to what kraut/cosmische heads were doing at the time, think of Conrad Schnitzler, Deuter or Cosmic Jokers, and also other European experimentalists like Richard Pinhas’ Heldon, Spacecraft, Didier Bocquet, Seesselberg, F.G. Experimental Laboratory, Roberto Cacciapaglia or Hydrus. Along with Cacciapaglia and Hydrus, Elektriktus shows the most adventurous experimental sounds under a kraut/cosmische music influence to ever come out of Italy”.

The BoingBoing article links to a sample of the Mind Waves track, but we’re including a different one here, the “First Wave” cut for variety’s sake. By all means, listen to them both–chances are good you’ll be hooked for life. This reissue is, according to the information at Wah Wah Records at press time, limited to 500 copies and is sure to be gone fast…