I don't understand Vinyl. Not so much in raw physical terms: plastic is plastic is plastic, pretty much. It's this: Why is the replay medium of choice for some of music's most long-winded creators, the electronic music community, only capable of a little over twenty minutes a side?
What's the point? Orbital, for example, on their undeniably fantastic album "Insides" have 6 tracks (8 if you count the 2 two-parters) It comes on 3 pieces of Vinyl, that's one track per side. You spend half your time listening to the record merely changing the record over. Not only is this annoying, it also dilutes a lot of the album's effect, since you can't listen to it in an unbroken run. The new Orbital album is only on two discs, but to do this they had to change the track order to avoid breaking a two-part song across the two discs!
The Roni size album is on four discs, the first Squarepusher album is on two, and so on. Why then do I keep buying the damn things? I like to think it has nothing to do with the poseur value of the stuff, though I'd be kidding myself if I thought I was entirely immune. I think it's partly because of it's ubiquity in the DJing world. I'd like to DJ in a club, therefore I bought decks, and thus I buy things I would like to play out someday on Vinyl, not CD. Looking further still I think it's because of the simple fact that if you start scratching with a CD the CD player looks at you funny and stops working.
The analogue nature of the Vinyl record means that it is incredibly versatile. It provides an intuitive interface for the DJ. You can see where the tracks end on the record itself, as well as being able to physically see especially loud or quiet bits. You can see how of the track is left at the same time as see how much has gone. I remember seeing Radio one's Hip-hop show broadcast on TV, and their was a DJ scratching on it. Really wicked scratching. He had the same record on two turntables and was phasing between them, playing a section, pulling it back, playing the same section from the other record, then the same section from the first record again. There was no room for him to correct timings if he got a little out of sync, and the segment only lasted a half second or so. It was a feat of extreme dexterity, hitting a precise point on the surface of the record time after time, shifting between the decks in a constant loop. It was impressive. And maybe that's why we forgive Vinyl its indiscretions of length. It's a tactile, physical, thing. You interact with it in a way you never do with a CD that's hidden away in the innards of a player. The only other thing that comes close is the open reel tape recorder.
There is one other thing, though. CD's come in a little plastic box. 12-inch LPs come in 12-inch fat cardboard sleeves. Vinyl is far more physical than the CD, even the 7-inch is more of a thing than a CD. You know you've bought something when you've bought a record. CD's just hide at the bottom of the bag and skulk around, and that's not even touching on the extra warmth that the Phase distortion, inherent in dragging a diamond stylus through soft plastic, lends to even poorly mastered recordings. I'm listening to a friends' band's album now. It was recorded quite cheaply and they did something to reduce the noise hiss, but they did it to the two-track master, and it killed some of the bits of a loud guitar that make it sound great. CD makes it sound very clinical. Vinyl would have helped it regain some of its lost humanity.
And anyway, Record bags are cool-looking, and CD bags along the same lines would look really silly.
Matt