I am marching to the beat... Part 3

In this entry I'm going to run through the 3rd, 4th and 5th pressings. From the 3rd press onwards, the design of the sleeve has stayed consistent, but there are quite a few changes between these presses and the two before them.

But first lets have a look at the vinyl shall we?

The 3rd press consists of one colour, solid white /750. From the 3rd press onwards too, the record is pressed on 180gram as opposed to the 150 gram vinyl of previous pressings. However as a downside, there is no longer any 'element' tie-in to the colour scheme of the records, ruined my fun.

The 4th press is remarkably similar to the 3rd press. It comes in cream /1000.

Yes, believe it or not these two are completely different pressings. You have to see them in person to really see any real difference, but it's cool I guess. I think the label had caught on to the similarity of the two and so added a IV to the centre label of the 4th press.

Next up is the 5th press, clear/ 1000. I was a little worried about this one, as I heard some stories about this press skipping loads and having cracks or splits in the record. Mine took a little longer to arrive this side of the pond, but I have no complaints about it, it arrived looking fine and plays perfectly. As a bonus, it looks really nice too!

The HUGE design change here, is that the record is now housed in a gatefold sleeve as opposed to the standard sleeves of previous pressings.

The gatefold is great though. The huge two sided poster was dropped in favour of a printed inner gatefold, housing all the lyrics and thank you's etc. making it a lot more convenient for first time listeners who want to follow the lyrics. I love the poster that came with earlier pressings, but it's never a bad idea to shake things up design wise to keep things interesting for people that own multiple copies. Again, everything was designed by Nick Steinhardt.

Another quirky little detail is that the cd sleeve follows this pattern. I know most people don't give a damn about cd's but I think anything Touche related is worth buying. Plus, the cover of the album was actually re-drawn for the cd. In fact, to my knowledge, the cover has been re-drawn 3 times to fit three different issues of the album. But more on that later!

Thanks for reading! Kane