SYR2: How many Colours...?
 

According to the discography section of the official website, SYR2/Slaapkamers Met SlagRoom has only been released on black (by mistake), then blue (or "tiel", as it was called in one of the SLR catalogues at the time), and again, black vinyl. However, my copy is on an almost-opaque green, just a shade or two darker than the green on the album jacket and record label--a green very similar to that found on the lower stripe of the Welsh flag or that used in some customary Welsh eisteddfodd costumes. What's up with this? Does anyone else out there have a copy pressed on this colour vinyl...?

Can't anyone help me clear up this contentious colour issue? Everyneurotic? Atsonicpark? Screamingskull? Does anyone know how this came to be released on green vinyl? A misprint? Official?

sorry. :(

i'd check the discography on this site perhaps; it seems to have any bit of info you'd ever want to know..

That's the first place I always check as "The Gospel" on all matters Sonic. The same old story as everywhere else: black (mistake)-blue-black. If I had a digital camera, I'd take a shot or two of the vinyl and post it, to determine if anyone else owns or has seen anything like it.

where did you get it?

i've had a few odd coloured vinyls in my time that i could find no official record of. i live in europe and often buy releases i can't get in europe online from various sources. i've been sold fakes on wrongly coloured vinyl often. i'm guessing you're in wales (flag/spelling of colour). did you get this imported from the states or from europe? there is a massive culture of fake vinyls being pressed in europe - usually on weird colours and usually focusing on tiny indie labels.

sometimes it can be cool - i've got some stuff i just couldn't afford and that has never been reissued. sometimes it can really shit on your cornflakes.

anyway, hope you solve your mystery. it doesn't matter in the end what colour it is, just how well it plays.

a lot of people mistake blue + green + all the shades in between. i'm not saying YOU are, i'm saying whichever source identified the vinyl as 'blue' for my site (my copy is black), may have the same pressing as you and just interpreted the colour.. differently.

or, there could be other colors! i'm curious to know either way, and i think this has come up before. coloured folk, post your SYR2 snapshots!

edit: oh, looks like i have a pic of the blue on my site. barring any potential lighting discrepancies, is that definitely not the one you have?

Chris, my copy is definitely not the version pictured on your site; that one, like every other one I've seen pictured on other discographies, ebay, fansites, etc. is a shade of semi-transparent blue, very similar to that of Experimental Jet Set, if not exactly the same. The green label stands out distinctly against these blue copies; with mine, it might be difficult for some to discern the label from the vinyl at first glance, if the label didn't have the titles, etc.

I bought this copy from an American fella on ebay, about a year ago, I guess. I can't see or hear anything about it that says "bootleg"; it's very nice, actually.

One other thing that's starting to rub at the back of my neck and make me wonder: I have an old SLR flyer from about 1999, and on it, SYR2 is credited with being pressed on 'teal' vinyl (I misspelled it 'tiel' in my initial post above). 'Teal' refers to the teal duck--a small freshwater species. (My father's a life-long duck hunter, so I grew up knowing this stuff since almost infancy.) In terms of colour, I've always heard such ducks being referred to as 'teal-blue' or (more commonly) 'teal-green'. I looked up 'teal' in Webster's dictionary; it was not listed as a colour, but as a duck, it was said to be a "genus of small freshwater ducks of Europe and North America, esp. the green-winged...." Hmmm...So now I'm thinking, Did they press it on both varieties of teal...?

Oh--by the way, I'm from Canada, not Wales. A fair bit of Welsh blood, but Canadian. Canadians spell 'colour' with the u, as well.

above is a picture of my copy but in real life it looks more green, here is another picture but it is hard to get the camera to pick up on how green my copy is, i would say mine is turquoise and i guess other copies varie in colour,
hope this helps

i also have EVOL and SISTER on coloured vinyl does anybody know when or how many of these were made?

Yes!!! This is the sort of copy I have! Digital cameras (and various computer processes in general) tend to somewhat distort true colours--for example, making the SYR2 vinyl look more 'seafoam'- or 'aqua'-coloured in your first photo (and the Sister and EVOL vinyl more greyish and peachy than what they are purple and pink); but still, there can be no question, that's the colour vinyl my copy is pressed on. In normal house light, as I've said before, it looks almost identical to the shade of green that you associate with the Welsh flag and eisteddfodd wardrobes (the kind participating little girls traditionally wore). As anyone should plainly see, it in no way resembles the Experimental Jet Set-type blue of the usual copies you come across on discography and fan sites, ebay, etc.

So now I'm left wondering something else: those earliest copies of SYR2 we're always reading about in discographies, the ones supposedly pressed mistakenly on black vinyl, Could those actually be these green-vinyl copies? Could the writers of those discographies actually be referring to an original small first-pressing (accidental or intended), but simply got the colour wrong, and a legend about "the few copies on black vinyl" has grown up around this as a result? (Black as the colour of choice for such a legend may have been spurred on by the fact that the record's third and future pressings were on black vinyl.) I think it's at least plausible.

As for the origins of the coloured EVOL and Sister LPs, to the best of my knowledge, they were reissued in coloured editions circa 1990--I'm not sure about how large or small the press runs were, although I have a feeling it was fairly limited (you don't see these coloured copies in circulation much). In fact, if I'm not mistaken, I believe a large portion of all SST Records' 'classic albums' were reissued in limited coloured-vinyl editions at that same time.




Not the greatest and most revealing photo (courtesy of Chris Lawrence's site referenced above), but obviously a shade of blue far from resembling anything like the green copy Stu666 has so kindly photographed and posted:













Alright! I found a more revealing photo! From my perspective, this could be Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star with a different label on it--so blue it would be better suited to the Scottish flag than what it would the Welsh!



[IMG]http://www.sonicyouth.com/gossip/

 

[/IMG]

I contacted the aforementioned American fella whom I bought my green copy from, and he informs me that he got it originally at the Beggars Group/XL Records office in New York. He believes it was some sort of promo. The plot thickens....

Here's my 'black' copy:

http://www.sonicyouth.com/mustang/syr2black.jpg

Hopefully the camera didn't betray the colour too much... I'd definitely call it black, though.

Interesting thread w/ good pictures!

Mine's definitely a green-ish colour. It's greener than the colour of the sleeve for sure.

I don't know how they make marble vinyl but perhaps the way they do it means that some are greener than others and some are bluer.

Well, if Chris's black copy above is definitely one of those 'accidently pressed early copies' we read and hear about, then we have no other choice but to assume that there was a third colour intentionally pressed--no doubt a much shorter press run. So maybe when they said 'teal' they really did mean the two versions, teal-blue and teal-green, like I talk about above. I tried e-mailing the folk at SLR to see if they could clarify some of this, but they've yet to respond--which is strange, for they usually tend to get back to me about the most nitpicking trivial matters. Maybe Chris would have more sway, being linked to the official site and all. Surely someone representing Steve Shelley would know the particulars of the various pressings.