Vinyl Me Please

Vinyl Me, Please Is Honoring Miles Davis With A Special Limited-Edition Box Set Of His ‘Electric Years’ Albums

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Vinyl Me, Please, the popular vinyl subscription company, has announced that their new anthology is a special Miles Davis tribute called Miles Davis: The Electric Years.

The limited-edition box set will consist of seven albums on vinyl from a certain period of Davis’ career — from 1969 to 1974, specifically. The records include In A Silent Way, B*tches Brew, A Tribute To Jack Johnson, Live-Evil, On The Corner, Big Fun, and Get Up With It.

They have also all been “mastered AAA from 1-to-1 tape transfers of the master tapes by Ryan Smith at Sterling Sound,” per VMP press materials. The box set will come wit a 24-page “listening notes and photo booklet” written by Ben Ratliff. The artwork on the box’s cover is a portrait of Davis done by the artist Tadayuki Naitoh.

“As a total volume of music, these records achieve an organic unity by growing and dissolving into one another, even as they might individually seem to you disjointed or unclear or even disembodied,” Ratliff wrote on the company’s website. “If so, you shouldn’t feel alone. This may be some of the most confusing music ever made. Miles Davis aspired to be the sort of successful artist who could make the ensembles and records and concerts that he wanted, when he wanted, such that he didn’t particularly have to worry about record-label marketing, audiences, and critics.”

This Miles Davis: The Electric Years tribute box set costs $349 for members and $399 for those who aren’t subscribed. It’s available for pre-order here.

VInyl Me, Please is Building A Gigantic Record Pressing Plant In Denver

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It’s no industry secret that there is still a shortage of vinyl pressing plants today. While independent artists and labels carried along the vinyl industry for the past decade or two, it wasn’t until in recent years when major labels jumped on the increase of vinyl record sales and began securing pressing contracts en masse. While artists like Taylor Swift and Adele have seen their vinyl sales skyrocket, independent artists have had to deal with months-long waits to get their records pressed. Jack White, who famously owns Detroit’s Third Man Records pressing plant, recently issued a call to action to all major labels to strongly consider building their own production facilities in order to counteract this economic effect. And while they’re not doing that yet, monthly record subscription service Vinyl Me, Please is.

The Boulder, Colorado-based company has begun construction on a massive 14,000-square-foot facility in Denver that is, according to Billboard, an “audiophile-grade” plant that is set to “open by year end for production, tours, and special events.” For context, Third Man Records in Detroit is a 10,000-square-foot warehouse, so VMP’s location is considerably larger.

Billboard reported last year that VMP had 80,000 subscribers, a figure that was steadily growing. It’s unclear whether the facility will be manufacturing records that won’t be sold exclusively to VMP customers, but a press release indicated that it will be an “experiential space” that lets visitors see the process of how records are made; almost like an open kitchen, but instead of food, they’ll be cooking vinyl.

Vinyl Me, Please Announces Its Stacked Fall Slate With Records From Usher, Clipse, RZA, And More

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Vinyl Me, Please has established themselves as an essential ally to vinyl collectors over the years, as they regularly offer exclusive editions of revered albums, pressed in unique colors and accompanied by delightful extras. There are only three months left in the year, and today, VMP has shared the roadmap for how they’ll be handling their monthly releases for October, November, and December.

October’s albums of the month are Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimest (as the month’s Essentials release), Teddy Pendergrass’s Life Is A Song Worth Singing (Classics), Three 6 Mafia’s When The Smoke Clears: Sixty 6, Sixty 1 (Hip-Hop), and Sam Hunt’s Montevallo (Country). Following that in November will be Usher’s Confessions (Essentials), Freddie King’s My Feeling For The Blues (Classics), Clipse’s Hell Hath No Fury (Hip-Hop), and Gram Parsons’s Grievous Angel (Country). Closing the year in December are The Meters’s Rejuvenation (Essentials), Roberta Flack’s Quiet Fire (Classics), RZA’s RZA as Bobby Digital In Stereo (Hip-Hop), and Buck Owens & His Buckaroos’s Carnegie Hall Concert (Country).

All of the releases are bound to be special, and in particular, Usher’s Confessions represents something new for VMP, as Alexandra Berenson, their Head of A&R, notes, “We’re really excited for the opportunity to run a record like this because we haven’t really done a massive R&B crossover hit in our Essentials. It’s a very cohesive album and it has been totally underserved on vinyl. It hasn’t had a reissue since it first came out and we figured, ‘Let’s give this the VMP treatment. Let’s try to make the most definitive version of this record that we can.’”

Learn more about the upcoming Essentials releases here, the upcoming Classics releases here, the upcoming Hip-Hop releases here, and the upcoming Country releases here.

Vinyl Me, Please Celebrates A Milestone With ‘VMP 100’ Editions Of Albums By Outkast, Gorillaz, And More

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For years now, Vinyl Me, Please has been one of the premiere ways to get a regular flow of exclusive and lovingly presented vinyl rereleases of terrific albums. Now they are celebrating their 100th Essential Record Of The Month with “VMP 100,” a series of reissues of sought-after albums.

The albums that will be re-released as part of the series are Gorillaz’s Demon Days; Phoenix’s Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix; Outkast’s Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik; Queens Of The Stone Age’s Songs For The Deaf; Queen’s A Night At The Opera; Outkast’s Stankonia; Spiritualized’s Ladies And Gentlemen, We Are Floating In Space; Saba’s Care For Me; Al Green’s Call Me; and Miles Davis & John Coltrane’s The Final Tour: Paris, March 21, 1960.

Vinyl Me, Please CEO Cameron Schaefer says, “Exploring music together is at the heart of VMP and is the driving force behind the last eight years of monthly releases. VMP Essentials is our flagship subscription, the OG, and is the most clear representation of the evolution and growth of our company and community. While it feels like we’ve reached the top of a mountain in a sense with VMP 100, the reality is there’s so much more to explore. It’s truly just the beginning.”

Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips, who have albums re-issued through VMP but are not included in the “VMP 100” rereleases, offered a statement, saying, “Being selected by VMP and having them present our music and packaging to their collected followers is like having one of the world’s great art museums show your stuff; or should I say, it’s like a great art museum that you’ve been to that you love and admire, and then one day you go to the museum and they have YOUR art hanging in it. It’s like being welcomed and accepted into a sacred church where records are God.”

Learn more about “VMP 100” here.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.