Duran Duran – Medazzaland

A fantastic album, underrated at the time (as are most Duran Duran albums). A precursor to the industrial music age, diverse and challenging but never less than brilliant.

Ordered a brand new copy off Amazon for less than 16 quid the other day. Don't understand how copies are being sold for so much more. Turning into eBay on here!

Received this as a late Christmas gift a few days ago. It’s pretty rad. My discs all play fine and sound good. Definitely one you gotta crank up a bit. Packaging is good, and I really like the art booklet, some great pictures of the boys in there! Love how the pink vinyl is translucent, which I wasn’t expecting. The inner sleeve for disc 1 was crushed though, and had to replace it with a MoFi. However I’m very pleased with my copy. A lot of care has been put into making a very nice looking and sounding copy of an underrated Duran gem! Will definitely be snagging the rest of this years reissues with Astronaut, RCM, AYNIN and Future Past Deluxe!

Pressing and sound are great, but packaging was a BIG letdown. Like many others, the seam glue on the gatefold wasn't strong enough to hold the disk AND the artbook (which is obscenely heavy for any record i've had). The artbook itself is a poorly scanned recreation of the insert book from the original CD. My guess is since there was no vinyl release in 1998, a properly formatted mastering of the album art doesn't exist. Thankfully, this is the only album of the 2022 represses that seems to be an issue with. Still an awesome LP and one I'm happy to have!

In an ordinary world the seam glue would not have come undone. I was going to unite it tonight, but I’ll save it for the morning after.

I must have been really unlucky because my copy of the album has the aforementioned warp on LP1 and also a slightly smaller warp on LP2, which also has side 3 pressed slightly off-center, so C3 sounds really seasick. :/
Did I mention that the seam on the bottom of the 1st LP jacket slot also was completely unglued? UGH
LP1 (strangely, LP2 so much) is also one of the noisiest vinyl albums I have heard in a while. There is a lot of vinyl noise between tracks.
The music itself seems nicely mastered, not the best, but not the worst I have ever heard... at least it doesn't sound too overcompressed...For some odd reason, Side 4 sounds best of all 4 sides... though I haven't heard the album before so I have nothing to compare it to except for "Electric Bararella" which I have on 12" vinyl: and the sound on this LP is a bit muddier than the 12" single I have.
The art book was a bit pointless, frankly. Lyrics would have been nice. It feels like they had good intentions with this release, but missed the mark in a lot of ways that they likely didn't even realize until it was already getting shipped. It's a bit of a shame.

Sounds fine to me 🤷‍♂️ No complaints here. Never heard the album before so not got anything to compare it to.

I bought the anniversary edition in pink vinyl and had to return it because the 1st record (Side A and B) was wavy and my needle was skipping. The sound was dull. I won’t order a new one. I‘m pretty disappointed by this edition.

Sounds terrible and I don’t understand why? DD are one of the biggest bands in the world so this should have been a great record.
Along with that, I’ve bought 3 different copies from 2 vendors, 1 online and 1 local, and all 3 copies have an edge warp on the first disc that skips the first songs of sides A and B. Has anyone else had this problem? I’m curious if it’s due to the huge book shoved in with that record?
Really disappointed because I love the album and it looks fantastic. I suppose this one’s a shower and not a spinner.

Glad to finally have this in my collection. If you compare the old CD with this new vinyl, it feels like they are the same. I don’t understand what all those snobs in reviews are saying about sound quality, maybe it is not the greatest ever produced album, but it is true to the original sound and while an audiophile, Chris Bellman made version could have been awesome, if you take it as a loyal recreation of the original, it is fantastic. Packaging and pink vinyl are also very cool. One of my favourite Duran Duran’s albums of all time, i was young, free and experimental, this kind of record just enhanced my real life experiences, a part of my soul definitely!