Dark (8) – Dark Round The Edges

Someone paid £950 for this, why? I bought this in 1990 because I never could have afforded an original. Now I couldn't afford this!

It's astonishing to realise that of the 30 editions of Dark, none faithfully reproduce the original photo cover.

Every single edition is inaccurate or embellished.

Every edition has the back and front the wrong way around.

The swank edition has photos the wrong size and is a single sleeve. The white borders are those of new sleeves, not images of the original sleeve.

The first legal reissue from 1990 on swank & dark side HAS THE STEREO IMAGE REVERSED. It was messed up by the pressing plant. Essentially it's defective.

No edition includes the whole actual original sleeve, eg the white card borders of the hand made gatefolds, or the authentic spine area.

New Prints from the negatives are not Vintage prints, techniques have changed, no two photographic prints from a neg are identical, none look like the originals.

Practically every other edition has added incorrect logos/band name that were not on the original.

The endless Akarma bootleg versions have a totally inappropriate Boeklin font logo added into the picture, copied from earlier K.Spell editions.

That means so far the most faithful reproduction is the recent Doodle sleeve, but that's not the well known sleeve.

Thus, 30 editions have all got it wrong. And all have the front and back the wrong way around. Which deserves some kind of award.

The 31st edition is the Doodle sleeve.

The forthcoming 32nd edition should have an exact facsimile of one of the last known existing colour gatefold sleeve editions of 1972, without any digital manipulation, additions or alterations, including the defects, wear, patina and authenticity. It will also reproduce the exact original photos from 1972 in their original tones.

This is the only all-analog repressing of this classic underground British monster, a fuzzed-out heavy psych/prog (dare I say?) masterpiece which any serious collector of '60s/'70s records will be intimately familiar with. And man, we're so lucky that this exists: for most obscurities, due to the circumstances in which the records were produced, master tapes have usually only been available for the rare original pressings, not any subsequent reissues. Finding one of the 64 original DARKs these days is pretty much impossible, so this is a perfect substitute. The fact that Steve Giles not only had the foresight to save his masters, but that they were actually used for this reissue is a pleasant surprise. There is a well-mastered Kissing Spell CD from around this same time frame, but for vinyl guys, this is the one you want. The only flaw is that the channels were accidently flipped; but this is easily fixed (or ignored), and a quick high-res digital dub reveals that the tape audio extends upwards to around 30kHz, way higher than the 21 kHz Nyquist frequency of a CD. And, although I've never had one, I seriously doubt a typical '70s private pressing would've contained that precision.

The photos on the front/back here were done by Steve's hand from his original photo negatives, which were afterwards stolen by the Akarma guys (they're bootleggers!) and thus never again used for any future reissue. Having only seen the Machu Picchu cover beforehand, seeing the "real" photo here revealed to me details in immense clarity which I didn't even know were there. It's unfortunate that the gatefold design was not replicated here, but the aforementioned Machu Picchu can still be easily picked up for the gatefold photos, lyric booklet, and replica labels.

There were apparently only 250 of these made, and they've become pretty expensive, but justifiably so. Upon initial issue more than thirty years ago they cost $150 retail, so you're just not gonna find one cheap. As of this writing, they're probably around the $600 range. If you can only have one expensive record in your collection, this is without a doubt one of the best choices you could make. Sell off some of those Madonna and Cheap Trick records and get yourself some DARK.

Except for the pressing being from the same run as the Darkside release the comments/reviews preceding this one and those appearing under the Darkside issue are incorrect. This was my reissue done in conjunction with the band in 1990. A deal was agreed upon to press 150 copies. It was never made known to me that far more were pressed and later sold en masse to someone else who redesigned the cover.

both darkside 001 versions listed on discogs are the exact same pressing with different covers but not both darkside 001, 225 x copies were issued as darkside 001 in the uk with a black cover , the remainder of the pressing run, circa 275 x copies were housed in the original style sleeves with glued on pics as above which were shipped to the usa and sold by SWANK as with the forever amber issue. the whole run was pressed up by steve giles of dark, the uk darkside edition of 225 copies was sold in the uk and the cover was printed in the uk. the vinyl of both versions is absolutely the same pressing. the black cover is actually rarer, it was issued by an early incarnation of kissing spell records, the label that discovered most of the uks rarest private pressings in the eighties, and is thought to have been sold to cypriot mafiosa around 1999.