4 out of 5

Label: WéMè Records

Produced by: ?

A collection of Rephlex’s Volume One and Volume Two, which are A. not cheap on CD, and B. definitely not cheap on vinyl. The rating is about the collection quality, and not the content.

WéMè Records has been an amazing resource of discovery and rediscovery of key electro, with the label managing to deliver absolutely solid pressings – the case here; clean, crisp wax of twenty-year old albums – at relatively low / affordable prices (if you ignore the not-WéMè’s-fault b.s. of shipping fees to my US home currently, thanks to the administration deciding that it helps my country if I pay $30 extra dollars for overseas goods that aren’t produced here). I’ll suppose prices are maintained by going sans bells and whistles – no remasters or extra art on reissues; generally no liner notes; etc. – but the label still has a design ethic through its center-label art or some color choices, and remains pretty slavish in terms of giving us the original art when resurrecting something.

…Which is the only knock here, and it’s a really silly one: the original LPs, from what I can see on Discogs, had some art on the back that it seems odd to have dropped here. We get the front cover of Volume One and Volume Two on the front and back of the set; and an image from one of the center labels – which are all accurately reproduced – as the interior art. But those back covers are missing. Now, they would’ve been repeated images, so I kinda get not putting it in the interior; fairly, they maintained touches of the art on the hype sticker, which is clever, but, I dunno, if you end up buying this used – maybe you don’t get that?

It’s really something silly to dock the rating on, but I think especially when you pack 4xLPs together where there’s nothing beyond the matrix to tell you A-side vs. B-side, etc. – true on the originals as well, but then you’d have been dealing with each volume individually – I found myself a little flustered and studying the whole product too intensely.

A lot more important: man, these sounds good.