Michael Kiwanuka – Kiwanuka

I hated this pressing, I used to get as far as Living In Denial (end of side 2) and the distorted harshness would make me take the record off the platter. I recently upgraded my speakers from a £500 pair to an £1100 pair and I now love this!! This used to stand out as a really hard listen, but now I'm totally back on board with it.
I always knew the distortion was intentional, but until now it just seemed self defeating. Good album.

No idea what the negative comments are about, my copy played perfectly straight out of the sleeve, it's not muffled, no sibilance, no distortion. A lot of the guitar on this album is played through a fuzz box, if people don't understand that it's meant to sound like that then their knowledge of music must be severely limited. One of my favourite albums released in recent years and it sounds fabulous on vinyl. No issues here at all, highly recommend.

One of the best sounding records I have. Very clean sound. Deep stage and awesome separation. Lows sound especially fantastic. Feels like you're at concert hall

I really don’t get all the negative comments about the mastering and distortion etc. It sounds really excellent and exactly as it should. Different =/= bad.

I’ve listened to awful pressings and this not one. It has warmth and depth.

Unfortunately my copy of this record sounds horrendous. It's muffled, comes with sibilance and there's virtually no sound stage. Judging from my own experience I would not recommend picking this up.

Was a little nervous about this one given the reviews - I did have to return the first copy I received because there was a huge scratch that ran through the entire A side, but luckily the 2nd copy was perfect. Honestly the only complaint I have is the odd decision to make this a gatefold with 2LP, but then to make one side of the gatefold sealed, so both records have to cram into one side of the gatefold.

No quite understanding the criticisms of this one. The album employs purposeful distortion all across its instrumentation and vocals, especially the guitars. That is not a defect, it's a feature. It does sound a little boxy, compressed, not the biggest soundstage, but overall it sounds very good to my ears. My copy does have a fair few pops and clicks, but I'm hoping those will be removed with another clean. Aside from this there is some distortion that is NOT intentional - crops up momentarily on a few songs and is most noticeable on Hard to Say Goodbye. Overall it's a great album with a good pressing but not a great pressing.

What a disaster. Plain and simple. Couldn’t believe my ears. This is one of the great albums of the 21st century reduced to a muddy, fuzzy, distorted garbage.

I just listened through my copy of the record, and it sounds fantastic. What little distortion there is, it's obviously an artistic choice, and not a defect in the pressing. I guess distorted electric guitars sound distorted. Who would have guessed. The most noticeable distortion was on the track "Hero", and I cross checked by listening to the same track on YouTube. Guess what? It sounded the same.

Only a minor warp on disc 2 of my copy, that has no effect on playing it. No surface noise, or any other defects for that matter. I never put much stock on hyperbolic, one star reviews. And that was proven to hold true once again.

Buying a vinyl record, I almost expect it to have a some kind of imperfections. I'm always happily surprised to come across a record, that doesn't have any. That's rare though. Slight warpage, not centered perfectly, center hole too tight or too loose, surface noise, hairline scratches etc. Vinyl is an inherently handicapped media, due to it's very physical nature. If I couldn't live with this, I'd either only buy CDs or stream my music.

That being said, if my new vinyl record is in unacceptable condition, I always either the shop I bought it from, or the label. I've always had a better copy sent to me to replace the bad one.

There's no real reason to avoid this pressing.

This is one of the most interesting discussions on Discogs.

My 2p:

I think there's a few people who've mistaken the deliberate haziness of the sound as mistakes in mastering, cutting or pressing. I don't share this view at all, and agree wholeheartedly with ianbev13 when he says this is great art if you're prepared to put yourself in the hands and hearts of the team who made it and go with them on their journey. The opening to Hero is supposed to sound like that; it's part of the overall shape and texture of the artwork, and one imagines it's been made to sound that way because it's supposed to stop you in your tracks and make you think. Fair play to MK, DM, Inflo and all involved: magnificent work.

That said, I've been through a few copies of this on vinyl over the past three years and have had some very strange experiences with and of it. I got the yellow version first, and was hearing occasional buzzing distortion on certain bass notes on sides 2 and 4 only. The soundstage and the general overall experience was enveloping and rich, but what seemed to be flaws in the pressing on those sides made it an album I preferred to listen to on CD. I got the pic disc too, which had exactly the same problem; then tried the black vinyl, same deal. After a while, and following a turntable upgrade, I played it again - same problems. Hey ho, such is life, etc. etc. But then, late last year, I upgraded the cartridge on my Rega P8, from Ania to Apheta; the Apheta has a different shaped stylus (clearly I can't see the difference in shape, but from what I understand the Ania stylus is elliptical and the Apheta stylus is what Rega describe as "fine line profile", which in my mind's eye I see as a maybe a kind of S shape - touching the sides of the groove in different places). And what do you know: I play this LP with that stylus and the bass distortion isn't there at all, and this sounds simply glorious.

All of which leaves me conflicted. On the one hand, I feel like I've unfairly blamed Universal for putting out a bad pressing when it is, as others have suggested, simply a record that really asks a lot of your equipment. On the other, can it really be thought of as a good pressing if it only really works properly on very specialised turntables with components that have very rare characteristics? Shouldn't the job of the various engineering teams involved in creating the vinyl involve them in making sure it's possible for anyone with any equipment to get as close as their set-up allows to the music? And if it needs very specialist kit in order to hear it properly, shouldn't it say that somewhere on the packaging so that you know before you buy?

In short, this is an excellent pressing if you've got exactly the right set-up to play it; and because of that I feel like it might be a really poor pressing, because if you don't have exactly the right hardware to get it to play properly then you're not able to listen to the music as the artists intended it to be heard.