Although cd and mp3 took over as the most popular music formats, a special place in the music heart is always reserved for vinyl. So much so that collecting vinyl has also become fashionable.
Many of us assume vinyl only comes in black, but actually it is made with a type of white powder with colour pigments only added afterwards. Black vinyl became the common form because there is a unique stickiness to black pigment. It lubricates the vinyl and makes it less likely to create particles and bubbles, consequently lowers the chance of the sound being damaged in the production process. Also, a lot of vinyl material is recycled, and naturally black became the colour of choice.
Having said that, colour vinyl works just as well as black vinyl — as long as it is not damaged during production. The first colour vinyl was produced in 1904, offering a medium for creative designs. ‘Colours’ magazine and Taschen invited two vinyl collectors, Alessandro Benedetti and Peter Bastine, to share their collection of over 500 vinyl — monotone, neon and half-translucent alike. Each of them as one-off, there are pirate vinyl with mixed colours; one that only plays on one side; hand or machine-cut vinyl in various shapes; one printed with five-layer-graphic. For a change, black vinyl is the only thing missing.
