Hormoaning

12" (red/ blue) / test pressing / Geffen / GEF 21711 / made in Australia (Festival Records) / 1992

This half blue, half red test/ pre-production pressing came in a standard Australian D-shape inner plastic sleeve and a plain white die-cut cardboard sleeve. A purple band formed where the two colors mixed. The record also has several small, black impurities.

The lacquers were cut by Rick O'Neil of Festival Studios, as identified by the "®" in the matrix codes [1]. It was pressed by Festival Records, which has been defunct since 2005 [2,3]. The one surfaced copy came from a former factory worker, and may be the only white label copy there is.

This record was made on a manual press. Festival Records had about 17 manual presses and 10 automatic presses. Test pressings were usually made on black vinyl because the machines were all running black vinyl as standard. Nobody ran test pressings on colored vinyl if colored vinyl was not already running through the machine. When colored vinyl was required, the plastic extruder would be allowed to run out of black vinyl and then the colored vinyl would be run through the machine. The impurities seen on this record are fragments of black vinyl from the extruder, as it takes some time to purge a color out of the extruder when changing colors. [3]

It is unlikely that they actually took the time to clean the machinery to make the test pressings on colored vinyl to also see how the colors would turn out when mixed in addition to testing the stampers. Instead, this record is probably (one of) the first record(s) off the press just before adding proper labels for the retail pressing. For example, they could have pressed a few records like this to make sure they had purged all the black vinyl from the extruder.

Tracklist

Side A
  • Turnaround - 
  • Aneurysm - 
  • D-7
Side B
  • Son Of A Gun - 
  • Even In His Youth - 
  • Molly's Lips

Matrix

Side A
DMX 79745 ®2B
Side B
DMX 79 746 ®2A

Record, side A
1. Record, side A

Red side with impurities
2. Red side with impurities

Blue side with impurities
3. Blue side with impurities

References