By Margaret Rhodes 01.29.15 Wired

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“Music today has become wallpaper,” says Trevor Jackson, a hyphenate resident of the graphic design and electronic music worlds. He’s got a point: thanks to Spotify, Pandora, Songza, Rdio, Beats, Shazam, and untold number of other streaming upstarts out there, music is more accessible, and therefore ubiquitous, than ever before.

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There are merits and evils to that (some of which have been debated on WIRED in recent months), but one con in particular has been irking Jackson: the format through which we get our music. These days, music—a powerful art form that gets created with many different magnificent machines that have been improved upon over the ages—is really just a bunch of files accessed through a screen. For Jackson’s generation, he says, that’s not as satisfying: “Unless something physically exists, unless I can touch it, it doesn’t have the same significance. I like records, I like noises, creases, tears, things you can’t have digitally.”

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So for his first musical release in 14 years, he’s issuing tracks on 12 different formats. That list is comprised of a three kinds of vinyl—12″, 10”, and 7”—a CD, a mini-CD, a cassette tape, a USB stick, a VHS tape, a MiniDisc, a Digital Audio Tape (DAT), an 8-track tape, and a reel-to-reel tape. The album is titled F O R M A T.

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Jackson, who lives and works in London, makes it clear that he’s “not anti-digital.” Rather, it’s that “all these objects have their own personality, and all these objects sound different.” Audiophiles make this argument about vinyl versus MP3s all the time, but fidelity is really just one feature among many that make a listening experience special. What about the crackle of a record player, that can transport you back to the era when that song was recorded? Or the plasticky click-and-snap that happens when you pop in a cassette tape? “All these things are really beautiful parts of the whole process that have been lost,” Jackson says.

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It’s being billed as an art project, but with F O R M A T Jackson is considering all the touchpoints that go into a listening experience, much in the same way designers working on connected gadgets, or cars, or whatever, think about points of friction a user will encounter. Those interactions make you engage with the music differently than if you were to double-click a file name in iTunes. It’s not about toggling between tabs, one for streaming music, one for chatting with coworkers, and another for checking bank statements. It’s about experiencing music as an artifact, and really listening.

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F O R M A T will be released by The Vinyl Factory on February 25, 2015. You can buy it here.

okay, VHS is a little silly, but otherwise I wish every release was like this

Cinny said:

okay, VHS is a little silly, but otherwise I wish every release was like this

You don't want the video album to return?

That's fucking goofy. There was indeed a certain difference in the listening experience when you had to go through a lot of trouble to play some music, but, I'm not nostalgic for that.

bobzilla77 said:

That's fucking goofy. There was indeed a certain difference in the listening experience when you had to go through a lot of trouble to play some music, but, I'm not nostalgic for that.

What's goofy about it? I don't do downloads (paid or free) and I still have a stereo, cassettes, 8-tracks, and a VCR. If there isn't a actual product I can purchase, I don't bother with it. There's no nostalgia with me, I never stopped listening to them.

Also, some acts have been releasing their albums on 8-track tapes for years now

MickyDolenz said:

Cinny said:

okay, VHS is a little silly, but otherwise I wish every release was like this

You don't want the video album to return?

I thought it was just an audio master to play back on an ADAT machine, not videos

Cinny said:

I thought it was just an audio master to play back on an ADAT machine, not videos

I used to know someone who would just record audio on a videotape. I guess it's like that.

Cinny said:

okay, VHS is a little silly, but otherwise I wish every release was like this

Yeah, the VHS format is the odd duck since it's the only one that's more than just audio. And albums on VHS were never a thing. That format should be exchanged for SACD or blu-ray audio in 5.1 surround sound.