Radiohead – The Bends

two cds one was good quality and the other was meh quality when it said it was good+

I love this album but as others have said this is not a good pressing at all. Pretty flat. Also lots of ticks on the last tracks.

This is a mispres. My iron lung is track 4 on the 2 meter sessions

Very nice mastering overall, bit more dynamic than the digital versions. The vocals sound a bit muted in my opinion, but not disappointing. The pressing is very good with little noisy parts, nothing distracting.

Decent pressing. No notable noise on my copy. Maybe it lacks a bit of dynamics but overall value for money.

This listing is not accurate and should be https://discogs.futbolgratis.org/release/6269761-Radiohead-The-Bends because the full bar code is 7243 8 29626 1 8 and not simply 8296261 as seen above

Bought brand new sealed from an independent seller. Record is flat and well centered. The spin hole is way too tight/small. The mixing is good, it sounds a bit more rounded / less sharp and “in your face” than most digital versions (CD/Streaming) of this album, especially with the electric guitar and cymbal crashes. It doesn’t suffer too much from compression despite having 6 tracks on each side. Unfortunately, my copy has 2 nasty scratches which totally ruin about A3 and A4… Quite frustrating. The pressing quality is okay, a lot of tics on side A, but way better on side B. There goes the vinyl lottery… 4.6 / 5

I have a -2 Parlophone repress and this -1 first press. I really don’t hear much difference in sound quality between the two of them. So I don’t think you’d have to seek out a first press to get the best possible sound quality. The Parlophone represses sound great as well.

So, my copy is of the PCS 7372 A-01-01- variety. It cleaned up pretty nicely, has very little surface noise and sounds pretty good overall. I find it to be 100% listenable but far from audiophile quality.

Be warned that sealed copies of this are highly likely to be the 2022 EU pressing which is a completely different cut, but shares the same barcode. This 2016 version uses the original DMM plates from 1995 whereas the 2022 pressing is an in-house GZ Media cut.