Analogue Productions & Acoustic Sounds announce The White Stripes’ ‘Elephant’ UHQR vinyl and on Ultra Tape

Posted on by Dave Denyer

Amazing news folks… 2023 is the 20th anniversary of The White Stripes’ critically acclaimed album Elephant and the team at Analogue Productions and Acoustic Sounds are celebrating in the kind of style we music-loving audiophiles dream of – with a special re-release on UHQR vinyl, SACD and…. (cue drum roll): reel-to-reel Ultra Tape!

I’ve got my copy on pre-order – of both the tape and the UHQR vinyl! The album is an incredible piece of work that got rave reviews, and was also later hailed as one of the best albums of the 21st century.

Importantly in this context, Elephant was produced by Jack White using pre-1960s recording gear, including an eight-track tape machine. White states in the album’s liner notes that the band used no computers at all during Elephant’s writing, recording and production, and that none of the recording equipment was more recent than 1963! I’ve had the good fortune to see / hear White live in concert a couple of times (after he went solo) and I can tell you that his performances are one hell of an event, a full-bodied experience. So I can’t wait to discover if the tape does what tape does best, which is to capture that visceral ‘being there’ experience – which I’m pretty sure will be an especially visceral one when we’re talking about Jack White.

Since Elephant’s original release in 2003, Third Man Records released a limited edition vinyl reissue to celebrate the album’s 10-year anniversary in 2013. Then in January of this year they released a mono remix, titled Elephant XX, followed by an Elephant deluxe edition in March which included live recordings from a performance in Chicago.

Here are Analogue Productions/Acoustic Sounds’ Chad Kasseem Ben Blackwell, co-founder of Third Man Records and official archivist for The White Stripes, sitting down to discuss this latest new UHQR and Ultra Tape release.

Here are the links to pre-order (in advance of the 29th September release):

Ultra Tape ($500)

https://store.acousticsounds.com/d/180395/The_White_Stripes-Elephant-14_Inch_-_15_IPS_Tape

UHQR vinyl ($150)

https://store.acousticsounds.com/d/176956/The_White_Stripes-Elephant-UHQR_Vinyl_Record

I personally think – or at least hope – that this move makes an important statement, a kind of ‘great leap forward’ in tape terms. Here we have a hugely successful album as recent as 2003 being released on tape. I’d love to think that it could set a kind of precedent for more high-profile albums, and also for more recent albums – to start making it to market on tape!