With Record Store Day and garage sale weather just around the corner, 'tis the season for crate diggers (and everyone else who owns a turntable) to rejoice that the so-called vinyl boom lives on, and with it comes an abundance of creative limited edition pressings of favorite, obscure and otherwise coveted albums. From albums pressed with Kesha's blood to LPs that glow in the dark or come peach scented, here are 11 of the weirdest vinyl records ever.
01. The Flaming Lips, The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends
The Flaming Lips celebrated Record Store Day 2012 by dropping a special limited edition pressing of Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends that contained blood samples from some of the album's contributors, including Kesha, Erykah Badu and Coldplay's Chris Martin just to name a few. Wayne Coyne himself sold about 10 copies of the double-LPs that contained vials of the featured collaborators blood for $2500 apiece with the proceeds going towards The Oklahoma Humane Society and The Academy of Contemporary Music at the University of Central Oklahoma.
02. Perfect Pussy, Say Yes To Love
In 2014, Perfect Pussy pressed a limited 300-copy run of their debut full-length Say Yes To Love containing swirls of singer Meredith Graves' menstrual blood mixed into the clear vinyl. The Syracuse punks included a cassette copy of Say Yes To Love featuring four bonus live tracks with the special edition LP.
03. Eohippus, Getting Your Hair Wet With Pee
2014 was apparently the year of infusing albums with bodily fluids. Eohippus took that quest to the next level by releasing their single "Getting Your Hair Wet With Pee" on the world's first-ever urine soaked LP with human hair mixed into the -- you guessed it -- clear yellow plastic.
04. Liars, Mess On A Mission
Translucent records pressed with glitter, flowers and leaves have seen their share of short-run releases by a number of artists, but Liars' 2014 Mess On A Mission takes the cake: multi-colored pieces of string seem to float in the clear disc.
05. Emperor Yes, An Island Called Earth
This album is literally out of this world. Emperor Yes pressed a special edition of 2014's An Island Called Earth containing fragments of an asteroid that crashed into the earth in the 16th century.
06. Ray Parker Jr., Ghostbusters Soundtrack
The 30th Anniversary edition of Ray Parker Jr.'s Ghostbuster's Sountrack saw its own glow in the dark release for Record Store Day 2014. Another edition of the soundtrack was marshmallow-scented.
07. Karen Elson, The Ghost Who Walks
Folk rocker Karen Elson's 2010 full-length, The Ghost Who Walks, saw a special peach-colored release. Not only are the limited-edition platters a cute marbled pastel, but they're also peach-scented.
08. Breakbot, By Your Side
French disco producer and DJ Breakbot released 120 copies of his 2012 single By Your Side on an edible chocolate disc that actually played.
09. Shout Out Louds, Blue Ice
Swedish band Shout Out Louds took an even kitschier direction with their 2013 single "Blue Ice." The playable ice "record" was really more of a kit including a mold and a bottle of water. Only ten copies of the ice mold exist.
10. Son Lux, Lanterns: Wicks
Son Lux's 2015 Lanterns: Wicks is one of the very few lathe cut multi-hole albums on earth. Each copy was hand-made, and as one can guess from looking it up on Discogs, the limited copies go for a pretty penny.
11. Hellmouth, Gravestone Skylines
Detroit rockers Hellmouth released a special "Bible Ash" edition of their 2010 debut full-length Gravestone Skylines that, as the title suggests, was pressed with the ash of a burnt German Bible from the late 1800s.
Additionally, Record Store Day 2016 has a number of picture discs coming out this week, including Justin Bieber's Purpose, James Bay's Chaos and the Calm and the Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks among others, proving that even with tools like Discogs' Vinyl Marketwatch available, enthusiasm about the medium is not limited to speculative collectors. These collectible pieces of eye candy will soon be joining the pantheon of visually-pleasing vinyl releases alongside countless albums pressed in cool color combinations and even more that have been cut into cool shapes. One website, Colored Vinyl Records, has compiled images of over 1500 such albums, which you can check out here.
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