Audiophiles praise vinyl for its supposed "warmth" - a quality completely lacking from the latest release from Swedish indie band Shout Out Louds -- a record made of ice.
The band last released an album three years ago, so to introduce the first single off their upcoming release "Optica", they hired ad agency TBWA Stockholm to create something a little more special than your average seven-inch.
The agency took inspiration from the title of the song, Blue Ice, and its theme of fading love to create ten kits for journalists and fans to create their own ice records. "We talked to professors at different universities telling us it would never work out, so we had to develop the technique ourselves," TBWA art director Alex Fredlund told Co.Design.
The agency tried a number of techniques and eventually settled on a silicone mould and distilled water to minimise the formation of air bubbles in the ice that made the needle jump. The resulting record can be played on a regular turntable.
You can hear what the ice record sounds like in the video embedded at the top of this post, and hear the full song embedded below.
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
