Thank you for buying this record. What follows is its documentation: the pressing identified, the matrix / runout transcribed by hand from the dead wax, and the condition as assessed before it was listed. It is yours to keep with the record.

— Paul, Vinyl Curator

Leonard Cohen

Old Ideas

2012 · Columbia 88697986711 / C 798671 · Stereo · Europe (rim text reads "Made in the EU"; no specific country named on the labels) · LP (180g) + CD, gatefold-style single sleeve with 4-page lyric booklet · 33 1/3 RPM

Pressing details

Label	Columbia
Catalogue number	88697986711 / C 798671
Year	2012
Mono / Stereo	Stereo
Country	Europe (rim text reads "Made in the EU"; no specific country named on the labels)
Format	LP (180g) + CD, gatefold-style single sleeve with 4-page lyric booklet
Speed	33 1/3 RPM
Genre	Folk Rock / Singer-Songwriter
Producer	Patrick Leonard, Ed Sanders, Anjani Thomas, Dino Soldo, Mark Vreeken, Leonard Cohen
Musicians	Leonard Cohen (vocals, guitar, programming), Patrick Leonard (piano, keyboards, programming, guitar), Neil Larsen (Hammond B3, piano, synth bass, cornet, percussion), Roscoe Beck (bass, musical direction), Bob Metzger (guitar), Jordan Charnofsky (guitar), Rafael Bernardo Gayol (drums), Chris Wabich (drums), Dino Soldo (horns), Sharon Robinson (synth bass, backing vocals), Dana Glover (backing vocals), Jennifer Warnes (backing vocals), Ed Sanders (guitar, backing vocals, engineering), Bela Santelli (violin), Robert Korda (violin), The Webb Sisters (backing vocals)

Matrix / Runout

Side A:  BB 61915-01 A2 MK
Side B:  BB61915-01 B1 MK

Condition

Cover: NM
Vinyl: NM

Variant chronology

2012 - US pressing, Columbia 88697986711, The Mastering Lab lacquer cut - band unavailable
2012 - Europe pressing, Columbia 88697986711, "Made in the EU" rim text  <- this copy
2012 - other territory pressings (Japan SICP 3425, Malaysia, Mexico, etc.) - band unavailable

This Pressing

2012 European pressing (stereo) - grey watercolour Columbia labels, "Made in the EU" rim text, BIEM/GEMA LC 00162; a contemporaneous counterpart to the US-mastered version of the same catalogue number.

The Album

Leonard Cohen began writing these songs around 2007 and recorded them over several years in Los Angeles sessions with Patrick Leonard, Ed Sanders and longtime collaborator Anjani Thomas, finishing in 2011. It was his first collection of new material in eight years and arrived after the long world tour he undertook in his seventies, a tour prompted by the discovery that his manager had drained his retirement funds. The songs confront aging, mortality, faith, love and reckoning with a plain-spoken, often wry directness that critics heard as the culmination of a decades-long artistic voice rather than a late-career footnote. Cohen's career had already spanned poetry, the 1967 arrival of 'Songs of Leonard Cohen,' and landmark later works, and this album was received as a major and unexpectedly vital addition to that body of work. It became his highest-charting album in the United States to that point and drew some of the best reviews of his career, with critics praising its wit, gravity and the warmth of the arrangements built around his famously weathered baritone. The record is widely regarded as the opening statement of a remarkable final act that would continue through two more studio albums before his death in 2016.

Tracklist

Side 1

1. Going Home
2. Amen
3. Show Me The Place
4. Darkness

Side 2

1. Anyhow
2. Crazy To Love You
3. Come Healing
4. Banjo
5. Lullaby
6. Different Sides

The Label

Both labels carry a grey watercolour nude-figure illustration on a white ground with the Columbia "eye-in-a-box" logo lower left of centre, the Sony Music wordmark, and rim text reading "BIEM/GEMA. LC 00162. Made in the EU." alongside the catalogue strings C 798671 / BL 88697986711. The ℗ 2011/© & ℗ 2012 Old Ideas, LLC / Sony Music Entertainment credit block and the "Made in the EU" text place this as a European-manufactured copy of the 2012 first release rather than the US-pressed version of the same catalogue number, which carries The Mastering Lab's lacquer-cut stamp in its runout. The LC prefix (a four-to-six digit European label code in use only from 1977 onward) is consistent with, and does not predate, a 2012 label.

Fidelity

The album was tracked and mixed across several Los Angeles rooms and mastered by Doug Sax and Robert Hadley; US pressings of this release were lacquer-cut at a well-regarded mastering facility, while this European manufacture uses the same source material pressed to a different plant's stampers. Collectors generally regard the 180-gram vinyl as a solid, unfussy modern pressing rather than an audiophile showcase, with no later deluxe or audiophile reissue series established for this title. This copy sits alongside, not above or below in sonic terms, other first-release territorial pressings of the same 2012 edition.

Notes

This is a 2012 stereo copy of Old Ideas on the standard Columbia 180-gram LP-plus-CD edition. The side labels' "Made in the EU" rim text and the BL/C matrix prefixes distinguish it from the US pressing of the same catalogue number, which carries The Mastering Lab's lacquer-cut stamp. The ℗ 2011/© & ℗ 2012 Old Ideas, LLC copyright block and LC 00162 code are consistent only with a 2012-or-later manufacture and rule out any dating before that year.

Documenting collections

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This record’s page: https://vinylcurator.net/albums/leonard-cohen-old-ideas/