Well, it is probably not called ‘Walker Wash’. Actually, it is definitely not called that.
But this post is about the Walker LP Cleaning Process Process Process Process.
It is officially, the Prelude Record Cleaning System.
The short and sweet is: It is a four (4) pass process. I hate that it is so labor intensive. I will personally hardly ever spend the time doing it. It works better than other, more commonly practiced processes. It opens a new world of music enjoyment for formerly unlistenable / unnatural sounding music genres.
It comes in some nicely labeled bottles. And I know one has purified water of some sort. Blah Blah Blah.
Neli uses 3 different brushes, all labeled according to their purpose in life.
Look, I did not clean the records. They had already been cleaned carefully by others. And then the Walker Solution was applied by Neli and Kevin. I just got to hang around and listen to several before and after results.
The results?
It made a previously, well – you know those kinds of jazz fusion bands that sounds like a cacophony of instruments slightly out of tune? Not exactly penetrable if you know what I mean. Cleaning with the Walker stuff made it sound like maybe the musicians did, after all, have some kind of plan in mind, perhaps even were accomplishing what they had planned. It was now possible to hear and follow the various, the SEVERAL various, melodies all happening at the same time, intertwining and playing off of each other.
It still wasn’t going to make the top 40 pop charts – but given that its purpose was more to be playful and complex and subtle and a little disturbing… it actually worked.
But before cleaning it with the Walker stuff, it was, uh, garbage? Can I say that? You know, Noise. I always thought that some bands just put out pure noise because, well, boys aren’t that particular sometimes, right? We just want to bang on cans and garbage-can lids and whatever…
Well, now, *dammit*, a lot of this really quite innovative and provocative music might just need an LP and 4 passes of cleaning on the Loricraft with the Walker cleaning fluids.
Whether spending the time to apply 4-passes with other cleaning solutions would also work this well, I don’t know.
Even if other solutions did work as well, it would still make this nirvana of uber-sounding LPs almost inaccessible to me, because, well, it is just so unlikely that I am going to spend the time doing all this cleaning. I mean, hello? How many years do we get? And I am going to spend them cleaning LPs?
But… well, just maybe, MAYBE, I’ll Walker the new Radiohead LPs I am getting for Christmas.
… and maybe DSOTM. … and Amnesiac.
Happy Holidays Everyone!
