Neil Young Unplugged Double Vinyl LP NEW CONDITION

$

75

2025 re-issue in Factory NEW/MINT CONDITION. First time re-issued on vinyl since the 90's.
Part of the Official Release Series #6 (Vinyl Box Set), the individual albums in the box were shipped unwrapped. 
Contains 2 LPS, printed insert, outer jacket (not gatefold). The LPs have not been removed from their sleeves. 
Original 90's pressing is rare! 
Unplugged features 14 live performances, including some of Neil's most popular tracks from his career up to 1993. 
UNPLUGGED Tracklisting:
“The Old Laughing Lady” “Mr. Soul” “World On A String” “Pocahontas” “Stringman” “Like A Hurricane" “The Needle And The Damage Done” “Helpless” “Harvest Moon” “Transformer Man” “Unknown Legend” “Look Out For my Love” “Long May You Run” “From Hank To Hendrix”

Neil Young: Official Release Series Discs 26, 27, 28 & 29 [Reprise] Review by Ned Lannamann - vinylcut dot net 
Neil Young is no stranger to boxing up his past. Aside from the massive multi-disc Archives sets he’s been unleashing every few years, the Canadian-born songwriter has also been re-releasing his original albums in batches of four or so, with Official Release Series box sets sporadically appearing on vinyl and CD. The vinyl for all of these sets thus far has been excellent-sounding, with meticulous pressings cut directly from the original analog tapes. And now the sixth volume of that series is in our greedy hands, bearing the ungainly but numerically accurate title Official Release Series Discs 26, 27, 28 & 29. 
The vinyl version of this new ORS is simultaneously the most anticipated of these album boxes to date and the least necessary. The four ’90s albums contained herein—Harvest Moon, Unplugged, Sleeps with Angels, and Mirror Ball—are some of Young’s best and most popular works. And the albums have been very difficult to track down on vinyl; apart from Harvest Moon, none of them have been reissued on vinyl since their initial releases during the CD era, meaning that original vinyl copies were scarce to begin with. However, three of the four albums were recorded digitally and mixed down to 16 bit/44.1kHz digital—the standard resolution for CD—while the fourth, Mirror Ball, was recorded on analog tape but then mixed down to the very slightly higher 20 bit/44.1kHz for HDCD encoding. This means that there are no complete analog masters for these albums and not even a meaningfully high-resolution digital version. Cutting them to vinyl would probably not lead to much of an improvement over CD, which is likely the reason Young resisted reissuing most of them on his (and our) preferred format until now.
And yet the market wants what the market wants: these terrific albums back on hot wax. It’s not something Young could have avoided, either, if he wanted his Official Release Series to continue on vinyl (although so far he has conveniently sidestepped reissuing his mid-’80s Geffen albums, but that may be a contractual situation). To make the proposition more enticing, Young and his audio guy, John Hanlon, dug into the Mirror Ball masters and discovered that much of the album was in fact actually mixed to analog. They decided to make new analog mixes of the four songs that only had digital mixes, so that all of Mirror Ball could be cut directly from analog tape. However, the situation turned out to be a little more complicated than that—we seem to have an almost entirely new Mirror Ball on our hands, as I’ll attempt to explain shortly.
Naturally, an ensuing appearance on MTV Unplugged made perfect sense, and Reprise Records could probably scarcely believe their luck when they had a Neil Young Unplugged album to release in 1993. While successful enough at the time, it fell shy of the blockbuster status that Eric Clapton’s Unplugged album had attained the previous year, and even today it’s among the least essential of Young’s ’90s recordings. It was Young’s second attempt to film an Unplugged set—the first run-through was a total fiasco, and he was reportedly unhappy during this recording as well. This isn’t really apparent on the album, though, as Young sounds as serene and mystic as he ever has, in full command of the crowd during the solo first half, playing tunes like “The Old Laughing Lady,” “Pocahontas,” and a previously unreleased 1976 outtake, “Stringman,” before bringing out the band to run through some more hits and Harvest Moon material. It’s never been a record I rated highly, but I found it almost overwhelmingly pleasant to revisit on a Sunday morning, with a top-notch setlist and a beautiful sparseness to the sound that works wonderfully well on vinyl. The crowd’s mixed a little too loud, but what can you do?
I should add that the other three albums, all cut from 16/44.1 digital files, sound fabulous. Unplugged sounds better to me on vinyl than it ever did on CD, and Sleeps with Angels features a diversity of sound that the vinyl presentation meets on every level, from the dense clamor of “Piece of Crap” to the disquieting ambience of “Safeway Cart.” Some songs on Harvest Moon have a cool, smooth sheen that vinyl can’t quite penetrate, but the album’s clarity and precision sounds awfully pleasant nevertheless. Harvest Moon (52 minutes) and Unplugged (66 minutes!) are thankfully expanded from their initial single-disc formats to sprawl across three sides, with an etching on the fourth side; Sleeps with Angels and Mirror Ball both replicate their original four-sided presentations.
All the discs are from new cuts by Chris Bellman of Bernie Grundman Mastering, except for Harvest Moon, which reuses two cuts Bellman made previously: one for 2017’s Record Store Day reissue (with the number “563181” in the deadwax), and one for a clear-vinyl cut released in 2023 (with “093624910787” in the deadwax).
The other new cuts sound great, with my only complaint being that the lead-in grooves for Mirror Ball are much too tight. The pressings were done at Record Industry in the Netherlands, and they are generally good, with superbly silent vinyl and no non-fill whatsoever. However, all eight discs in my box were very, very slightly dished—nothing to cause alarm, but something to be aware of. Furthermore, my Side 2 of Sleeps with Angels was just a little bit off-center, which I started to notice during Young’s sustained guitar tones during the jam’s final minutes. And lastly, my Side 1 of Unplugged had a quiet but irritating repeating tick at the end of “Stringman,” which I will try to eliminate with some cleaning. There’s nothing here I’d consider a deal-breaker, but pickier vinyl buyers should take note.
The packaging aims to replicate the original releases as closely as possible, although this Harvest Moon’s gatefold originated in the 2017 and 2023 represses. The other three albums stick two discs inside a chubby single jacket—no gatefolds. Mirror Ball comes inside a rough, brown, Kraft card jacket (as per the original); Sleeps with Angel’s cover art looks atrociously low-res (as per the original, I guess) and the vinyl package of Sleeps is unfortunately missing the individual musician credits that appeared on the actual physical CD itself. All the discs come inside die-cut black paper sleeves, earning demerits for not being polylined, and each album gets an insert with lyrics; Unplugged’s is meant to replicate the original one-disc version’s lone inner sleeve, even though this new and improved version is two discs. Some folks have reported their copies are missing inserts, so take note of yours and make sure you’ve got all four. The only thing extra inside the numbered box, with lift-off lid, is a card with the now-familiar diagram of the Neil Young Archives website.
With a gently tweaked Mirror Ball and an Unplugged that is no longer jammed onto overlong sides of vinyl, this sixth installment of the Official Release Series justifies its existence. But the real win here is having all these albums back on vinyl, particularly Sleeps with Angels. As is his way, Young has already moved well past this particular retrospective, with talks of a tour next year, an archival Pearl Jam live set in the works, and an expanded 50th anniversary reissue of Tonight’s the Night coming out on November 28. (Equally exciting is the 1973 live show that was just posted on his Archives website, an audience-recorded cassette that was discovered in a Hamilton record store, featuring a concert recorded at Hamilton’s McMaster University during the Tonight’s the Night tour.) Being a student of Young’s history continues to be overwhelming but immensely fulfilling—and now an important chunk of that history can reclaim some deserved vinyl shelf space.
Official Release Series Discs 26, 27, 28 & 29 | Reprise 8-LP 33 RPM • Harvest Moon, Unplugged & Sleeps with Angels cut to lacquer from 16/44.1 digital by Chris Bellman of Bernie Grundman Mastering • Mirror Ball cut to lacquer from analog tape by Bellman with assistance from John Hanlon • pressed at Record Industry • black vinyl Listening equipment Table: Technics SL-1200MK2 Cart: Audio-Technica VM540ML Amp: Luxman L-509X Speakers: ADS L980