Ipecac Recordings and the Fantomas WunderKammer vinyl RSD box set...

Indie labels are supposed to be cool - right? The labels who care about artists, fans, and are hip to vinyl.

Not Ipecac Recordings, home of The Fantomas and the new box set reissuing their first four albums -Wunderkammer, a Black Friday 2014 Record Store Day package that just got released after being delayed.

The music is incredible and totally unique. Metal, but not metal, proto punk, but not punk, soundtrack samples - found sounds - the odd vocal but no words - pastiche, almost like a cutup cassette tape, yet incredibly engaging and unique. A total blast and the remastering for vinyl is very good.

That's the good part - all of it, and the story should end with that.

 Unfortunately, it doesn't. Ipecac has shown itself to be actually not the cool, hip, indie darling but just another, smaller version of a corporate beancounter collective.

The pressings are absolute crap. Usually my tolerance level for vinyl is quite high - in almost every case, a good cleaning remedies most faults, and the odd click is just part of the vinyl game. But not this time.

Packaging - the box is nicely done.

Sleeves - cheap single sleeves, thin stock. Beancounters saved some pennies there.

Inners - cheap black card stock. Beancounters saved a bit more, again.

Pressings - cheap, cheap, cheap. Worst pressings imaginable. Beancounters got a big win here - out of 5 slices of vinyl in the package, only one is barely passable. The rest have it all - gouges, warps, dishing, skips, divots, there is even a piece of foreign debris embedded on one side. There is loads of lovely no-fill. There are small abscesses throughout. Just - awful. Like they picked the worst, cheapest plant they could find and didn't give a shit about how bad the product would be.

Now here's the thing. Ipecac clearly either doesn't understand vinyl or care to, or doesn't care at all about ripping off customers, or thinks all it's customers are people who buy vinyl at Urban Outfitter and use crappy cheap record players and won't know the difference. Unfortunately, when it's this bad, even those Urban Outfitter hipsters will know.

So if you were unfortunate enough to buy one as I did - should you take it back? Here's where the accountants running Ipecac are really disgusting. The record store isn't allowed to send defective vinyl back to their distributor or the label - they have to absorb the loss themselves. That's right - the little guy, the record store - exactly the kind of store Record Store Day is intended to help - has to suck it up and eat the cost. Not the corporate suits at Ipecac - they got their money, crap, defective product or not. The record store has to suffer the loss for Ipecac's cheapness and carelessness.

If you ever wonder why so many people don't think it is wrong to download illegally and steal from record labels and artists, look no further than the Ipecac vinyl of the Fantomas. They steal from us, after all.

If you were unfortunate enough to have bought one, for the fabulous, well mastered and unique music it contains, don't bring it back to the record store - WRITE IPECAC directly - info@ipecac.com - and don't just insist that they send you replacements - I can guarantee that the whole pressing run is total crap. Insist that they repress this set at a half ways decent pressing plant that has some minimal standards of quality control and then replace every single one of these junk pressings they so dishonestly passed off on the fans. The artists deserve no less.

Shame on Ipecac for doing such a shoddy job on such fine art.