The release has been recalled as the pressing quality is atrocious. Lots of high end distortion make all 3 tracks unplayable. I told Toolbox this when I was sent a test press, but unfortunately they had already approved the release. The final copies were then pressed and a few were sent out by accident. Unfortunately because Toolbox approved the release, the pressing plant is refusing to redo it. In my opinion, they should never have sent out the release in the state they did. It would not have passed quality control at the majority of pressing plants.
The plant e-mailed this to Nik: "My cutting engineer, my quality control expert and myself had a listen to the master, lacquer, positive and test pressings, and honestly we just couldnt tell what the problem is!", and: " this is commercially acceptable, and would have no problem selling." and: "my cutting engineer has been in the business over 25 years and is one of the best in the business. My quality control expert has been in the business over 35 years and IS the UK's leading authority on metalwork and pressing; so at every stage of the process your jobs are in the best hands, far superior than any pressing plant in the UK, which is why they all come to us to sort their problems out."
This is how my usual mastering engineer described it: "I listened to the recordings of the ESIS013 vinyl that you sent me. They are all definitely distorted, particularly in the higher frequencies. You really notice it on the crash cymbals and on synth sounds with a lot of high frequency energy. The tracks sound very crunchy overall too (not in the good way!)."
I hope this can get sorted, but I don't know what is happening..