Return of the glamour-pack CD

At a time when the rest of the record industry is trimming costs and frills, the French have gone barking up the counter-intuitive route.

William Christie has launched an Arts Florissants own-label with Music for Queen Caroline. It comes furnished with two booklets, the second containing a bi-lingual short story by the best-selling novelist Douglas Kennedy. It weighs a ton. The  music is feather-light. Bulk is the new CD.

Another new Paris label, La Dolce Volta, proclaims that it ‘wants to change people’s perceptions of the CD so that they see them as luxury items’… Each release will be designed as a work of art.’

Er, yes, and takes up four times the shelf space of a normal CD – not an obvious selling point to space-poor collectors. What’s more, much of the added heft is made up of multilingual interviews with artists who have little to say.

Despite these irritations, I have chose a Dolce Vita release as my Album of the Week on sinfinimusic.com. Click here to find out why.

Does anyone prefer heavy CDs to light?