Drive OST - 2X 12"

Here is something a little different, my first post about a move soundtrack. Usually I don't get into movie soundtracks so much, but as soon as I saw Drive back in 2011 . The movie was just excellent, but more importantly for this blog, so was the soundtrack. I originally didn't have a physical copy of the album, but a little while ago I decided I wanted to get my hands on one. The first release I saw was like this, which I was almost set on getting when I spotted these versions. The artwork was just so much better that I had to get one of these instead. Of course by that time they were all sold out from mondotees, so I had to resort to Ebay once again. They were all a bit more pricey than if I'd been able to get one originally, but not too bad in the scheme of things. For the regular black version anyway....

Although the soundtrack is really great, this record is really about the packaging. But first I will make a bit of a complaint, it may seem quite minor but it is something that has annoyed me on several occasions. This record came shrink-wrapped, which in some circumstances is a good thing, except it came with a sticker on the outside! Of course I wanted to keep the sticker, but as this is a gatefold LP I didn't want to leave it shrink-wrapped and be forever tormented by what gems lay on the inside of the cover. To keep the sticker I had to carefully cut it out of the shrink wrap and glue it onto the front of my own plastic sleeve. I can see the point to shrink-wrapping, but why do so many people instead on placing stickers on the outside of them?

But enough complaints, lets get back to the good stuff. The artwork is really well designed, and features each of the main characters in the film (well except Standard). The whole thing has a pink and purple thing which is continued throughout the inside and back of the cover. The rear even features Ryan Gosling wearing the stunt-double mask he wears when he murders Nino.

As I eluded earlier, there are two colour versions of this record; black and pink. Most of the records are on black wax, but a randomly selected few are on a wonderful looking hot-pink. I think that is quite a cool deal, you would certainly be pleasantly surprised to get a pink copy. Of course that has really "driven" up the price of the second-hand pink copies. I think when I was looking they were going for around $200, which was considerably out of my price range. I could have gotten pink vinyl with the more standard version of the cover, but I think it was worth trading in vinyl colour to get this far superior packaging.

This is a relatively long soundtrack, and such this a double LP release. Each of the four sides draws on the theme of driving, with the centre labels featuring a speedo, tachometer, fuel gauge and a battery gauge.

Inside the sleeve there is a very clean looking white insert. On the front is more fantastic Drive artwork, and on the back is information about the five songs not composed by Cliff Martinez.