Folder 147
UK
Manufactured in the UK by EMI Records Ltd. and Made and printed in the UK, read at native resolution off the inlay print block. Two direct country statements, so the UK is established from the object rather than inferred, and the eleven non-UK rows sharing this catalogue number are excluded outright.
What the record says
Every line below was read off a native-resolution crop of the photograph named beside it.
Every line of small print, and the photograph it came from — 13 of them
Front of the cased cassette, front inlay panel read through the clear case: the IRON MAIDEN logo above SOMEWHERE IN TIME in the album's own lettering, over the Derek Riggs artwork. No catalogue number, barcode or country line anywhere on the front panel
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Rear of the cased cassette: SIDE 1 listing CAUGHT SOMEWHERE IN TIME, WASTED YEARS, SEA OF MADNESS, HEAVEN CAN WAIT, and SIDE 2 listing THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE RUNNER, STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND, DEJA-VU, ALEXANDER THE GREAT, with the barcode panel below and a boxed DOLBY SYSTEM device at the foot
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Barcode panel close up and cropped at native resolution: 5 099924 059749, sharp digit by digit, with the boxed DOLBY SYSTEM device and its ® beside it
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Cassette shell, side 1, out of the case: TC-EMC 3512, ℗ 1986 Original sound recordings made by EMI Records Ltd., © 1986 Iron Maiden (Holdings) Ltd., a boxed EMI logo, a boxed DOLBY SYSTEM device, and beside the window "SOMEWHERE IN TIME" / IRON MAIDEN / See Inlay Card For Details above All rights of the producer and the owner of the recorded work reserved. Unauthorised public performance, broadcasting, copying and hiring of this record prohibited.
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Cassette shell, side 2: the same printed block with the side number 2, TC-EMC 3512 and the ℗/© 1986 lines legible again
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Inlay unfolded, outer face: TC-EMC 3512 printed along the top edge of the front panel, the spine reading IRON MAIDEN / SOMEWHERE IN TIME, the tracklist panel, the barcode 5 099924 059749, a boxed DOLBY SYSTEM device with ®, the XDR / QUALITY SYSTEM logo and the yellow EMI logo
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Inlay rear panel close up: barcode 5 099924 059749, the boxed DOLBY SYSTEM device, the XDR / QUALITY SYSTEM logo and the yellow EMI box, all on the printed card rather than on a sticker
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Inlay inner panel: the Riggs cityscape with personnel beneath it -- Dave Murray Lead and Rhythm Guitars, Guitar Syth, Adrian Smith Lead and Rhythm Guitars, Guitar Synth, Backing Vocals, Nicko McBrain Drums, Steve Harris Bass, Bass Synth, Bruce Dickinson Vocals
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Inlay part-folded, showing the front panel with C-EMC 3512 running down its edge, the band photograph, and the full tracklist with timings: CAUGHT SOMEWHERE IN TIME (Harris) 7:22 through ALEXANDER THE GREAT (Harris) 8:35
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Inlay inner panels: the production credits, cropped and read at native resolution -- Produced, Engineered and Mixed by Martin 'Masa' Birch., Bass, Bass Synth and Drum tracks recorded at Compass Point Studios, Nassau, Bahamas., Guitars, Vocals and Guitar Synth recorded at Wisseloord Studios, Hilversum, Holland., Mixed at Electric Ladyland Studios, New York. and Mastered by George Marino at Sterling Sound, New York., beside the first lyric columns
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Inlay lyric panels laid flat, the song headings running from CAUGHT SOMEWHERE IN TIME (Harris) 7:22 across to STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND (Smith) 5:43 and DEJA-VU (Murray-Harris) 4:55. The last heading sits outside the focal plane at this angle and is read off IMG_3045 instead
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Inlay print block, whole, with the last lyric panel beside it -- ALEXANDER THE GREAT (356-323 B.C.) (Harris) 8:35 sharp here where IMG_3044 has it soft. The XDR quality system paragraph on the left and, on the right, EMI Records Ltd / Hayes Middlesex England closing with Manufactured in the UK by EMI Records Ltd. and Made and printed in the UK
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The same print block cropped at native resolution, where the two country lines are unambiguous: ...and broadcasting of this tape record prohibited. Manufactured in the UK by EMI Records Ltd. / Made and printed in the UK, under EMI Records Ltd Hayes Middlesex England
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The photographs
IMG_3034.jpg1 of 13READ FROM
The object, and what marks it out
Sleeve, labels and inserts
- White five-screw shell printed in black, in a clear library case, with a multi-panel fold-out J-card carrying the full lyrics and credits. The shell is out of the case and photographed on both faces, and the card is unfolded flat, so every printed panel on this copy has been read.
- Cassettes have no run-out or deadwax equivalent, so there is no etched matrix to photograph on this format at all -- the strongest discriminator available on vinyl simply does not exist here.
- A faint moulded line runs along the bottom edge of the shell below the printed block. It is too shallow at this lighting to read with confidence even boosted at native resolution, so no string is quoted from it. The inlay states the country in plain print anyway, so nothing turns on it.
- No plant code, printer code or rights-society mark appears anywhere on the inlay or the shell -- the three places a cassette usually carries its most release-specific print. That absence is the whole reason six candidates survive.
- Condition -- the card is creased along its folds and lightly rubbed, and the barcode panel has yellowed; all panels are present and the shell is clean.
What distinguishes this pressing
Manufactured in the UK by EMI Records Ltd.andMade and printed in the UK, read at native resolution off the inlay print block. Two direct country statements, so the UK is established from the object rather than inferred, and the eleven non-UK rows sharing this catalogue number are excluded outright.- Catalogue number
TC-EMC 3512-- on both shell faces and along the top edge of the front inlay panel. Normalised toTCEMC3512it matches seventeen of the master's 388 rows, six of them UK. It is the axis the match was made on, so it cannot also serve as the discriminator between those six. - Barcode
5 099924 059749-- corroborates the commercial release and nothing narrower. Barcodes are shared across pressings in any case, and here the version list carries no barcode field, so there is nothing on the Discogs side to hold it up against. - The
XDR/QUALITY SYSTEMlogo and the boxedDOLBY SYSTEMdevice -- EMI's duplication and noise-reduction markings, printed across the whole UK cassette line of the period rather than on one release. Corroboration, never a discriminator. ℗ 1986and© 1986on both shell faces -- these date the recording and the copyright, not the manufacture of this copy. Three candidates are dated 1986 and three carry no date at all, so the year excludes none of them.
Eight tracks, two sides, and the recording credits
Side A
- A1Caught Somewhere In Time
- A2Wasted Years
- A3Sea Of Madness
- A4Heaven Can Wait
Side B
- B1The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner
- B2Stranger In A Strange Land
- B3Deja-Vu
- B4Alexander The Great
Bruce Dickinson - vocals · Dave Murray - lead and rhythm guitar, guitar synthesizer · Adrian Smith - lead and rhythm guitar, backing vocals, guitar synthesizer · Steve Harris - bass, bass synth · Nicko McBrain - drums.
Produced, engineered and mixed by Martin Birch. Mastered by George Marino at Sterling Sound. Bass, bass synth and drums recorded at Compass Point Studios, Nassau; guitars, vocals and guitar synth recorded at Wisseloord Studios, Hilversum; mixed at Electric Lady Studios, New York. Sleeve illustration by Derek Riggs; sleeve concept by Derek Riggs and Rod Smallwood. Inner sleeve photograph by Aaron Rapoport. Published by Zomba Music Publishers Ltd.
Personnel and studio credits are sourced from Discogs release 1701390, the UK original, and apply to the recording rather than to this pressing. The producer, publisher and copyright lines are independently corroborated by this copy's own label, quoted above.
Condition, from the photographs
A photograph cannot grade a record - this is a description of what is visible, not a grade.
- Case/inlay: general handling wear with some edge and corner softening; no cracks or splits visible in these shots.
- Shell: light surface marks and handling wear are visible. No visible warping, tape spillage or shell damage in these photographs.
Nothing on this page comes from playing the record. No Goldmine grade is claimed for it, or any other. I have no record of where this copy came from.
What is settled, and what is not
Six UK entries fit, and there is nothing left on the object to choose between them. The country is not in doubt: the inlay says Manufactured in the UK by EMI Records Ltd. and Made and printed in the UK in plain print, under EMI Records Ltd at Hayes Middlesex England, which is a direct statement rather than a rights-society inference. Nor is the catalogue number: TC-EMC 3512 reads sharp off both shell faces and off the top edge of the front inlay panel, and normalises to TCEMC3512. Seventeen rows in the 388-row version list carry it; the UK lines knock out the Turkish, Singaporean, Indonesian, Australian, New Zealand and Egyptian ones, and six UK rows remain.
Those six split three and three -- 4397151, 10934217 and 7782120 dated 1986 and catalogued 'Album', then 27215484, 35539702 and 12222787 undated and catalogued 'Album, Reissue'. On the version list's summary fields the three 1986 rows are indistinguishable from each other, character for character, and the three reissue rows differ only in being silent. Silence is not a difference, and a copy cannot be excluded from a row that records nothing to exclude it with.
Everything that might have separated them is either absent from the object or absent from the data. The format has no run-out, so the one discriminator that decides vinyl is not available at all. The inlay carries no plant code, no printer code and no rights-society mark. The barcode 5 099924 059749 and the XDR marking are both on the copy and legible, but the committed version list holds summary fields only, so neither has a Discogs value to be matched against -- and a barcode corroborates a commercial release rather than a pressing in any case. The shell's ℗/© 1986 dates the recording, not this copy's manufacture; a reissue keeping the same catalogue number would print the same line.
The owner's note does not break the tie, and it should not be read as if it did. It reads Cover says : Tc-emc 3512 5 099924 059749 Tape says / tv-emc 3512 1986 -- three strings the photographs already carry, and tv-emc is a slip of the pen for the TC-EMC the native crop of the shell shows plainly. It confirms which object was photographed; it names nothing the camera missed, so it narrows nothing.
What would settle it is on the Discogs side rather than the shelf: fetching each of the six UK rows' own release pages and comparing their recorded barcodes, shell and inlay notes and images against this copy's 5 099924 059749, its XDR / QUALITY SYSTEM marking and its white five-screw shell. Three of the six are thinly held on Discogs, so at least one is likely to be sparse enough that it still cannot be excluded -- but the barcode alone would probably split the 1986 originals from the undated reissues, which is most of the distance. No further photograph would help: every printed panel on this copy has already been read.
Standing caveat: the version list is incomplete by construction, so a UK pressing of this catalogue number absent from Discogs cannot be excluded either. Cassettes carry the least release-specific print of any format here, and this one carries less than most.