akrjohn

Looks like we're sold out. Lots in stores though. Sorry about shipping. I just did a test on several other independent record store sites (Subpop, Merge, etc), and our shipping is exactly the same for USPS on a 2xLP. USPS runs a couple of bucks higher than UPS (instead of $11 to me it was $9 for UPS/Fedex), but the UPS is unreliable in Lander Wyoming. Short of becoming a global conglomerate there just isn't much we can do on shipping. Sorry about that. It'll be in your favorite local record store though.

Oh no, thank you. Seriously. It's music fans like you all who keep the flame alive. The flame of love. Or whatever. But whatever it is you keep it alive.

I do! And I'd be happy to! Email me at john at asthmatickitty dot com. The next few weeks are busy with holidays/family/etc but we can surely fit in somewhere.

Thanks for asking gmoney. It'll be available in all copies of the record (mail order, retail, etc).

Hi everyone - this is John at AKR. I so appreciate you all as fans of vinyl. I can't constantly monitor this board and Reddit and the other things as part of my part-time-ish job, but I can post here for a minute and answer a few of your questions. re: general profit margin. We are making the same amount of money on this edition as we are the regular edition, and maybe even a little less. So to those folks here and a few other places who are thinking we're just cashing in, this is a really stupid way to cash in. Yes, we'll sell some more Illinois vinyl. But we're doing our best to make good music like this record accessible to as many people as possible without compromising on the art. re: shipping. Can't help it. It's calculated live by the USPS. The weight on this product is about 2.5 lbs which compensates for the extra goodie that we're working on. re: extra goodie. It won't change your life but I hope you'll think it's cool. We just had to work out a few logistics and we're waiting to announce it until January or so. re: black/colored vinyl. Black vinyl is a color. It's just the most ubiquitous. re: mastering. We had to re-plate in late 2014 and we went with Roger Seibel at SAE who is a mastering genius in my opinion. I don't always like everything Roger does, but he was perfect for this. The good news is that we went with triple-plating on this so we won't need to replate for a while. re: Avalanche. Working on it. This is the 10th anniversary of Illinois, so why would we celebrate Avalanche? Avalanche has some of my personal favorite Sufjan songs but it is an outtakes record. Illinois is the star. We'll get to it as soon as we can. Thanks again for all your support. We appreciate you all very much, and it's only because you keep buying the music we release that we can keep releasing new, good music. - John at AKR