Last year, Universal celebrated Jurassic Park's 20th anniversary with a remastered edition of John Williams' iconic soundtrack. Williams himself oversaw the project, and the finished product included four previously unreleased songs, leaving just two minutes of the film's epic score (literally) off the record. It was a pretty great deal for superfans of both the film and the composer's legendary scores. Only one thing was missing: the remastered edition was a digital-only release.
One year later, that's being rectified. The cinema superfans at Mondo are releasing the iconic score in two versions of 180-gram double-LPs as the latest in their series of artist-commissioned soundtracks. One version of the limited-edition soundtrack will have art from Dan McCarthy, whose packaging contains an amber-colored vinyl, and the other will showcase JC Richard, whose version will have either a dilophosaurus-patterned LP or a standard black one (to be selected at random).
"Artists like to draw dinosaurs, so there's that," says Mondo creative director Justin Ishmael of the decision to tackle Jurassic Park. "But we've always really loved the movie. The official logo is iconic, and there's a gift shop in the park in the movie itself. We thought of this as something that could exist even in that gift shop."
Mondo has been putting out art-centric vinyl for roughly two years now and has released 17 soundtracks so far, from Maniac to Gravity (which, we might add, is awesome). Most of their LP releases are soundtracks that were either never released on vinyl, or sometimes—as in the case of the Timecrimes soundtrack—never released separately at all. Though it established its name with posters, the company has hidden musical roots: Many of its artists were originally album-art designers. (Rob Jones, for example, won a Grammy in 2011 for his limited-edition packaging on the White Stripes' documentary Under the Great White Northern Lights.)
The vinyl versions of the Jurassic Park soundtrack will retail for $35. While only 1,000 copies of McCarthy's amber LP were pressed, Richard's version will be more widely available with 2,000 copies of the dilophosaurus pattern and 3,000 copies of the black version up for grabs. Ishmael says he expects most of them to sell to Mondo disciples, not audiophile superfans. However, considering the deep emotional investment millennials have in both Jurassic Park and vinyl, this particular soundtrack might spread beyond the company's typical target demo.
The new LPs were originally supposed to be released on Black Friday last year, but due to various pressing-plant-related delays, the debut was postponed; now they'll be released June 11, on the film's official 21st birthday. But please, people, don't go out for beers with your vinyl.
