Space Ritual

Vinyl variants

The undisputed most desirable vinyl variant is the Japanese version of Space Ritual, which not only had the fold-out sleeve, but also came with a lyrics & information insert-cum-booklet and a full colour poster.

Japanese version (1973)

Front of booklet

Booklet pages

Poster (this is a repro of a poster that was available to buy at gigs and alternative shops, including Woolworths!)

The fold-out sleeve was used in nearly all territories, except Australia and New Zealand, where it was issued as a gatefold.

Australian inner gatefold (1973)

One particularly interesting vinyl variant of Space Ritual is the "auto-coupled" version, which was pressed with sides 1 & 4 on one record and sides 2 & 3 on the other. This was quite a common practice with double albums in the 1970s, enabling 'continuous' play of sides 1 and 2 on any record deck fitted with an auto-changer, so long as you didn't mind your precious LPs being dropped from a great height onto the turntable! Here's a Discogs entry for a US auto-coupled version.

Cassettes

As well as radically changing the running order to make the sides equal, the UK cassette version of Space Ritual displays the same attention to detail as the Doremi version. 'Space Is Deep' and 'Time We Left This World Today' are missing their full titles, 'Electronic No. 1' is missing its number, and '7 By 7' has become 'Seven Times Seven'. 'Poem' is added to the start of 'The Awakening', but none of the other spoken word pieces. And 'Earth Calling' is missed off altogether (though presumably still present on the tape given the timings).

Cassette version with altered running order (1973)

The US cassette version retains the album's running order and uses the full title from its label: The Space Ritual Alive In Liverpool And London. However, the quoted timings are either wrong or the tracks have been edited...