The exposed Promo-Bootleg: "Armour Plated / X-Rated" (not) by One Cut!
Armour Plated / X-Rated Cover, image borrowed from Discogs
Armour Plated / X-Rated rear side of the Booklet, image borrowed from Discogs
Armour Plated / X-Rated Promo-CDr, image borrowed from Discogs
Sometimes we accept things as real even though we never proofed the facts. I'm pretty sure the CD shown above is an inherent part of the most want-lists of all serious Banksy-Record/CD-Art-Collectors. It was part of my search-list as well and part of the iconic Banksy-Cover-Art list by Rockdoc, published via "recordart.net" either. I didn't started any research on this CD, even though it was very suspicious that this alleged One Cut Promo-CDr didn't had any listings online beside it's Discogs listing and there are only two accounts who lists this in their collection. I never noticed any offer of this CDr neither on Discogs, nor on any other auction-platform, which is also a very suspicious indication that there is something wrong with this CD.
It was my friend Nick Suszynski who started a request to One Cut via Facebook to get more information about this release in September 2020. The scrennshot can be noticed below:
After Nick's request there happend...... nothing. More than a year was already gone by and this issue was nearly forgotten. But now the request was answered by One Cut and the answer was more than surprising:
After this message I kicked this CD out of my watching list and I'm very thankfull that Nick provided this information to me and allowed me to post it here for you. There are so many releases which are worth to search for, but it's also a good feeling, if you can cancel a search which might cost you hundreds or thousands of Euros. Thank you Nick for saving this money for me. I will never again look out for this CD and my advice to you is, to do the same way.
Update
After someone made a Spam report on this on Discogs it's not for sale there anymore. But there was an interesting comment from the user who listed this item:
ConsultthisMusic 15. Dez. 2021
"As the original contributor to this release I thought I would just add that this was given to me to review when wrote for Breakin' Point magazine. At the time it could quite easily have been mailed out by Darling Department PR but I can't remember. At the time CDr copies were a cheaper alternative to send to press then finished copies."
So, it seem like a promotipnal agency has distributed some "quick" CDr copies to magazines or other institutions to preview this Album. Would be interesting to know how many copies were spread. I'm not sure how to count this. Is it a regular release? At least we have to conclude that it most likely isn't an unofficial bootleg, but more or less an very exclusive promotional copy...