-
No, not warped and was in a cardboard sleeve. I'll give it a go with a cloth and some vinyl cleaner and see how it goes.
It almost looks like something has been spilt on it at some point
eskay-
I see a fair few of these. Mostly a combination of no fill or just poorly mixed/heated vinyl puck that has a different texture to the properly mixed and pressed vinyl.
No fill is one of the worst problems with a pressing. There is nothing you can do about it. After many years of looking at new records under a bright light and cleaning them I've come to realise that there aren't too many that are perfect.
There is another type of problem that you often see at the edges and that's contamination. Usually adhesive from the inner sleeve because there's a type of pressing machine that drops the vinyl into a freshly folded inner sleeve and if the glue dispenser on the sleeve folding machine is not properly calibrated some of that glue gets on the record. In some cases it's impossible to clean off.
Of course clean it but sadly I don't think you'll see an reduction in noise.
I've had to reduce my expectations of new pressings otherwise I couldn't keep spending money on them. It's a really small percentage that don't have some issue.
Airhead
Is it also warped? Was it in a pvc inner sleeve? Looks like it’s most probably been crushed/compressed in that area? Probably not much you can do if so. Have you used a basic spray/cloth cleaner on it to see if that makes any difference?