Analog Vinyl Sampling from Ishac Bertran on Vimeo.

Amazing effort and interesting outcome. It reminds me a little of Australian band Severed Head’s early experimental music.

“Experimental analog sampling with modified vinyls. Sectors from a vinyl record are cut and replaced by pieces with exact shape from other records. When played in a vinyl player the needle follows the grooves from both sectors creating sampled tunes or loops.” – blog.ishback.com

For more info: blog.ishback.com

via laughingsquid

Every musician over the age of 35 has an Ikea Expedit bookcase full of records, wires and operation manuals. Mykea is a site that offers products to help you customize Ikea furniture. I think their Amplifiers collection will do the trick.

“We are a small creative company that one day came up with a Big Idea! To customize Ikea furniture with amazing designs. Hence, our slogan: say NO to NAKED Furniture.” – thisismykea.com

For more info: thisismykea.com

There are plenty of beautiful boutique turntables out there but what’s interesting about the $1298 Barkly Turntable is that it’s sold at chain store Anthropologie.

“A pitch-perfect piece of nature, this smooth slice of ashwood is outfitted with a Premotech motor and a Rega tonearm, a weighty glass platter and adjustable spike legs. Wood, glass. Handmade in USA” – anthropologie.com

For more info: anthropologie.com

via vain and vapid

I used to have Europadisk in Manhattan make me one off acetate records to test and play out with. I used to love hanging out in the mastering and manufacturing room there. There’s a interesting bunch of photos and an article on how to pirate a vinyl record over at Mike Senese’s blog. If you’re like me and have 5000 records this could be interesting to you. For the full read: click here

“Using the wooden strips, make a box around the glass plate. Seal off the edges using the window cement. Make sure everything is air tight. Place your record inside the box making sure that the portion to be copied is facing upward. Squeeze in some window cement to mark where the hole in the record is. Mix the silicone (Smooth On OOMOO 30 or OOMOO 25) for about 3 minutes before pouring in to the mold….” – mikesenese.com/how-to-pirate-a-vinyl-record

For more info: mikesenese.com/how-to-pirate-a-vinyl-record

I have this record on pink marbled 12″ vinyl. I remember my friend Joe Forbes bought it first and it took me a while to find my own copy. Eventually I found it at Rebel Rebel on Bleeker Street. Amazingly Rebel Rebel still exists and the owner still stands in behind the front counter exactly as he did 20+ years ago. Recently I went in there with my brother and saw him only now with gray hair. We spent countless weekends, hours and money buying hundreds of records from Rebel Rebel. Secession had a few good songs. I love the melancholy melodies in Touch. Melodies like this were in so much of 80s New Wave and for me the memories are melancholy too. Forget Virgin Galatic I want a proper time machine.

“Rebel Rebel is one of the old school NYC record shops— they’ve seemingly been around since the dawn of time. The walls are lined with posters and records from bands that haven’t seen a recording studio in years. Vinyl is everywhere, promo posters are sold out of a box for $2 a piece. It’s one of those places where a record buyer just feels at home.” – nycgoth.com

Bring back any memories?

via Matrixsynth

I’ve had a Press & Distribution deal for my label Things to Come Records with Neuton Distribution since June 2002. Neuton has been a major force in vinyl manufacturing for electronic music. They out paced and out lasted many of it’s competitors. More likely than not if you purchased a new dance record in the past decade it had a small white “Distributed by Neuton” sticker on it somewhere.

According to Belgian online magazine Side-Line, Neuton will announce insolvency today. To be clear, I don’t know the exact details and what this really means. The word insolvency generally states they won’t be able to pay their bills. Is it a sign they are about to go out of business? My initial thinking is yes. The world is moving all digital and music is basically free. Vinyl is a niche product for collectors and audiophiles only.

“Neuton, one of the biggest (vinyl) music distributors, is about to announce its insolvency today. After the collapse of the UK distributor Amato and the Japanese distributor Cisco, the whole vinyl label scene and the distributors were under extreme pressure. Neuton worked with many top electronic labels, distributing music for diverse labels including Four Twenty, Tresor, Vakant, or Perlon and has worked in the past with labels like Bpitch control, Playhouse, Klang or M_nus.” – Side-Line.com

If Neuton pulls through I will happily continue to produce records with them. If they follow the path of the DoDo bird I wish the very best to SIggi, Bo and all my friends there. Electronic music and great songs will always be produced.

For more info: Neuton.com

Nylvi is a new site about to launch from a group of Norwegian’s who recently moved to Berlin. They have been getting to know the city and its scene visiting labels and other music tech companies. I would say Nylvi has some similarity to the Discogs Marketplace but with much added style and extended functionality. From talking with Nylvi I see they understand social media and data portability which appeals to me as an online music seller. I think they are one to watch.

They visited my studio last month and today I recorded a short interview with Thomas who you can see in the photo above (left):

Download audio file (nylvi-interview.mp3)

Visit them at Nylvi.com

Paul Mawhinney’s has a 50 million dollar record collection. I always imagined there must be people with insanely huge vinyl collections. I personally have 5000 records in storage all mostly from the 80s. My favorite 12″? A German edition of Depeche Mode’s “Leave in Silence” on clear vinyl.

Paul Mawhinney was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA. Over the years he has amassed what has become the world’s largest record collection. Due to health issues and a struggling record industry Paul is being forced to sell his collection.

This is the story of a man and his records. I hope you enjoy it. – veryapeproductions.com

So are you still hording a giant record collection? Do you have any records that are crazy expensive collectors items?

A Documentary By Michael Greene. In October of 2006, a small mom and pop record store in Southern New Jersey named Full Circle Records announced that it was going out of business and that the liquidation sale would continue until mid December. Ironically, at approximately the same time, Tower Records, the iconic juggernaut of the music retail market, made the same announcement. Something has happened to the music retail world and it seemed to have happened overnight. …Or did it? The Final Days Of Full Circle Records is a fascinating documentary that provides valuable insight into the rise and fall of the record store industry and subculture which may change the way you think about music, music retail, and the art of collecting music forever.

via bestfreedocumentaries.blogspot.com

You know about Discogs.com right? It’s a detailed online database of music releases. The best part of the site is the fact that it’s user driven. Anyone can join and add a release to the database. The input system is detailed so releases on the site are complete with information including artwork, liner notes and related links. All the data is moderated and voted upon keeping things tidy. There is also a comment system where you can review releases and add artist and record label blurbs. For example, Frankie Bones wrote the following about my label, “Things To Come does exactly what the name suggests, and that gives the future something to look forward for…..” (Thanks Frankie!).

If you visit the site you will see multiple pages for what seem like the same release. However, if you look closely they will be different somehow, either being on different labels, or having different remixes, artwork, something. This is great as I often check to see if there was a bootleg of one of my releases or another label somewhere in the world released something of mine without permission. Over the years I have found quite a few unauthorized 12 inches!

Discogs, short for discographies, is a website and database of information about music recordings, including commercial releases, promotional releases, and certain bootleg or off-label releases. The Discogs servers, currently hosted under the domain name discogs.com, are owned by Zink Media, Inc., and are located in Portland, Oregon, USA. Discogs is one of the largest online databases of electronic music releases and is believed to be the largest online database of releases on vinyl media. Across all genres and formats, over 1,019,000 releases are catalogued. It also features listings for over 874,000 artists and over 87,500 labels. The site has around 200,000 visitors a day. – Wikipedia

Discogs is also the best place to buy and sell vinyl. They have a good working system called the “Marketplace“. Most of my friends tell me it’s better to sell records on Discogs than on eBay. Your user profile can have a a wish list, list of things your selling and even a list of records in your collection.

One thing I am looking for is the ability to embed the my own label’s Discogs page and releases into my own website. I see that Discogs has an API. Does anyone know how to do this? As of today I maintain my own database but it’s a pain to keep up especially considering there is already a great one auto updating on DIscogs. How about a Discogs widget? I would love to have one that displayed all my releases that I could put on my MySpace or Facebook page. Please let me know in the comments if these things exist.