It only took about two months since it debuted on white label at DEMF, but the full release of LWYF-001 is now available for purchase in the US, the UK, Europe, and Japan! It is available from various distributors and shops, notably Rush Hour, Gramaphone, Nuloop, Juno, Clone, and Underground Gallery.

Thanks to the kind folks at Gridface, Little White Earbuds, and Resident Advisor who all had kinds words to say about the debut release from Disco Nihilist. Also, many props to Shuja @ LWE and Juju & Jordash for charting the record, as well Andrew Duke for playing it on his Cognition Audioworks show. One last shout out to Manny Theiner for giving a little local love in Pittsburgh’s City Paper (where you can learn a little bit about the plans for LWYF-002!). Thanks to all readers who have supported as well! This will be the last you’ll hear about this record on here as I feel retarded with the blatant self-promotion being so heavy, but this will be the first place to hear about all future releases so keep your eyes locked on ISM….

If you took the time to read that City Paper article, you will already know that my man Andrew Burger (who did the awesome artwork for my label that you can see at the top of the post) has also started a new label, The Harmony Society. The first release is a small-hole 7″ by local beatsmith BusCrates (who has been killing it recently in the 412 with his sets of 80′s disco and R&B!) and it will be of interest to ISM readers because it features two extremely ill soulful house instrumentals alongside two dope hip-hop instrumentals. The full color packaging is just as good, designed and assembled by Mr. Burger while working at the record store. I’m as excited about this as I am my own label! Worldwide distribution is currently being negotiated for this release, when it is widely available I will let you know. In the meantime, you can support through the Pittsburgh shops mentioned a little deeper in this post.

These labels are the start of a new focus for us at 720 Records on getting original material out into the world, and both are available for purchase through us and at Paul’s Records in Bloomfield as well.

The lucky people who met up with me in Detroit already know this, but as my label’s first release is on Crosstalk’s distribution list this week (link is time sensitive, by Friday it will show next week’s releases!) it is finally time to let all the info out. The release is by an artist from Austin, TX, who goes by Disco Nihilist. My label (some of whose early logo artwork you can see at the top of the post, the final label art has not yet been completed!) is called Love What You Feel and it has no web presence.

Disco Nihilist is a name that may be familiar to long time readers and commenters here, as you will see it sprinkled throughout the comments on ISM. Check his Myspace to hear some of his new tracks, all of which are also quite dope. He has a few other things in the works for release on wax, but this is his debut vinyl release and I must say that I am quite pleased to be the person who got to help him get his music out there. He’s already been praised by Santiago Salazar in an interview from last year, and recently the Broken Audio Movement guys mentioned him in an interview as well. His mixture of the old and the new is very fresh.

Check the link to Crosstalk’s page, you can listen to one minute samples of each of the release’s four untitled tracks which you can no longer hear anywhere else online (well, until shops put up sound samples!). The description I wrote on that page is still the best way I can think of to describe the sound of this release, so I won’t expound on it more here. I will add that if I heard a record that sounded like this in a shop in 2009, I would immediately pick up two copies and start feverishly hunting down the producer online. I hope other people feel the same way!

The artwork is being done by my man Andrew Burger, aka one of the owners of 720 Records in Pittsburgh and sometimes blogger over at Stupid Scientifical. Andrew is an outstanding visual artist who works in many different styles and mediums. He’s also a huge record nerd, who loves everything from hardcore to dub to house to jazz. All artwork for the label will be done by Mr. Burger, whose work you may have already seen on every flyer I’ve had for all of my nights and events (except for the Rick Wilhite thing last year). You can also check out a project of his that he hopes to turn into a book here, featuring lots of crazy monsters and whatnot. Insanity!

So yeah, now is the time for shops to do preorders through Crosstalk. If you own a shop, then you know what to do. If you want your local shop to get it in, harass them this week and tell them that the release is on Crosstalk for preorder now. The actual release date is about 3 weeks away, leaving a time for the artwork to be completed and the final pressing to be done and shipped. I’m sure I will be slowly going insane over those few weeks to get everything finished up, but the experience of putting out a record has been nothing but fun and excitement. Copies of this record were given out to many house deejays at DEMF, so hopefully it will be making its way into sets around the world very soon.

As for LWYF-002, some things are already in the works….. keep your eye on this space!

Updated to add: If you want to be the first on your block to have this record, I’m selling a couple of the last white label copies through the shop I work at in Pittsburgh, 720 Records. The link to buy is here; the promo records are a tad bit more expensive than they will be in shops once they come out but that’s life in the big city I reccomend this especially for heads in the US as overseas shipping is insanely expensive these days.

Last Thursday, the test presses of my label’s first release came in the mail. A listen through the whole record on my studio monitors revealed no pressing flaws or any other problems, so I tried it out at my Saturday night gig playing records with Jwan Allen and Noleian Reusse. Everything sounded good, and it was quite fun to finally get to work the tracks in the mix as one of my turntables at home has a short in the RCA cable that I have yet to repair.

Now that the record has passed from an abstract concept into the real world, I have to sell this thing to people. This involves promotion and distribution to get it into the hands of the cats who are interested. I had 100 total white labels pressed, five of which have already gone out to the artist, myself, Jwan, and Noleian. The remaining 95 are going to be picked up at Archer on my way into Detroit on Thursday for DEMF. Some of those copies are going to go to the deejays who might be interested in the kind of music on the record. I’m going to try to get some of those copies into every shop that carries dance vinyl in Detroit, at least one is already definitely gonna take some. Watch my Twitter feed to see in which shops it will be for sale. I will also be selling copies out of my backpack at the festival, along with two new limited white label releases on Pittsburgh’s Technoir Audio. The Technoir boys will also be pimping out my label’s release backpack style along with their own. If you want to know the artist and label name, you’ve got to find one of us or visit the shops who are carrying it to find out! Otherwise you have to wait…..

Sometime this week I will finish the paperwork necessary to get some international distribution. As of right now, it looks like that will go down through Crosstalk out of Chicago. They will send the info and soundclips out to shops and distributors in the US and around the world for pre-orders, this will help to ensure the proper number of records gets pressed up. Crosstalk seems pretty open to working with new underground US labels, so hopefully they will help get this record into shops everywhere so that you can go down to your local shop to pick it up. I had initially planned on trying to sell everything myself DIY style, but that kind of cuts out the record stores which is not something I want to do. Once the record comes out, if you’re in some place where it is not going to be stocked, you can get in touch with me directly to find out what the best way for you to get it will be. As this is the label and artist’s debut, getting it out to people is my primary concern!

Now it is just a matter of drumming up as much interest in this record as possible. Obviously, having the ISM audience is a benefit that may not be available to most people starting a new label. Promoing it at DEMF seems to be the most obvious route to getting it into the hands of deejays and people interested, but also the most effective. Between these avenues and the quality of the release, hopefully a substantial number of shops and distros will be interested in it. Once Crosstalk gets back to me with the number of preorders, the artwork will be finalized and the final run will be completed. That will be the final step documented for this release.

My label’s first release is finishing its own tour of house and techno’s birthplaces (mastering just outside Chicago at Prairie Cat, plating just outside NYC at Mastercraft) at Archer Record Pressing in Detroit. The plates were shipped to Archer, who then attatch them to the press. These plates act as stampers. A chunk of vinyl is then placed inbetween the plates which are then pushed together using powerful hydraulics with 100 tons of force to shape it into a record. The edges are then trimmed and the records are loaded into their sleeves. The Detroit News has a nice little video online showing what goes down at Archer, with narration by Mike Archer and Theo Parrish.

There are usually two runs done for a record, the initial white label test pressing and then the full label art pressing. The white label run of my record was completed over the weekend. Five test presses are in the mail on their way to me now to be checked for any pressing flaws. Flaws could come from a mistake in mastering, damage done to the acetate in shipping to the plating facility, damage done to the stampers, etc. The rest of the test presses are waiting for me at Archer, where I will pick them up on the way into Detroit next Thursday for DEMF. Once I approve the test presses, get the label art together, and pay Archer the final 50% of the pressing costs (ha!), the final pressing will be run.

Now all that is left to do is get those records into the hands of deejays and music heads around the world! That will be the subject of the next post in this series…..

Photo of Archer courtesy of Adam Ratana

The next step after the master lacquer has been cut is for the lacquer to be plated. Plating is an electro-chemical process that deposits nickel onto a thin layer of liquid silver solution that is first applied to the lacquer. This process is being done for this record at Mastercraft Metal Finishing in New Jersey. Check their site for a more detailed explanation of how electroplating is done (you may need to highlight the text to be able to see it, website design doesn’t seem to be a major concern for them!). A plate is made for each side of the lacquer; these can be used in a few different ways.

Plating for big pressing runs takes multiple steps. The first plate, an inverse of the laquer, is called the “father plate” which can be used to make a nickel “mother plate” which is an exact replica of the lacquer but made of metal. The mother plate can actually be played on a turntable! More importantly, the mother plate can be used to make a number of stampers, each of which is good for approximately 1000 vinyl records before degrading.

However, for an underground record with less than 1000 copies being pressed (that’s us!), only one stamper is necessary. For this purpose, the father plate is used as a stamper. The advantage of this is that the single plate is cheaper to manufacture than making the father and mother plates. The primary disadvantage is that you only get 1000 records out of this. Once those father plates are used up, if you want to press more copies the entire mastering and plating steps need to be repeated! Also, if something happens to the father plate to break or disfigure it, mastering and plating will need to be done again.

At the end of plating you have two plates, one for each side of the record. These are then shipped to the pressing plant of your choice where they will be put on a machine that will stamp out the records!

I mentioned in a post last week that I was starting a label and would be documenting each step of the process here. This post will establish the background and the first crucial decision: mastering. I’m gonna keep this stuff really general for now, the label name, artist name, and sound samples and things like that will all come out as the record is nearing its completion.

It all started back in January when I got a friend request on Myspace for both my account and the ISM account from a guy with a pretty entertaining screenname. When I went to check his profile out, I listened to a bunch of his tunes and found that I was really into them. I contacted him straight away and told him there were two in particular that I really liked and that I would be starting a label later on in the spring. He then sent through a link to a joint he had just finished, and that was that. I knew immediately that this would be the first release on my label. We stayed in touch, bullshitting on the phone and via email about various topics and planning how we would go about things. We saw eye to eye on just about every issue, and that made choosing our route pretty easy.

The first (and possibly the most important!) decision that needed to be made was where to get the record mastered. Mark Richardson at Prairie Cat has a client list that reads like a who’s who of my favorite labels. Prescription, Balance, Planet E, Sound Signature, Fxhe, Dance Mania, Main Street, Sistrum, Elevate, Aesthetic Audio, M-Plant, and many more have had releases mastered through Mr. Richardson, so we knew he had the ear for how dance 12″s should be cut. After talking with him on the phone to get the specifics on payment and info that needed to be submitted, I mailed out our master this morning.

Mastering for vinyl, for those who aren’t sure about this part of the process, is when a sound engineer plays the raw uncompressed master version of a track through his audio processing equipment in order to make the recording work well and sound loud in the vinyl medium. The master lacquer is a 12″ round disc of soft material that is cut buy a diamond tip lathe creating the grooves that will play back music when a stylus and needle run through the groove. Mastering involves compression and equalization to allow the lathe to cut the lacquer without distortion or errors that would cause pressing flaws. This is also the point where the label’s matrix number is etched into the runout grooves. Lacquer is not a stable material, it begins to break down pretty quickly after the cut. Once the master lacquer is cut at Prairie Cat, it will be shipped overnight to the place for the next step, plating.

As I have noted here before, school has been killing me for the last month. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, I will be graduating in just under two weeks which means I will finally have time to getting around to all the ISM things I have had in the works. In the meantime, I have only a few assignments, papers, and exams to get through! To say that I am excited would be an understatement. It’s been a looooooooong four years, I won’t be missing school very much.

Also in the works is the first EP on my new label which is being sent out to be mastered this week. I think it will be fun to kind of blog about the step by step process of making a vinyl record from the very beginning, so that’s how it’s gonna go. And it makes sense to do it that way since I met the artist who did the music for the record through ISM. More info will be forthcoming on this one later this week when things really start to get rolling.

In what little free time I’ve had, I have been buying some great records both new and old. Recapping the most important of these will be one of my first posts once school is done! Tomorrow, look for a post with not one but TWO mixes from the Ferris Park family, one by Scott Ferguson and one from Mr. Keith Kemp. Those have been in the pipeline for a minute, sorry for the delays guys! Next Monday will see a post containing the newest mix from Juju & Jordash (who also have some new music about to drop! keep your eyes on this space for more info on that….) which is sounding pretty fucking dope indeed. Hopefully that will be enough content from me to get through the next two weeks! All the other ISM writers have been doing a damn fine job in my absence, big ups to all those cats. Our readership would probably be nonexistent by now if it weren’t for their hard work.