Weekend Offender brings vinyl production back to Portsmouth

The News, Portsmouth

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00:00So mine's Matt, I'm one half of Weekend Offender Records, which is a record label, we deal with

00:07physical media product rather than Spotify streaming and all sorts of stuff, so we do

00:12CDs, vinyls and cassettes for local artists. And we used to do vinyls for local artists,

00:187-inch vinyls, 10-inch records, things like that. And we then decided this year that instead of

00:27outsourcing it, we do it ourselves, so that's why you're here with the equipment. We decided

00:33then to go over to Germany, buy the record lathe, we've come back, and ever since we've been making

00:38vinyls for local artists. The big thing behind it is of course the artists don't technically

00:43have to pay anything, so we make them to order, a bit like Amazon do with books, if that makes

00:48sense too. They're all made to order, so if you're a band, you come in, you send me your artwork,

00:54when someone orders it off the website, I make it, we ship it out.

00:57Perfect, perfect. So how is that different to how you said the benefit is you don't have to pay for

01:01it, so what would be the usual process if you were to participate?

01:04So the usual process, if you went and pressed vinyl, there's usually minimum orders of

01:09300 to 500 copies. Well, a lot of times, especially with local bands, they can't afford

01:16to do, you know, 300, 500, and let's be honest, they're not going to sell them,

01:19most of them are friends, family, and a few odds and sods. So this way, it means it doesn't cost

01:26the artist anything to do it, and they still get their musical on some sort of physical product.

01:31They make more money that way than they would do from, say, one vinyl, of course,

01:35500, 600, 12,000. Gives you an idea of, it's a lot more, and it's nice for people to go into

01:42these and have a physical product, because artists, they all rave about their Spotify

01:49raps for the year, but these things, they're promoting the company, they don't pay them.

01:54Whereas, of course, if you're selling your vinyl, your CD, your cassette, your t-shirts,

01:58or whatever, you're actually making a lot better reward, if you will, for your work.

02:03Okay, and this is the first time for a little while that this option has been

02:06available in Portsmouth in terms of vinyl? Yeah, so you had Lathe to the Grave were here,

02:12in weirdly the room opposite, as I found out. They've moved over to Cardiff, and ever since

02:17there hasn't been anyone there, so we've kind of filled the void, if you will, but slightly

02:22different, because we do a lot of live events, and festivals, we did a side of festivals this

02:27year, for example. We kind of combine it all, so for the artist's benefit, we're giving them

02:32an opportunity to release music on physical vinyl at no cost, and the second part of it,

02:36give them a place to play. Perfect, and obviously, having made the decision to

02:40do your own vinyl, you'll see, as you kind of mentioned there, you had to go to Germany to do

02:46it. Yeah, that's the story, and painfully itself. I decided to, instead of worrying about coming,

02:53getting this shit back, I thought, I'll do the thing, we'll have a day trip, or a weekend trip,

02:59and I took my van to, over the Dover, drove over Dover, stayed the night in a place called the

03:05Bristol Inn, in the middle of Germany. It was raining, it was a horrific day. Next I set off,

03:11van overheated. I was filming it the whole time as well, for a diary, the last show is the bonnet

03:17up, and smoke billowing out. I was told, I won't repeat the words he used, but I was told that the

03:23van was no longer fit for purpose, so then I had to take a £300 taxi ride, so where I was going,

03:29train for 24 hours, to finally be approved to buy this, and then have it shipped back anyway,

03:36so what should have been quite a cheap trip, and it cost me more in a new van, plane tickets back

03:43from Germany, and then obviously the tax and everything, getting the thing shipped over here

03:49in the first place. Yeah, it's painful. You said it was a day's train as well, so yeah,

03:53so obviously the guys are a little, could they say eccentric, in terms of the inventor of this?

03:58Yeah, it's a guy called Suri who invented the lathe, he's quite an eccentric guy, he's a very,

04:04very clever man, and he invented it to make replacement vinyls for jukeboxes, and then it's

04:12kind of taken off, so it's got a number of celebrity clientele as well, but whoever you are,

04:17be it someone like me, or some of the famous people that purchased them, you have to go

04:23through the same rigmarole, so you have to go and stay over in this little weird hotel in a village

04:28in Germany, which has got four bedrooms and one shower, it's quite an interesting thing, and he's

04:34got, no, he doesn't mind, whoever you are, provided you wanted to do this, so I got over and I pitched

04:41to him why I wanted to do it, and what we were going to do, and he was like, fantastic, come over,

04:45and then the rest is history, and we've been playing with this idea for a couple of years,

04:48but it's only this year we've actually managed to physically do it. And you were saying it's

04:54Will Ferrell? Will Ferrell's got one apparently, Norman Cook's got one, Jazzy Jeff from the Fresh

04:59Prince, he's got one, so Jack White from the White Stripes, of course, has got one too, and then

05:05obviously there's loads of other people like me, so it's kind of something to be mad about, it's quite a

05:09cool little thing. Yeah, interesting. Yeah, so someone was interested in having their own,

05:16or a band that wanted to come and have their own vinyl house, how did they go about that?

05:20Quite easy, there's two ways, you've got the website, which is weekendoffenderrecords.com,

05:25it's also on my really old jumper, if you go on Facebook or Instagram, you've got

05:30at Weekend Offender Records, you can just message us on there, and we'll kind of give you the,

05:34what we need, which is basically artwork and tracks, send them over and we can get started.

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