Talking Records, episode 19 (May '26)

stuart huggett

Discussing the 12" EP 'Gleam' by Rashamon and the elasticStage press-on-demand service.  The Rashamon 12" is available here: https://elasticstage.com/soundcloud/releases/rashamon-gleam-album  My own Stay Out Forever page on elasticStage is here: https://elasticstage.com/stayoutforever  I also mention The Family Grave, whose elasticStage page is here: https://elasticstage.com/thefamilygrave  Phil's lathe cutting service is here https://www.345rpm.com/

Transcript

00:00Good evening, good morning, good afternoon. I'm going to talk a little bit here about this 12 inch EP, which

00:10is by Rashomon, and it's called Gleam, and the reason why I'm talking about this record will become apparent as

00:20we go on.

00:22Okay, so, Rashomon is an old friend of mine called Lee, who, we used to be in a band together,

00:32he then started making electronic music, he started putting it out on tape, he used to have tapes, in the

00:38mid-late 90s, that then developed into him putting out stuff on CDR, I was doing the same with my

00:45own music and my own record label and stuff as well, all in parallel, we often did stuff together.

00:50And at one point he had a 7 inch single come out on a London label called High Point Low

00:56Life, this was a while ago, this is a 7 inch that came out, called Window Loka, still available on

01:05Discord, you can pick it up quite simply, and our friend Seb did the art on that, played guitar on

01:12it, yeah, came out a while ago, got played on the radio, Radio 1,

01:18by Robert the Bank, by Robert the Bank, when you're swinging for John Peel, after John Peel passed away, so,

01:22anyway, these carried on doing stuff, sometimes CDs, mainly on SoundCloud, and Bandcamp, anyway, a month or so ago, he

01:35posted on Facebook, that he'd made a 12 inch,

01:41and when I looked at it, and when I looked at it, and ordered a copy, you get it from

01:45a, I'll show you the back, you see, there's the SoundCloud logo, and there's another logo for a company called

01:55Elastic Stage,

01:59and, and, I'd forgotten, I had heard about Elastic Stage a while back, because another friend of mine called John,

02:06he's a single songwriter, and put some music out under the name, The Family Grave,

02:10and he had, and he had occasionally posted when he had, um, CDs or records out, um, I'd clicked the

02:17links, and I, I'd seen them on Elastic Stage, but I hadn't, uh, apologies to John, I hadn't bought any

02:21of them,

02:21and I hadn't really looked in depth, and I'd sort of forgotten about it, uh, anyway, so, basically, Elastic Stage

02:27is a press-on-demand vinyl company from the UK, um,

02:37way back when, we're talking, oh gosh, early 20th century, maybe, maybe a bit later, but, assume 100 years ago,

02:47um, in the world of literature, vanity publishing was a thing, I think, particularly in the US,

02:54I don't wish to disparage anyone, because I'm coming on something like this, but, um, yeah, vanity publishing, where you

03:00could, um, if you had a, uh, if you had a book, here comes a cat, if you had a

03:04book,

03:04that you would like a printed copy of, and you would like to give to your friends, or hawk around

03:08publishers, um, you could pay, uh, companies to do small runs of them, um, and then, use them as you

03:16see fit, uh,

03:19I think it's taken a long time to get to this point, here's the cat, hey Buckles, um, you alright,

03:26mate, having a very needy morning, alright, you're not wandering through, um,

03:34yeah, it's taken a long time to get to this point, where, you can basically, you put your, it's a

03:41free service, initially, sort of,

03:44you go on the website, you upload WAV files of the songs you wish to put potentially on CD or

03:54vinyl, uh, and you upload JPEGs of the artwork, um,

04:02and you basically, kind of, design a release yourself, and it then, sits for sale, on the Anastic Sage website,

04:10on your, on your own, sort of homepage on there, um,

04:15uh, until such a time as someone wishes to purchase a copy, whether that's yourself, or a friend or family

04:21member, or a complete stranger,

04:22and at that point, it, sort of, rolls into action, and creates a single copy to sell to that, to

04:32post to that purchaser,

04:32it takes about, sort of, three or four weeks, I think, it took about four weeks, I think, for my

04:37rationale on 12-inch to come,

04:38there was a slight delay at the end, but, um, it arrived, uh, and yes, I'll show you, because it's,

04:46uh,

04:55so you can see, it's, uh, only concentrated on black vinyl, um, reasonably thin, uh, but still, probably about twice

05:08as thick as the, um,

05:1012-inch singles that major record companies were putting out, sort of, uh, mid-80s to mid-90s, you know,

05:16if you go to a second-hand shop and pick up a, a big-selling Pet Shop Boys 12-inch,

05:20it's often razor thin,

05:22it looks like they really skimped on vinyl around those years, this is thicker than that,

05:26and not as heavyweight as a, uh, heavyweight vinyl you would buy in HMB these days, but it's good, um,

05:32sound quality is great, um,

05:34nice and solid, um, it's not something that's gonna decay any more than an ordinary vinyl release,

05:47so it's not like an acetate or a flexi or anything like that, um, I like the idea that anyone

05:57can do it, um,

05:59if you're able to record something digitally, have it, convert it, again, you can do that for free to the

06:06WAV file,

06:07take a photo on your phone, crop the JPEG to the right size, again, you can do that for free

06:12on whatever, Adobe,

06:14or other sites on the internet, and then go on the website, attach it all, and there you go, you've,

06:22you've created something,

06:22and, if you wish, you can order a first copy for yourself, uh, and you can hope that other people

06:31order copies too,

06:32I don't know how many of these have these done, um, how many of these people have ordered from, uh,

06:36me anyway.

06:40Talking of the cat, it reminds me, it reminds me a little bit of Schrodinger's cat, as in,

06:45um, a record, both exists once someone's designed it for the website,

06:55but it also doesn't exist until someone purchases a copy, so it's in this kind of, uh, uh, reality, anti

07:02-reality, um, dual position.

07:06Uh, so, that's that, that's Gleam, by Rashomon, uh, I'd like, I would say buy a copy, um, dead good.

07:14Um, so what I've done is, because I have some stuff, I, on Bandcamp, um, although I've made music for

07:25a long time,

07:25I've got no skills in making music, so I tend to just put batteries in there, uh, battery-operated Casio

07:32or whatever,

07:33improvise something on that, or I'll, uh, knock some percussion things together.

07:37Basic stuff, basic Anyone Can Do It stuff, um, which I've put on Bandcamp and Places.

07:41Um, so, I've put together two CD compilations, again, on Elastic Stage.

07:51I haven't run off a test copy, so I don't know what they're gonna look like,

07:54well, I'm not gonna look like, I don't know physically how they'll be.

07:58Um, they will have these, uh, generic,

08:02uh, rear labels. I like the generic rear labels at Elastic Stage, although you can submit your own artwork.

08:09Same as, um, same as on the, uh, the labels, you can do generic CD or vinyl labels, or you

08:14can design your own.

08:15Um, I mean, at some point, I'm in there, but at some point, I'll probably run a copy off and

08:21have a look.

08:21Uh, and I also put a, I also had some, uh, AI stuff I'd done on Bandcamp through the Suno

08:31Pro company, um, for my friends at the KLF Reenactment Society.

08:36Uh, Bandcamp early this year decided, uh, they no longer wish to have AI generating music on their site, so

08:41I've removed it all from there.

08:44But, Elastic Station would be fine with it. I think they're fine with it because the more people put up

08:49on their site,

08:49the more people are likely to buy their own copies, and they take the larger cut of it, so, you

08:53know, it's a money making thing for them to allow it.

08:56Um, so I've put a CD album together of some of that, and a 12 inch single together of some

09:04of that.

09:04Again, I don't have copies, um, I will at some point, uh, someone else might order one, they might not.

09:11Um, we'll see how that goes, but yes, uh, I think it's, um, I think it's a good, good idea.

09:20My friend, uh, Phil, has a lathe cutting service called, uh, 3.33 RPM, I think, he's been doing that

09:33for a few years.

09:34I interviewed him about it once for the quietest, and a few of my friends have used his service,

09:38and basically he has to sit in his spare room with his lathe cutting machine, um, playing the music,

09:44and he basically kind of cuts it by hand, like, every disc, steadily, from the outside,

09:50the outside of the disc to the inner, turn it over to the other side.

09:55Um, he's done loads of stuff, loads of small ones stuff for, uh, small, um, indie labels.

10:01I don't know quite how Elastic Stage you do their cutting.

10:05I don't, I think it's probably somewhere in between that and Standard Record Company making a, uh,

10:13making a stamper and pressing loads on the conveyor belt.

10:17Um, I suspect it's computer-operated lathe, I don't know, we'll find out at some point,

10:22I could look it up. I'm sure it's one of those things that I don't know,

10:24but in 12 months' time I'll have discovered randomly how they do it.

10:30Um, because yeah, it's very, very solid, very steady, very evenly spaced grooves,

10:35very, very slick operation, I think.

10:38Um, sometime later in the year, I will run off copies of the things that I've done,

10:47and I will do another vlog, uh, probably do it on a Vlogspot thing later in the year,

10:52a different vlog channel on YouTube, Dailymotion, and we'll look at them then.

10:56Um, but yeah, that is that. Um, I'll stick a link, uh, maybe in the description

11:06to my Elastic Stage page, which is Stay Up Forever.

11:10I would say also have a look for Rashomon's one, R-A-S-H-A-M-O-N,

11:16and have a look at The Family Grave.

11:17And, uh, if you're another, uh, artist who watches this and uses that subject,

11:24put, uh, put a link to your page in the comments or something,

11:27because, uh, it'd be interesting to have a look at what other people are doing.

11:30Um, that's about it. Uh, the cat's now having some biscuits.

11:34Um, and I'm gonna go and upload this, alright?

11:39Bye, bye, bye, where's the off button?

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