“Matador still puts out everything on vinyl.”
Mark Ohe’s words come through crystalline and without distortion. The art director at one of the country’s most respected independent record labels has a message, and he makes it heard in high-fidelity stereo sound.
“We still do vinyl packages with every release,” said. Ohe, a longtime employee at Matador, the label home to Cat Power, Interpol and Yo La Tengo. “We’ll sell, for example, a respectable amount: 4,000 to 5,000 on vinyl, 20,000 on CD. Still 10-20 percent of sales is vinyl. A lot of record companies would say it’s not worth it because our profit margin is next to nothing. But most bands are really jazzed their records are coming out on vinyl.”
Bands do like seeing their album art on a 12-by-12 inch sleeve. Even better, they love hearing their music in the warm fidelity of vinyl.
“With most bands,” said Conrad Keely, whose Austin band … And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead releases everything on vinyl, “there is going to be a 12-inch edition of their record.”
While many still see vinyl as a relic, an anachronism valued more in thrift stores than in music stores, audiophiles and music geeks know that vinyl is alive – thriving, even.
“It’s been fascinating to watch vinyl over the years, and we’ve been lucky enough to be a part of it from the beginning,” said Paul Epstein, owner of the tastemaking Denver music store Twist & Shout Records. “When we started this, vinyl was the primary delivery system, and it went pretty quickly to being one of the two majors and then to being completely overwhelmed by CDs.
“And now we’re watching it come back, in a number of different uses.”
Vinyl is all over the music world – as a promotional tool or as a collector’s limited edition, as a legitimate full-length release or a thick-grooved single for DJs.
When Barsuk Records released the single “Houdini” from the band Jessamine, the Seattle label let it loose as a 7-inch vinyl disc that was locked shut, and the key was in an attached envelope.
“I’ve always liked that kind of stuff,” said Josh Rosenfeld, co-founder of Barsuk and a notorious lover of vinyl. “Somehow having thousands of tracks on an mp3 player isn’t as satisfying as looking at the spines of hundreds of LPs and deciding which ones you want to pick out and play. Pick out ‘Sticky Fingers,’ and it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, I have the one with the zipper on the front.”‘
The collectors are as enthusiastic as they have ever been, and now there are more of them as more people develop a fondness for vinyl.
“It’s an expensive habit,” said Darien Waldhoff, a local DJ, record collector and vinyl mastering engineer with Denver-
based Aardvark Record Mastering. “A lot of people think that vinyl’s dead, but it’s not. I see a lot of stuff on vinyl, all sorts of stuff, and it’s not a dead format. It’s just a little bit more limited than CDs in terms of quantity.”
In some instances, Vinyl collecting is more prominent than it has been in decades, thanks to technological advances in the bartering market.
“(Collecting is) easier but more expensive than it’s ever been thanks to eBay,” said vinyl aficionado Ben Sumner. “If you don’t care about getting a reissue of something, the world is your oyster at this point. If you’re happy to get an ’80s pressing, then fine. But I’m not.”
The old vinyl will always have an audience, but now new pressings of contemporary bands are finding their audiences with increasing frequency. Record labels such as Sub Pop and Jajaguwar see vinyl as added incentive for their discerning fanbases. When Sub Pop released the most recent Mudhoney record “Under a Billion Stars,” they released it on CD and vinyl – and purchasers of the vinyl product also got a gift copy of the CD in the record sleeve.
“We do that so whoever buys the LPs can still put the music on their iPod,” said Jeff Kleinsmith, the art director for Sub Pop Records. “We don’t really make money on them. We’re pleased when they break even. They often end up being more of a promotional tool and pleasing the people who used to buy vinyl from us in the old days.”
Jagjaguwar is taking that philosophy one step further with the release of Odawas’ sophomore record, due in spring 2007. They’re inserting a CD in the record sleeve, but they’re not releasing the record as a standalone CD.
“We want to make this a very special record,” said Darius Van Arman, part owner of Jagjaguwar, an Indiana label that typically has initial pressings of 4,000-5,000 on CD and 500-1,000 on vinyl. “All of us have record players. We have big record collections. It’s something that we’re into aesthetically. Sometimes things sound better on vinyl, sometimes they don’t. It’s not a universal rule.”
Twist & Shout’s Epstein would beg to differ. A few months ago he indulged in a high-end turntable, and recently he’s been digging through his own collection and playing some older platters alongside newer records such as Bob Dylan’s latest, “Modern Times.” It’s like he’s a little kid again, talking about the needle, the record, the sound.
“It’s without a doubt a different quality than CDs,” Epstein said. “CDs are louder and clearer and don’t have scratches and are brilliant, but they do not sound as good as vinyl. I can’t put my finger on what it is exactly, but it’s amazing.
“It may just be that the creation of music – a finger striking a string, a breath striking a wind instrument or a key hammer striking a string – is a physical thing. And here you have a sharp needle dragging on vinyl. And it’s magic.”
Pop music critic Ricardo Baca can be reached at 303-954-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com.
