JUMP RIGHT TO THE ORDERING PAGE HERE
It’s well known that getting vinyl pressed can be a huge financial burden for smaller artists, not to mention high minimum orders that can reach into the thousands of pieces. This simply isn’t feasible for anyone that doesn’t want to empty their savings and then have to move hundreds of copies of their own album every time they get a new apartment over the next forty years.
elasticStage is a relatively new on-demand vinyl and CD service based in London. When I first heard about them (via a targeted Instagram ad) it sounded too-good-to-be-true. But they make it very easy to try out, and so I have. As always I can’t resist stress-testing systems like these, so I figured throwing the edited collection of my twenty-five hour ROOMS project at it would be a good place to start. Even when trimmed down to easily digestible lengths the collection of twenty-five songs clocks in at around two hours.
As luck would have it all but one track fit perfectly across three LPs and two CDs. There was only that one edit for length, and then a complete remastering for vinyl. (This was its own voyage and I’m happy to have learned a few things along the way.) Artwork was adapted from the original digital cover, with the newly updated Dirty Knobs logo swapped for the previous one. Otherwise this is the exact same thing you can already find on Bandcamp as a digital download for the low low entry fee of $1 USD (or more if you’d like).
This series, like many of my other deeply ambient works, is a natural fit for physical analog media. I’ve always strived to make music that is as far removed from its machine origins as possible, perhaps more than ever with this ROOMS series. The original format was twenty-five hour-long pieces with very little variation from their core concept. These pieces “strived to create individual sound environments. ‘Music’ for spaces left alone or otherwise ignored.” Liminal spaces, in other words. These can be highly meditative when focused on, or be used to fill the background for other creative endeavors. All of these full pieces can be found in The Endless Compendium, a paywalled garden where far too much of my work is kept safe from crushing the unwary in a content-alanche. But if you’re curious, give it a try.
PRODUCTION, SHIPPING, AND THE PHYSICAL PRODUCT
As I mentioned, creating each release was very straightforward. Anyone familiar with Bandcamp or its ilk will have no problems, aside from having to format the artwork for printing. Just remember to build it in CMYK and that black is C75, M68, Y67, K90 and that should get you pretty close to there.
After each release was built and uploaded, I placed a “test” order. I had to place separate orders for the three vinyl volumes and two CD volumes since they seem to have a three test copy maximum. I placed my orders on July 16th, and they shipped on July 30th. Keep in mind that traditional vinyl pressing can start with a six month wait and go up from there. Two-ish weeks is extraordinary. I received the vinyl August 8th and the CDs on the 9th. I live in the States so I had zero expectations on when these would arrive what with the state of absolutely everything right now. So while tracking through the Royal Mail was mostly unhelpful, they did get them here quickly and without any snags (other than sitting in customs for several days). They also arrived in great shape despite shipping in simple cardboard boxes with no extra padding.
Finally, to the products! Long story short (too late) they are excellent. I would not call them “premium” or “deluxe” by any means, but they are all well made, sturdy, clean, and very well and evenly printed. Bare bones, which is exactly what I was looking for with this project. There are options to add things like a booklet, which I did not do. (You can get all of the exact material specs here.) One note: The vinyl labels printed a bit darker than the sleeves, so if you’re really trying to color-match you’ll want to lighten up the labels. Check out the photos below to see the difference.
As for the sound quality, specifically the vinyl: This is a little tricky because the music itself is what you might call “lo-fi.” This was specifically my intent, making hazy, murky, dusty spaces where shapes are indistinct and echoes are confusing. But I can say that it sounds great. As others have mentioned there may be a little more surface noise with the vinyl than traditional pressing, but if anything I think any added hiss or pop only adds to the experience in this very specific case. I fully intend to try this in the future with more high fidelity projects, so I may update this if anything jumps out as a problem.
UPDATE: I originally forgot to say anything about pricing. The three test LPs were $31.90 (USD) each (no added tax) and shipped together for $15.66, a total of $111.36. The two test CDs were $12.90 each and shipped for $10.84, a total of $36.64. Keep in mind these were slightly discounted since they were tests sent to me, the artist/label, and I also have retail pricing set as low as possible. Artists can set much higher prices, and therefore get more of a return on sales, if they wish.
I am very happy and satisfied with my experience and the final product. I’ve added a few photos below to show them off. The lighting was difficult and these were taken over a couple days. Just be aware that the white lettering is indeed crisp and white and not at all blue or grey as some of these have come out.
HERE IS WHERE YOU CAN ORDER THEM. You can also listen to samples of each track there, or hear the entire collection on Bandcamp. I hope this helps anyone with questions about the service. I’ve read that SoundCloud will be partnering with elasticStage to create releases directly from SoundCloud. It would be incredible if Bandcamp would do this as well.
If you have any questions or comments, please leave them over on the Bluesky post here.
