By ION on Mar 1, 2009 in MUSIC
Telephone Explosion [Records]
Depending on whether you are a consumer or a major label CEO, the music industry is either in the best shape yet or it’s looking like a homeless donkey. For the consumer it’s great. There is more music available than ever before, it’s easier to find music that suits you and a lot of it is available freely through blogs, which also happen to be genre-specific most of the time. One can then easily go ahead and purchase hard copies of favourite records cheaper than ever via sites like Discogs and Gemm, which aggregate thousands of stores’ collections into a one stop search. Not to mention digital sales on iTunes, Beatport and emusic. The consumer’s access to music is at an all-time high.
For the record industry executive it’s looking a lot different. Vinyl and cassette sales have all but disappeared, and the compact disc is on its way out as well. CD sales have been steadily declining since their heyday in 2000 with 942 million units sold that year. In 2008, 363 million physical CDs were sold (428 million if you include the full album equivalents made up of digital tracks). Armed with those figures, most people would agree now is the worst time in modern music history to start a record label. Knowing this, why would anyone want to go ahead and do just that?
Back in the fall of 2007, a couple of neighborhood pals from Toronto, Jon Schouten and Steve Sidoli decided against all odds that they would start up a label. They had known for years this is what they would do, and the label would be called Telephone Explosion. And after a lengthy discussion about the current state of the music industry (specifically the imminent death of the compact disc) they were convinced their label would release primarily audiocassette tapes—a format not readily playable by most people.
Telephone Explosion emerged in 2008 as a Toronto-based label that focuses on garage punk released exclusively on cassettes. According to Schouten, apart from the low overhead costs associated with cassettes, their inherently “smeared” sound lends itself quite nicely to the bands they intended to work with. And since a cassette tape is about as readily playable as a minidisc these days, every release comes with a download code to get the MP3s off the website.
Since its inception, Telephone Explosion has seen nine cassette-based releases from Teen Anger, Holy Cobras, Ugly Stick, Charlie & The Moonhearts, Demon’s Claws, and Superstitions. Its tenth (and first vinyl-based) release is a shredding 12” LP courtesy of Montreal’s Demon’s Claws titled Lost In The Desert, which is due out this month. It features unreleased songs as well as demos, outtakes and a collaboration with King Khan. The label has no plans to stop releasing cassette tapes and will step up their overall output in 2009.
Telephone Explosion is not alone in releasing cassettes either. Cassette-punk seems quite healthy out there these days with labels like Fuck It Tapes from NY and Wizard Mountain from California routinely selling out of their limited edition cassettes. Vancouver is even home to our own cassette-punk label Cassette Or Die which is run by Justin Gradin, who is probably best known for his work running the Emergency Room (RIP). According to Gradin, “cassettes are the coolest looking things in the world. Also it is neat to be obsolete!”
And that’s the whole point of going out and buying cassettes or vinyl records in 2009. Even though MP3s are really convenient, sometimes it’s just not enough to possess the sound of the music on a hard drive or an iPod—everyone’s mom can do that. Sometimes you just want something tangible and unique you can hold in your hand.
Words: Tyler Fedchuk
Photography: Tim McCready
Kaila | Mar 2, 2009 | Reply
I grew up with cassettes and recorded some of my earlier compositions with cassettes. . .they can never be replaced in my memory in any way. And to imagine children these days born into a world ruled by mp3. Technology, wow. ( MP3 are great, just that i miss pressing the rewind button.)