British Independent Record Labels, Memory and Mediation

PhD ThesisThis thesis examines the changing relationship between the material culture of music (in the form of recorded music objects) and memory (as it is sedimented in, and mediated by, the work of a selection of British independent record labels). The principal aim of this work is to explore the significant but often-overlooked material paradigm of recorded music, from Edison’s invention of the phonograph in 1877 up until the early twenty-first century, increasingly characterised by the digital archiving, collecting and consumption of music. Drawing from a broad range of cultural theorists (including Benjamin, Straw, Sterne, Kittler, Gitelman and Huyssen), this research seeks to situate recorded sound within broader discourses on memory and mediation, technology and cultural transmission. The thesis is structured around the analyses of several British independent record labels from the recent past and the present: Sarah Records (1987- 1995), Ghost Box Records (2004-) and reissue record labels, including Finders Keepers (2004-). By focusing on specific record labels and situated configurations of the material culture of music, both physical and digital, I identify and map various aspects of the music object and clarify the particular socio-technological contexts within which such configurations arise.Whittaker Scholarshi

Introduction: Multisensory materialities in the art school

Little has been written about the specific and complex environments of the studio and the art school. A ‘material culture’ approach to art and design can throw light on the multi-materiality of works of art and design, and on the affective resonances of artefacts. We complied this special issue of the journal 'Studies in material thinking' with particular focus the multisensorial and affective materialities in relation to the objects, meanings and practices of art and design and art education. While many writers have noted that the multi-sensual aspect of material culture is also that which resists attempts of narration or rationalisation, we discuss how this raises particular concerns within some of the less well theorised or observed fields of art and design, where practitioners may themselves believe that ‘theory’ is not part of practice. We examine the formation of identity also, as art school students can be thought of as self-fashioning professionals, young adults engaged in varying processes of self-creation and self-narration through material practices. we examine the continuous appropriation within the art school of vernacular cultures, and the repurposing of various amateur practices. We introduce the issues and debates in a collection of critical reflections that bring together the study of material culture with that of affect, aesthetics, and politics in a cross-disciplinary dialogue, engaging theorists and artists, thinkers, makers and collectors/connoisseurs of objects

Displacing the Past. Mediated Nostalgia and Recorded Sound

The audio past of the 20th century, as it is stored in both material and digital collections, is largely and almost effortlessly accessible to contemporary audiences. The recycling or revival of former musical pasts seems to be an inescapable and familiar reality (Reynolds, 2011). In light of two case studies borrowed from contemporary British audio culture, I determine how nostalgia has become a strong, yet paradoxical, shaping practice for contemporary independent record labels. The first case study is dedicated to Ghost Box records and examines the prevailing practices of hauntology and sampling. The second case study focuses on hyper-specialised British reissue record label Finders Keepers, which help to salvage and rehabilitate semi-forgotten recordings from bygone eras. In this article, the notion of nostalgia is constructed as a relevant dimension of contemporary audio cultures rather than its superficial (or fashionable) correlative. The links between early phonography as a technology of early presence and the rise of nostalgia are also discussed

For a radical media archaeology: A conversation with Wolfgang Ernst

In his numerous writings on archives, technologies, and time media archaeologist Wolfgang Ernst indefatigably interrogates the ways in which technical and digital media do not only exist in time but produce temporalities – and temporealities – of their own. This interview sheds light on media archaeology as a discipline emerging within a relatively codified academic institutional framework (rather than in the more organic domain of the arts) and closely associated with Humboldt University’s Institute for Musicology and Media Studies, where Ernst is Professor of Media Theories

All the Memory in the World, All the Music in the World: Mediating Musical Patrimony in the Digital Age

In this article, I will examine the internet through the lens of consumption and waste studies. The internet will be conceived of as the place where the cultural waste of music – in the form of marginal artefacts and obsolete media (such as vinyl records, tapes, and ephemera) – can effectively be excavated, recirculated and re-mediated by means of systematic digitisation and uploading. The redemptive role of popular and spontaneous digital archives (such as the video platform YouTube or dedicated audio blogs) will be critically examined. Complementarily, I will underline the idea that the internet also encourages a paradoxical return of tangible artefacts, as the work of digital music collectors may prompt the actual reissue of previously lost music objects (a tendency that is exemplified in the UK by the work of British contemporary reissue record labels such as Trunk Records or Finders Keepers). The internet will be discussed as an ambiguous site of redemption, forming the basis for a nostalgic retro-consumption of music. As such, it will be conceived of as a site of memory and as a possible archive, though the ambiguity of such a term will be discussed. I will reflect upon the cultural meaning of digital archives that, as they are ceaselessly renewed, continue to erase themselves. Lastly, I will suggest that the forms of redemption that are enabled by the internet are strictly inseparable from the production of further layers of cultural waste. Departing from Straw's assertion that the internet ‘has strengthened the cultural weight of the past, increasing its intelligibility and accessibility’ (2007, 4), I will point out that the internet may accelerate the processes of cultural obsolescence and oblivion that it seeks to suspend

‘Total trash’. Recorded music and the logic of waste

This article introduces three situated moments – or plateaux – in order to partially uncover the particular affinities between popular music and the ‘logic of waste’ in the Anthropocene Era, from early phonography to the present digital realm (with a focus on the UK, United States, and British India). The article starts with a ‘partial inventory’ of the Anthropocene, outlining the heuristic values of waste studies for research in popular music. The first plateau retraces the more historical links between popular music and waste, showing how waste (and the positive discourses surrounding it) became a defining element of the discourse and practices of early phonography. It aims to show how recorded sound participated in (and helped define, in an emblematic manner) a rapidly expanding ‘throwaway culture’ at the turn of the 20th century. The second plateau presents a more global panorama of the recording industry through a focus on shellac (a core, reversible substance of the early recording industry). Finally, the third plateau presents some insights into the ways in which popular music may ‘play’ and incorporate residual materialities in the contemporary ‘digital age’. I argue that the logic of waste defined both the space and pace of the early record industry, and continued to inform musical consumption across the 20th century – notably when toxic, non-recyclable synthetic materials (especially polyvinyl) were introduced

Scenes from a bedroom: situating British Independent Music, 1979-1995

This article deals with the real and symbolic centrality of the bedroom in the development of independent music in the UK (1979-1995). Drawing from Bachelard’s Poetics of Space (1958), Bollnow’s Human Spaces (1953) and also cultural and music theorists such as Susan Stewart and Wendy Fonarow, I argue that the bedroom can be read as (1) a space of creation, (2) a place of mediation and self-mediation and (3) a political space. The bedroom is notably, but not exclusively, examined in the songs of The Smiths and the later ‘bedroom pop’ movement (as embodied by Sarah Records). This article aims to situate British independent music, showing that it is not primarily or initially a genre or a sound, but should rather be defined in its relationship to a lived, everyday environment. The article especially focuses on the material culture of the bedroom (with analyses of the radio and the mixtape), and its dissemination beyond the bedroom. The bedroom is seen as both fragment and miniature of the world; as a transitive, and potentially subversive space, which proves instrumental in the making and establishing of independent music

Displacing the Past. Mediated Nostalgia and Recorded Sound

The audio past of the 20th century, as it is stored in both material and digital collections, is largely and almost effortlessly accessible to contemporary audiences. The recycling or revival of former musical pasts seems to be an inescapable and familiar reality (Reynolds, 2011). In light of two case studies borrowed from contemporary British audio culture, I determine how nostalgia has become a strong, yet paradoxical, shaping practice for contemporary independent record labels. The first case study is dedicated to Ghost Box records and examines the prevailing practices of hauntology and sampling. The second case study focuses on hyper-specialised British reissue record label Finders Keepers, which help to salvage and rehabilitate semi-forgotten recordings from bygone eras. In this article, the notion of nostalgia is constructed as a relevant dimension of contemporary audio cultures rather than its superficial (or fashionable) correlative. The links between early phonography as a technology of early presence and the rise of nostalgia are also discussed

Reissue programmes: framing the past as project

This chapter highlights three distinct waves of archival and reissue record labels: first, the pioneering labels, which often arose from institutionalised sound archives; secondly, the commercial reissuing labels and programmes initiated by majors and whose practice was triggered by changes in technological formats; and finally, the smaller, niche independent reissue record labels which developed and survived through the rise of the internet, and often emerged from mp3 blogs in the early 2000s. I illuminate aspects pertaining to these three waves, while drawing attention to their continued interdependence. The chapter opens with a quick panorama of past and current discourses concerning reissuing practices. It then moves on to theorising the two main poles in contemporary reissuing – that of documenting and that of monumentalising the past – through two case studies: the French archival record label Frémeaux & Associés (founded in 1991) and the British record label Finders Keepers (founded in 2005). It finally proposes to go beyond reifying discourses of nostalgic ‘retromania’ and to consider reissuing practices as a dynamic means of producing a rich and valuable musical present

Jim Rogers, The Death & Life of the Music Industry in the Digital Age

L’étude de Rogers (Dublin City University) retrace l’influence du développement numérique sur l’industrie musicale au sens large, laquelle excède la simple industrie du disque (tant par son ampleur économique que par la variété des acteurs qu’elle mobilise). L’auteur s’inscrit en faux contre l’idée répandue qu’internet a révolutionné, en la détruisant, l’industrie musicale (i.e. les majors). Il s’attache à démontrer les limites, voire l’infertilité radicale, du cliché de la « révolution numér..