Anthology Recordings
WorkNameSort: Anthology Recordings
On Oct. 5, 2006, the ‘Long Tailâ?� came to its most pronounced and obvious fruition: Anthology Recordings, the ‘first-ever all-digital reissue label,â?� was launched. While several labels have harnessed the low-overhead power of digital distribution and reissued dozens of niche-market catalog titles, Anthology took a completely different approach. Digging up albums that were obscure when they were released ‘ often on microlabels that have long since ceased to exist ‘ Anthology untangled messy webs of outdated contracts and convoluted licenses in an attempt to reintroduce lost and sometimes legendary music. While the psychedelic Krautrock of My Solid Ground or the Minneapolis punk of Suicide Commandos may not garner the same sort of buzz that a Doors box set does, Anthology ‘ founded by Keith Abrahamsson, who does A&R for Kemado Records ‘ smartly understood that there was a market of weirdo music fans that, while not vast, was certainly voracious. Knowing that the number of music lovers who are aware of something obscure is usually far greater than the actual number of physical copies pressed ‘ but also far below a number high enough to warrant a new CD reissue ‘ Abrahamsson did the math and decided to cater exclusively to the record geek who means it when he or she says, ‘It’s not about the rarity, it’s about the music.â?� After all, what is less rare than a downloaded MP3? While it would have been a snap for Abrahamsson and crew simply to throw up a handful of licensed MP3s on a website and start raking in the dough, Anthology has taken a far more artful method. The site launched with only seven albums, all of which had been remastered and conjoined with original artwork; furthermore, the online presentation of each album included a well-written biography (I guess they would be ‘liner notesâ?� of a sort) as well as links. Only seven more albums ‘ including some Father Yod cult-psych madness, the proto-metal of Sir Lord Baltimore’s 1970 debut and the legendary Cauldron by Fifty Foot Hose ‘ have been put up since then. This is not due to any slackness on the part of Anthology, it’s a byproduct of the fact that these guys want to do justice to this music. Priced at the iTunes sweet spot (just under $10 an album), you could buy the entire Anthology catalog online for less than half of what it would cost you to pick up an original of any of the albums they ‘stock,â?� making it a deal of nearly obscene proportions. By stripping away the fetishistic tendencies of collector geeks and focusing on the raw weirdness of the music, Anthology has staked a claim as the best new record label never to release a record.
This article appears in Jan 3-9, 2007.