Tiptop Audio has announced a new project for 2015, Tiptop Audio Records, to celebrate the rebirth of modular synths in the Euro format.
Tiptop Audio Records has selected for its first issue a selection of artists who, through their tracks, explore the landscape of dance music in a very fresh perspective. According to the company, “These are the artists who inspire the Tiptop team to make more innovative devices, which in turn make new music (a nice feedback loop).”
Tracks range from Surgeon’s trademark hard minimal beat, to Kink’s gauzy dreamscape, while Richard Devine and Joseph Fraioli explore the outer reaches of beat based music. The Phase VI team (John Tejada and Moe Espinosa AKA Drumcell) produces an endlessly shifting set of percolating rhythms, Christian Burkhardt and Joao Ceser put some 21st century twists on classic dance floor patterns, ANGLE lay down effortless, sophisticated Continental style and Blawan adds some industrial toned menace.
Here’s a preview:
The release will initially come as a double vinyl edition, with a cover painted by the artist Matteo Giampaglia, and a digital download version will follow.
See the Tiptop Audio Records site for details.
You know, when the announcement came from Elektron that they were putting out a record label, I couldn’t see a valid long-tern strategy in it. Sure, it’s great for short-term sales and exposure for the instruments, but associating an equipment manufacturer with a genre risks certain equipment getting a ‘flavour of the month’ reputation.
After thinking about it from the artist’s side, maybe it’s a pretty good deal for underground electronic musicians. In an era when labels are increasingly finding that the only profitable artists are the very few mega-sellers, maybe underground artists become like professional skateboarders in the ’90’s. You get a sponsorship deal, that pays your bills, and you shoot your promo videos / do appearances for the company and generally get to do what you love.
Tip top is quite a bit different from elektron. They are a eurorack manufacturer with a few very popular modules, but they have made no move to offer a complete system (as say doepfer, make noise, or pittsburgh have).
Therefore associating with them (or any other manufacturer that you have a module or two buried in your system) doesn’t carry the same stigma, except that of a modern modular system.
Also as a eurorack manufacturer I doubt they have the resources to offer an artist anything more than a limited pressing of lps and maybe some free modules.
I think it’s cool though, the lineup on that comp is pretty excellent I would like more formal releases from the modular scene, endlessly trolling soundcloud is less than satisfying.
Superb, nothing wrong with equipment manufacturers having a record label, if the music is good then the music is good.
Nice to see this although it is not something completely new – for example check out ACrecords, a division of the hardware based company Acidlab.
Well they may as well setup a label, worse ways then this to spend $25. But labels live and die on curation. It is hard enough to curate a good label taking advantage of the full spectrum of the market. So it is very easy to see how further limiting that curation to a hardware choice is going to get problematic very quickly – you need to release some tunes and the quality isn’t there that month – so what do you do? Release any old crap and deeply damage the integrity of the label, or wait around for months for something of suitable standard, while the label dies. You are always going to have a bunch of material that ticks all the right boxes for curating, if quality, consistence and continuity is totally disregarded – the main things that will build a user base for any label. Good luck with that.