Jump to content

How difficult are reissues?


Grayling

Recommended Posts

I've been listening to goa and psytrance since '99, but until recently I hadn't really plumbed the depths. The recent trend of reissues by labels like DAT Records, Suntrip, Zion 604,etc are MUCH appreciated and very welcome additions to many people's collections, but of course there are still lots of hard to find (for a reasonable price) fantastic albums out there. My question is, how difficult is it to reissue these old gems? Stuff like Koxbox, MFG, Planet Ben, etc. I mean, I can't even find this stuff as downloads! 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The hardest is to convince the artist to do it, for a reasonable price. Some are OK with it, some don't because they prefer to promote their newer music.

The music has to be available in good quality. Either by getting the tracks from the artist himself (from our experience there's 2 kinds of artists: those who don't have their own tracks, and those who are anal with them and have kept every recording and midi files), or by ripping the original CD with 100% accuracy -which is hard to find will you repeat- (and no remastering is possible), or by ripping the master DAT from back then and restoring the parts with static, ripping the vinyls and cleaning them, or even re-recording the tracks...

The other issue is the rights. Who actually owns the tracks in 2017 ? It's a hell of a mess and there's lots of grey areas...

The artwork is also a pain in the neck. It's a risk to scan the original artwork: the image will be ugly because of the offset patterns (see image below). There, either you find the original artist who may have kept the artwork or knows how to reproduce it (our case with Dimension 5 Transdimensional), or you remake it from scratch (also our case sith Asia 2001 Psykadelia, or Zion 604 with Tandu's Multimoods - that's a lot of work), or you scan anyway and apply some median/gaussian filters and hope for the best (what Inpsyde used to do), or you do some totally different artwork.

623

It's not THAT difficult overall. But most labels can't only live in the past and also have newer stuff to release. If you're in for getting into this niche and re-releasing some old gems, I'd be happy to give you some hints, really.

Another thing we could do IMO is release some old vinyl-only tracks on CD (or digitally). Like you said, oldschool Goa music is hard to find as downloads (well, it's finadable but you need to read cyrillic...)

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, mars said:

ripping the original CD with 100% accuracy -which is hard to find will you repeat- (and no remastering is possible)

Well that didn't stop DAT from releasing the I.F.O. remaster, or the same case with Zion604 and Multimoods. AFAIK they're both remastered from the original CD release. Correct me if I'm wrong by all means :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It sounds like a nightmare. I don't have the means, time, or knowledge to be able to do something like this any time soon (as in before I retire from the military in the next five or ten years), but your response helps me to appreciate the reissues available more fully. Transdimensional and Psykadelia are two of my favorites,so thanks for all the hard work. 

I guess the next question is how do specific albums get chosen as 'the one' to be reissued? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, mars said:

 

It's not THAT difficult overall. But most labels can't only live in the past and also have newer stuff to release. If you're in for getting into this niche and re-releasing some old gems, I'd be happy to give you some hints, really.

Another thing we could do IMO is release some old vinyl-only tracks on CD (or digitally). Like you said, oldschool Goa music is hard to find as downloads (well, it's finadable but you need to read cyrillic...)

 

Can I have those hints pls? B)B)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10/5/2017 at 11:43 PM, mars said:

The other issue is the rights. Who actually owns the tracks in 2017 ? It's a hell of a mess and there's lots of grey areas...

I've actually wondered this too. How does it usually go for your releases for example?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...
On 10/5/2017 at 1:43 PM, mars said:

Another thing we could do IMO is release some old vinyl-only tracks on CD (or digitally).

 

I'd much rather have some old cd-only tracks to be released on vinyl (with a digital download ;) ) lololololol
and, yeah, getting an artist to expend the time n energy to do this, or convince a label that it's worth their time, is a bit of work. if they're even able to find the masters.

I know many artists that just don't have the old master files any more. Hard drive crashes over time, especially in the 90s era before Time Machine, cloud storage, and super cheap external hard drives; archiving music files was a different reality back then.

That said, I'm fairly sure, unless it was extended, most of the music rights reverts to the artist after 10years. So anything 90s would be back to the artist by now...

Anyway, I'm still waiting for someone to release Nervasystem & Aether "Mama Matrix Most Mysterious" as a double LP...
Someone should get on that. It would be super duper awesome... 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...