Kevin Dupzyk got a behind-the-scenes tour of Third Man Records’ new vinyl pressing plant in Detroit, where the art and craftsmanship of vinyl recordmaking is making a major resurgence. [via Popular Mechanics]
As vinyl has made its comeback over the past few years, pressing plants have tried to keep up with old equipment held together with salvaged parts and tinkering. But Third Man found a company making new presses, and they bought eight of them—enough to make five thousand records in an eight-hour shift. Tonight as those executives gather—with friends and family of Third Man, music-business people, and Detroit people—the new presses will be running.
White says Third Man is entering the lineage of what he calls “ancient technology,” pointing out that records were originally made of shellac, a substance humans have been using for thousands of years. “You gotta understand,” he says. “When you’re a musician and you started entering the late ’90s and the early 2000s, things became more and more digital, and it started to seem like—whether it was blues, jazz, or rock and roll, whatever genre you were involved in—you kind of felt like the world around you was dying in a big way.”
Anthony Mason recently did a nice profile of the company for CBS:
• Welcome to Jack White’s Temple to Vinyl (Popular Mechanics)