Liner Notes - an introduction

Replicating our physical liner notes here on Substack

Since ASIPV021 (Wanderwelle’s, A State of Decrepitude) the label has included one-pager liner notes within each of our vinyl releases.

Instead of printing these onto the actual sleeve or artwork, they are printed on a heavy piece of quality paper, and inserted into the sleeve. They aim to continue the story of the release and provide a bit of light reading when you receive and play the record.

They always come from my (the label’s) point of view). It’s a small way for me to document the releases that take up such a big part of my life. One day, I dream of compiling them all into a book or label retrospective. That day may still come, but for now, they’ve remained exclusive to people who own the vinyl record.

However, I’m going to begin publishing them here on Substack too as a way to generate more interest on here, but also open them up to a wider audience.

I think some of you will enjoy reading about the releases in more depth and it will also give me a good reason to revisit and write text for some of the older releases that did not receive liner notes (ASIPV020 and before).

Each liner note is structured as follows:

Artwork

Notes on how the artwork came to be - always a very big focus and often taking as long as the music itself.

Story

The story of how the record came to be. How the artist and I met, or what the process was to get it out into the world.

Insight

Something you may not already know about the artist or record from the press release. Sometimes fun, sometimes geeky, sometimes just an extension of the story so far, and often including a direct quote from the artist.

Press

The story of the record press. As many of you know, pressing ~50 releases, we have had our trials and tribulations, and it’s fun to capture the progress, learnings, and mistakes to give you the listener an insight into the effort that goes into making that record.

~

You may realize the above titles are in a very specific order (the small things…)

Stay tuned for the first Liner Note very soon. They may not follow in any specific order. In fact, I may jump all over the place just to keep it a bit spicy and not too expected, and when visiting existing Liner Notes I expect to elaborate a bit more where I can. And I may even add a few more headers… toying with the idea of including an “On reflection” header here, to talk about how the release fared… stay tuned.