At Pourville, the beach where Jean Rollin ended most of his film

Andy Votel, appart from being a great DJ (check him when he’s in town, always worth it!) and a serious vinyl addict, is also at the head of forward thinking label Finders Keepers! Check and share the story of one of the busyest guy in the record bizness!

 
 
 

When did you start digging records?
Records were a forbidden fruit when I was very young, I wasn’t allowed to touch my parents records at all. But almost overnight they switched to cassettes (K7) and the records went in a cupboard. When I was around 8 years old my folks divorced and the records became plastic orphans! One day I took the LPs and did silly experiments like gluing toy cars to them and playing them backwards or painting them with Tippex or making loops by taping a lolly stick to the platter to make the needle jump, after that I used to ask everyone i knew if I could have their old records. Once I got a bin bag full of ex jukebox records including some early rap like Rhythm Talk by Jocko. I instantly identified with early hip-hop being about record abuse and from then it snowballed. I’m not entirely sure that I even liked music at this point.

What Lps did you buy at first? Do you still listen to them?
My dad had a flat that he rented out. One day a tenant skipped town and left his records behind. There was The Misfits, The Brothers Johnson and The White Album. I think that awkward mix has contributed to my eclectic taste. My first self-funded purchases were hip-hop albums but i almost instantly started buying the original samples… Cymande and Mandrill marked one significant early shopping trip in Manchester. Records were the absolute cheapest form of entertainment. I practically lived on car boot sales in my teens, but i grew up in a very white middle class area so the best i could muster was Funkadelic, George Macrae, James Brown, Bill Withers but i also saw expensive folk and easy listening. I learned to DJ using old turntables and speakers rescued from the tip / dump. Then started DJing at the school discos.

Do you have a particular style or favourite period?
Not one in particular, I would say 1972… but pop music progressed at irregular rates in different countries so it’s pointless reading dates any more. People used to be obsessed with dates but its all changed. I have a few specialist subjects now, Post 68 French concept albums, Turkish pop, female punk, i’d like to add Italian library to that list but it’s becoming progressively unaffordable. There’s no punk attitude in antique collecting.

Are you still digging, buying vinyl, visiting record shops?
Yes, it’s the only thing that keeps me out of the pub. Record digging is like smoking a cigarette for me, it makes me feel secure.

What was your first release on Finders Keepers?
Jean Claude Vannier’s – ‘L’enfant Assassin Des Mouches’ in 2005. Although I did a compilation called Finders Keepers a few years prior to starting the label… and the same people who run Finders Keepers also did a compilation called Folk Is Not A Four Letter Word at exactly the same time. I previously started Twisted Nerve Records in 1997.

Jean-Claude Vannier
Les Gardes Volent Au Secours Du Roi

Why did you choose this name: Finders Keepers? A kind of double hat?
It’s obviously based on the popular phrase (Finders Keepers – Losers Weepers) but i’m never sure how well that translates globally.
I was a rapper in my teenage years and this was the title of one of our tracks. Boney Votel (Mark Rathbone) and myself basically rapped about digging for records and not much else. There was a bit of arrogance with the age and culture, now I guess the label should be called Finders Sharers but it doesn’t have the same ring to it does it? To be honest none of us have the physical space to “Keep” anything anymore.

What could be the label’s leitmotif?
Well our slogan is “Making Global Sound Local” so I guess that means putting very obscure music in a palatable context (or making it widely available). I decided at an early age to simply stop buying English or American records just as a form of discipline and this turned into a bit of a religion. There was a time quite recently where there was a lot of xenophobia in pop music. For example The annual English TV coverage of The Eurovision song contest was borderline racist year after year. Even since the label started the climate is a lot different, people have alway loved Brazilian (Portuguese) and French language music, but releasing Welsh and Hungarian music 20 years ago seemed insane to some people. The other phrase is “Making Old Record Feel Young” which is also about recontextualising old records (old records that actually sound more progressive than most modern music).

How do you decide on the choice of reissues?
We are at our most successful when we find a recording that is like nothing else in your collection, which is increasingly difficult but very rewarding. People think we make up these absurd genres for fun (Krautsider / Welsh Rare Beat / Turk Jerk) but we genuinely search for records that are free from any pigeonholes. Obviously there is a stylistic thread that involves loud drums, fuzz guitar, primitive electronics and female vocals but as the label gets older these kind of trends, alongside rarity or dance-floor compatibility, become irrelevant. One thing we are passionate about is not physically manufacturing records that are already available which is why we mostly release very rare records by default or totally unreleased master-tapes that have never been pressed before, in this sense we are not technically a re-issue label anymore.

Ten years ago, you did a lot of reissues about Anatolian scene in the 70’s. What motivate this choice ? And what was for you the most amazing artist?
For me ‘Selda’ was by far the best record to come out of that scene. She was well respected by the younger community and all the best musicians assembled to help her create that amazing first LP. I naturally always gravitate to female musicians and there are far less female composers in the the domains of Eastern music (as well as electronic music or library music) but she was special and much more important than the many female pop singers who followed. The synth and saz combination was the huge cherry that tilted the cake. When I first heard Turkish music I was blown away by the incredible FUZZ, it was much bigger than that of Big-Jim Sullivan or Micky Karoli from Can but then I realised it was actually a Saz and not a regular guitar so I was hooked. We also admire that the music scene was in no way reliant on the Western major labels, it was genuinely independent which is rare (even Greece, Pakistan and Israel had labels like EMI and CBS attempting to control the market). We managed to meet all of our heroes in Istanbul within 12 months and they all agreed that it was the first interest they had had from the West EVER! We could have released 50 further Turkish albums but the trend went through the roof and the bootleggers started chasing all the trophy titles and spoiled things a bit. We try not to repeat our selves too much, but i still buy for personal use. About twice a year i do a 5 hour Turkish-only DJ set just to flex that muscle.

Mustafa Ozkent
Burçak

You have released also such iranian productions, recorded at the same period. An objective link between those two scenes?
In some rare cases the same songs have come out in both Turkey and Iran, but its mostly the Arabesque stuff as opposed to the Anadolou pop. The main thing with the Persian records were that they were forbidden and often destroyed. The Iranian records have a more bitter-sweet story surrounding them and from my perspective they are more soulful whereas the Turkish stuff is more psychedelic and funky. Googoosh is quite possibly my favourite female recording artist of all time.

And was it difficult to obtain rights for those Lps ? How did you find all the people who owned rights?
Since the start of FK Doug and Myself have always had a wish-list and schedule that would keep us going for the next 5 years so we have never needed to bring other compilers on board. The two exceptions are Chris Menist and then Mahssa who runs the Finders Keepers office in Los Angeles, both of these people are mad vinyl junkies but understand the very important fact that it’s more important to connect with human being as opposed to pieces of plastic. Mahssa is Iranian and her family is part of the Iranian community diaspora in L.A. – The label owners were family friends.

Another part of F. K. catalog is more focused on early electronic stuffs, another global movement, like psychedelic. What is the unity between all those productions, from Lollywood soundtracks to T.R.A.S.E. (Tape Recorder And Synthesizer Ensemble)?
The Lollywood and Kollywood scenes were the poorer cousins of the huge Bollywood industry, so instead of huge orchestras they had to experiment with studio trickery, tape sampling and synthesisers. A lot of those ancient sounding strings are re-cycled off other old tracks which is why you find mono strings agains stereo synthesisers, it’s better if you don’t analyse it but there is a direct common thread between Massiera, Joe Meek and Ilaiyaraaja… in fact there is no difference apart from language, the indigenous influences are arguably the smallest detail. TRASE was a teenage synthesiser inventor, and an uncompromised one-man-band who worked on a pocket-money budget in a home studio… and there lies the unity.

You became one of the experts of French free jazz band avant-garde music developed in France. How can an Englishman dare?
It might sound a bit silly but I very rarely buy American or English records, I much prefer records manufactured in smaller economies. It’s really just a matter of paper and plastic. America has some of the greatest diggers in the world, living in Europe i’ll never be able to compete with people like Dante Carfagna, Johan Kugelberg and Egon on their own turf so I don’t bother. When I got interested in Free Jazz this became difficult so i turned to labels like BYG Actuel, Palm and Futura and then got a bit obsessed. I love the fact that bands like The Art Ensemble added the words “Of Chicago” so they could get gigs in Paris, i believe that France and the Pan African festivals played a huge role in free-jazz providing an appreciation that was not available in America and an unrivalled first hand inspiration for French musicians. I came to these records with French pop knowledge. I first heard Gilson because he worked with Gainsbourg’s drummer Pierre Dahan. I first heard Tusques because of his Jean Rollin films. AEOC via Fontaine. Also France’s history in musique concrete lead to the best electronic jazz music albums like Jacques Thollot and François Jeanneau (from Triangle). In a way French records have taught me about American music. You can also learn a lot by looking at all the people who Don Cherry has worked with on a global scale without having to buy American pressings

Googoosh
Talagh

What about your collaboration with cult producer Jean-Claude Vannier? And François Tusques?
When i was younger Vannier resembled The French David Axelrod, a few years later Tusques was like a French Mal Waldron. Axe and Waldron were staples of my teenage record collection, so after buying all their records I upgraded to French models. ‘L’Enfant Assassin Des Mouches’ is my favourite album of all time, it was the first record that Finders Keepers released and remains a benchmark for all of our records. He has also become a close friend. It feels like our relationship with Francois might go the same way.

In fact, do you believe this eclecticism of editorial line is a part of your force, of your identity?
Yes, I really don’t understand why people create specialist labels. It seems too calculated, too business-like.
The beauty of an independent label is you DON’T have to act like that. Our goal is for Finders Keepers to stand up as its own record collection which covers a lot of musical bases and hopefully for no two records to sound the same. I also think some FK records, like L’enfant Assassin Des Mouches and Holy Mountain, are almost like entire record collections in just one release. I love the way jazz labels like Futura and BYG randomly released experimental rock LPs like Gong, Ame Son or Jean Guerin’s ‘TACET’.

What is the Finders Keepers LP you are prouder? why?
The eclecticism makes this difficult so i’m proud for different reasons. I’m instantly proud of any album that was previously unreleased, that’s especially gratifying and life affirming for the label. Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders soundtrack and the Czech releases that followed are really important. Selda ticked a lot of boxes. Belladonna and Holy Mountain were both holy grails for the label and it took us 10 years to release them so i’m still very proud of them. We have lots of grails coming out in the next 18 months.

Most of your previous reissued LP’s are sold out. Do you plan to repress them?
Yes. There are just 1 or 2 artists that decided to double their fee so we had to let them go to other labels. And there’s even a couple of bootlegs of our FK albums out there!

Martial Solal
Electrodes

You work to release some tapes (K7). On one hand, we can consider that it is still about the vintage mode, on another hand, we can however consider it is the possibility to hear of the other unpublished sounds … Do you feel there is a specific market for that? And don’t you believe there is a kind of irony to publish K7 on vinyle in 2015?
The compact cassette was a great format for all types of DIY music from post-punk to PINA and allowed people to release music without too much financial speculation. If it wasn’t for the cassette a lot of music would have remained in the minds of constipated genius’. Most people we licence cassette masters from comment on how they always wanted to make vinyl but it was unaffordable or they couldn’t get a record deal to pay for it. My friend owns a successful cassette duplication company near my house, he has lots of vintage dead-stock raw material from all over the world, its a treasure trove. I sometime s DJ with cassettes fro special occasions.

Do you still discover a lot of unearthed obscure records these days? Where (on line, record dealers, flea markets…)?
Yes. I try not to buy records that are well known at all and don’t really buy records that Doug or any of my friends have. I’m aware that I have more records than i’ll ever get chance to properly listen too so there has to be certain disciplines. I rarely use dealers or boutique shops unless they are friends who are willing to trade, i don’t do much digging in the UK but i buy records every time i travel and mostly from that specific country. I much prefer messy unorganised shops to showrooms. The best place to dig is other peoples houses, or artists collections (including master-tapes). I also enjoy finding records in my own house, its always a good party trick!!!!

You had published many compilations, selections… Is it harder to sell this kind of issues today ? How do you think the market has evolved on these compilations?
Compilations belong with mix-tapes. They are an important staple in the history of record digging but are now virtually impossible to do legally without losing money, the accounting process is also a long-haul commitment. I was brought up with Ultimate Breaks And Beats and later compilations like The Folk Funk Experience and Nuggets Of Funk shaped the way i continued to buy records. Regardless of legitimacy I still have A LOT of respect for the people behind those releases but sadly that era has passed. I agree that the process has evolved a hell of a lot. I regard the process of finding the artist and knowing their story first-hand as an integral part of collecting in 2016… diggers who release compilations without getting the rights are not doing the full job. Anyone with money can find records in the internet age… now it’s all about the social aspect… in my opinion. From a buyers point of view i think the age of the “tastemaker” has faded along with DJ worship, as a record seller i know that people are no longer comfortable buying into another persons opinion/taste, they prefer to find an original artist and focus on the work as intended… and probably make their own compilations, so FK caters for this need. Today compilations really have to have a very strong concept, or focus on a particular studio or small label or micro-genre. Various Artists DJ friendly pic ‘n mix comps simply don’t sell enough to cover costs.

Have you received many negative answers on some of the LPs, artists, unreleased tapes, you were trying to reissue?
I am very persuasive and always willing to visit people to share our enthusiasm. In the early years people were sceptical… many artists thought we were ridiculing them but when they look at our website and discography they begin to understand that we have very solid relationships with over a 100 artists. The only time when things have not run smoothly is when middle-men or major-label execs have tried to position themselves in the deal. Holy Mountain took ten years to release after Abkco had said NO five times… I just kept asking and asking like a child and offered to send them flowers. They have since thanked us for giving them the impetus to retrieve the masters. Some people just say YES so I’ll go away!

Mehrpouya
Soul Raga

There are more and more reissues of old LPs, and more and more record labels (major or indie) now release their new artists on LP, or EP. Do you think that the LP reissue market could ever reach saturation point?
Yes, when teenage clothes shops are selling £30 180g re-issues of classic records that are already available in charity shops you know you are at saturation point. The fact that small labels who have always been faithful to the vinyl format can’t get any records made for 4 month leading up to Record Store Day because of Ghostbusters coloured vinyl picture discs proves that we are at crisis point. I have known new artists that insist that their music has to be on vinyl, later to find that they don’t even own a record player themselves. I think it’s important to think responsibly when mass producing vinyl. Projects should be era-specific and genuinely unavailable before people add to the pollution. 180g virgin vinyl doesn’t really suit what my kids are taught at school about recycling and protecting the environment.

Price for rare records go crazy these days. What do you think of this trend?
Vinyl used to be a punk gesture, a throwaway creative format which matched table-topping at buying clothes from thrift stores. Now it’s got more in common with antique dealing. The culture has been gentrified. Sadly i’m addicted to vinyl so i sometimes have to pay through the nose to complete circles that I opened 10 years before the gold-rush… and with this i often think i’m contributing to the problem. But I’m also not going to sell my rare doubles for half the price of everyone else am I?. Its a catch 22.
I know alot of people who have been in this game for 20 years plus, many of whom initiated niche-buying trends in Punk, Library music, Iranian 45’s, dance-floor psych, folk funk, Krautrock and paved the way for further generations of collecting – sampling – and influencing modern music… but nowadays they can no-longer afford to be part of the game. There’s no respect. MAny of these new vinyl antique dealers push the prices up for fun from the comfort of there well paid 9-5 jobs… they remind me of The Duke Brothers in Trading Places. It’s in danger of becoming elitist, less creative and eventually a bit lonely.

What are your next releases?
Unheard out-takes from Jean-Claude Vannier’s ‘L’enfant Assassin Des Mouches’ 1972 session with different arrangements and extra instrumentation. A totally unreleased electronic jazz soundtrack by Swiss composer Bruno Spoerri about Zurich’s Red Light District. The incredible unreleased score to Jess Franco’s Les Demons recorded by French Library cognoscenti. Unreleased Buchla synthesiser exhibition performances by Italian American composer Suzanne Ciani. A comprehensive collection of Italian soundtrack work by trio Frizzi/Bixio/Tempera who recorded with Goblin musicians under the name The Magnetic System. Some mesmerising unreleased new age synth explosions from a Hungarian animation soundtrack. An entire LP of unreleased electronic / mechanical / folk from the UK 1983 version of The Moomins. Some very rare François Tusques music. Some unknown electronic Don Cherry soundtracks…. And a particular unnamed Gainsbourg/Vannier holy grail x 2!!!!

What is the LP you dream of reissuing?
There are so many but it’s probably best to keep them a secret, there’s much more competition now. I’ve been speaking to Francois Wertheimer for almost 10 years trying to release his Popera Cosmic LP, I came to visit him in Paris and he signed our contracts… unfortunately another well known French re-issue label also cut a deal with Guy Skornik (the co-writer) for the same record at the same time so we were stuck in checkmate! For a small fraction of time the music was almost liberated, but I think it might have slipped back into the clutches of a major label now… i really hope not. I think you’d agree that Finders Keepers is a good home for that record. If you don’t know Popera Cosmic well Finders Keepers are trying to Make It Local.

http://www.finderskeepersrecords.com/

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Finders Keepers Radio Show Psychedelic Soul Special