Rob Sevier with John Kirby (left)…

 
 

Each month, we are focusing on a record label founded by an active digger. We are stopping with Rob Sevier, one of the souls behind the Chicago-based Numero Group, the label that has specialized in giving new birth to the unknown musical faces of the other America.

When did you start digging records?
I guess that’s hard to pin down exactly, depending on what your definition of “digging” is. My first experiences experimenting with buying records that I didn’t know anything about was in high school. You could argue that I did something similar to digging simply by taping music off the radio, some of the arcane college radio shows played original recordings I’ve never seen or heard since (in some cases I believe I might have written the names down wrong.) My first record purchases were fifth and sixth grade, buying 45s that I heard on the oldies station.

What Lps did you buy at first? Do you still listen to them?
I still listen to a lot of the music I consumed in my youth, particularly rap which I never bought but rather taped off friends, or jazz that I taped off CDs and cassettes borrowed from the library. Of course I listened to classic rock and at one point bought a Roy Harper LP after reading that Led Zeppelin played on it (the internet has revealed this was misinformation, only Jimmy Page plays on one song, but it was a definitely a new experience to listen to Valentine as a freshman in high school.) The first LPs I started being seriously were jazz LPs, particularly jazz fusion but a chance purchase got me John Coltrane’s ‘Interstellar Space’. And that sent me deeper into weirdo shit, especially after reading Thurston Moore’s article in Grand Royal (Top Ten From The Free Jazz Underground). Simultaneously of course I was buying indie rap records, instant classics like “End To End Burners”, “Dead Bent”, “Agent Orange”, Fortified Live… pretty much anything that the dude at Beat Parlor recommended from ’96-’98. That was some of the most excitement I ever experienced about an underground scene as it was happening. I still own a lot of these records but had to rebuy them all over the last few years… wish I had my original 12”s which all had miscellaneous stickers stuck to the blank sleeves.

Do you have a particular style or favorite period?
Broadly I collect soul music on 45 from the 1970s most fervently. I have at various times collected other styles more aggressively but arrived at some sort of impasse or completion with them enough that I’ve moved on.

Are you still digging’, buying vinyl, visiting record shops?
Yes, but there are definitely diminishing returns on digging in the purest sense, and it’s virtually impossible to find anything you actually personally want to file in your collection. Best case scenario you find something rare and sought-after by someone else that you can trade for something you want, or sell to buy something you want. Even having omnivorous tendencies its still fairly impossible to get a record “in the wild”.

What was your first release on Numero Group ?
‘001 Eccentric Soul: The Capsoul Label’.

Kool Blues
I Want To Be Ready

Why did you choose this name : Numero Group ? Were inspired by Library music series?
It was Ken’s choice, he had already selected the name by the time I partnered with him. However, it is very much about putting the catalog numbers front and center, and building a library not just individual releases.

Do you feel close to a label like Folkways ?
Very close. Both Ken and I consider Moe Asch a hero. Our Numerophon imprint is an attempt (not a very vigorous one, but nonetheless) to cover some of the same diverse ground as Folkways did.

You mentioned before that UK labels such as Soul Jazz or Honest John’s were a marking influence on your work. Can you think of any specific project?
I always loved the ‘NuYorican’ comps that Soul Jazz did, and the first ‘New Orleans Funk’ comp is seminal of course. These were survey collections, overviews, and from the start we wanted to do something lazer-focused and less “greatest hits” feeling, perhaps in friendly opposition or as a complement to these broader looks.

Ken Shipley told us that you had also been influenced by the BYG/Actuel series, mainly on the visual aesthetics, the number artwork … What else did you like in BYG?
I’ve listened to most if not all of the series and definitely have my favorites. ‘Africanasia’ by Jacques Coursil and Arthur Jones is a sleeper hit and probably the only one I still listen to regularly. ‘Echo’ by Dave Burrell is a large ensemble monster and featured prominently in the aforementioned Thurston Moore list and was one of the earlier records in the series I acquired (from the Antiquarium, if I remember correctly, or maybe a Len Bukowski list.) The Archie Shepp ‘Live at the PanAfrikan Fest’ is really beautiful, particularly the side with the tuareg musicians. That Alan Silva triple set is excellent but I made it through the thing exactly once, and that was a struggle. Both M.E.V. LPs are strong and still filed and might be the best non-jazz things on the label (‘Camembert Electrique’ is one I got rid of because I never quite connected with it… probably worth revisiting.)

What could be your editorial/aesthetic line?
With the exception of the 200 line, which focuses on 80s and 90s indie rock and DIY, the editorial line is probably something like this: We will prioritize the completely unknown over the known every time. Our goal is to thoroughly investigate the most unlikely motherlodes of unknown independently-produced recordings from the fifties through the eighties that contain visionary, artistic, underground statements, in any style from any genre.

Spirit Of Israel
Daniel

How do you decide on the choice of reissues?
The releases that I’m most proud of don’t happen by choice necessarily… I see it as boring into an aquifer and if there’s a bounty there, it pushes itself into existence (through the well we’ve dug.) What we decide to release feels really obvious and necessary to us.

One of our favorite (and one of our store’s best sellers) is ‘Soul Message From Dimona’. What an incredible story! How did you get in touch with those guys?
They have deep connections with Chicago and before we knew about the music we visited their restaurants on the South Side to enjoy some of the most unhealthy vegetarian food available. When we first became aware of the music we went there asking questions and a member of one of the bands happened to be working in the kitchen and he started putting us in touch with the right people. Eventually some of the elders came over from Israel and met with us and we finalized the project.

What Numero record are you most proud of and why?
I’m proudest of the records that couldn’t have existed without our inexhaustible curiosity and inquisitiveness, records that were unearthed because of, in hindsight, totally absurd pursuits that should not have borne any fruit. Examples include 24 Carat Black, The Final Solution Brotherman OST, Universal Togetherness Band, Downriver Revival, debatably the Pisces LP. I’m also particularly proud of our forthcoming Ork Records box set which was a hard-fought from beginning to end and involved aligning personalities that were deliberately unaligned for many decades. We also managed to dig out a bunch of unreleased material that was painful at times to get our hands on. But it’s genuinely one of the most important and influential record labels and no one really knew that until their vision was assembled the way we did here.

You released a boxset dedicated to Syl Johnson, 45 boxsets, you add photos, sleevenotes, etc… After 12 years, do you still believe this rigorous, in-depth editorial line is still your main strength?
Yes. We also do very simple, straightforward LP replicas but I think our supporters are generally less excited about these. We have more fights than anything over liner notes, and they are probably the part of our releases that the fewest people really focus on (music first, photos second, overall package third…) but its still really important that they’re there and document artists that will no longer be with us before long. I have a hunch these biographies we wring our hands over will became valuable to someone someday in an academic setting.

Express Rising
Memorabilia

What about the Omnibus 45 boxset? It was a huge success. Are you planning to put out a second volume?
We will make another thing that massive and sprawling and ridiculous, I imagine, but not a second volume of that exact project. We don’t want to dwell on the same ideas, we want to move on to other ones.

Numero Group has recently started to release contemporary music, like Dante Carfagna’s ‘Express Rising’. Is this a direction you are intending to pursue with more intensity?
We manufactured Dante’s record for him, but it’s not on our label (per his requirements its not on any label). We have no plans to release any contemporary music but we do try to support our friends, like Ryley Walker who is signed to our sister label Dead Oceans.

You published many LPs with a strong political message… Is it an important aspect in your decisions ? Or is it simply an echo of that era ?
It’s an echo of the era, and the political messages of sixties and seventies soul and funk are rarely relevant in the same way today (same goes for eighties and nineties punk and indie)

What could be the label’s leitmotif?
Visionary has a wealth of ability but personal choices, paranoia, lack of funding (or lack of ambition), and poor location conspire to keep his or her creations unknown and isolated.

Nowadays, there are many reissue labels who follow your model, we mean more quality even if it’s more expensive… but at same time, there is also another « new » LP market, with major and smaller labels trying to do high numbers by selling cheaper. Are those 2 different markets or are they compatible?
When we tracked down Thorn Oehrig, the artist behind the Circuit Rider LP, he was insistent upon keeping the re-release identical to the original release, since all the artwork was part of his original vision and concept for the album. This was unusual for us, and really unusual for self-released music from the era since most artists privately-issuing their LPs were deferred at least somewhat from their vision. It unintentionally birthed the line (we call it the 1200 line) because it was an exact replica with no ornamentation or documentation.

Boscoe
He Keeps You Down

There are more and more reissues of old LPs, and more and more record labels (major or indie) now releasing their new artists on LP, or EP. Do you think that the LP reissue market could ever reach saturation point?
Right now the bulwark against true saturation might be the fact that it takes 6 months to get a record pressed and most pressing companies are not taking on new clients. Given unlimited capacity, we’d be past saturation. Most reissues can’t get any press attention, there is arguably already press saturation. But I think we do have our own niche within a niche and I’m not necessarily worried that we’ll oversaturate.

Have you received many negative answers on some of the LPs, artists, unreleased tapes, you were trying to reissue?
Absolutely, we get “no” frequently and it’s not always just about the money. Usually because they’ve moved on and nothing can bring them back.

What are your next releases ?
‘Edge of Daybreak’, the best soul LP ever recorded in state penitentiary, comes out in early october and it’s simply incredible, truly idiosyncratic as something a group cloistered from the outside world can create. The aforementioned Ork Records collection comes out in the month we’ve dubbed Orktober and its maybe our most thorough documentation of a label ever. It takes a totally fresh approach on the most fretted about rock scene in history, downtown Manhattan in the middle and late 1970s.

What is the LP you are dreaming of reissuing?
There are many unreleased rap LPs that, given unlimited ability to clear the samples, I would release in a heartbeat. The period between 1989 and 1995 was so rich with creation in rap music and there are, without exaggeration, hundreds of full-length LPs that are worthy of release that might be known only through one copy of a demo cassette.

To Numero Group website
 

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Annette Poindexter
Mama