Photo by Xavier Popy

Each month, we are focusing on a record label founded by an active digger. This month, Bernard Ducayron from Le Souffle Continu, record shop and label, talked about his passion: music, from noisy impro to acoustic electro.

When did you start digging records?
My brother gave me Led Zeppelin’s “In Through The Outdoor” as a christmas present when I was thirteen, that was a shock ! I started digging / buying at sixteen.

What LP’s did you buy at first? Do you still listen to them?
As a kid, I was really into the hard rock/heavy metal scene, there was this NWOBHM (new wave of british heavy metal) thing at the time, I remember buying early Iron Maiden singles at Prisunic, then discovered Jukebox record store where you could find Kerrang magazine the bible for any heavy metal kid and all those crazy priced imports ! in the mid-eighties, Jukebox opened a second store dedicated to the more psyche / garage / acid sounds ; that’s the place where I discovered and dived into The Stooges, Velvet, the Real Kids, early Spacemen 3 stuff… the Stooges “Fun House” & MC5 opened the free jazz “Autobahn”, Sun Ra, Coltrane, Sanders, Ayler, I had to sell most of my heavy metal records then to get some money to buy second hand records. I still listen to most of these records.

Do you have a particular style or favorite period?
I don’t have a particular style, I mean when you grow up with music you get more and more open minded, I can listen to Eric B & Rakim, Peter Brötzmann, Black Sabbath, Funkadelic, Faust or Throbbing Gristle with the same pleasure!

Are you still digging, buying vinyl, visiting record shops?
I am still visiting record shops of course when I’m travelling and as a record dealer there’s something very special, a real pleasure in buying a record in another record store, but that becomes very rare as I don’t have much free time left.

Why did you choose this name, Souffle Continu, for your Record Shop and now for your label ?
Souffle Continu is the french word for circular breathing, a technique used by the Aborigines when playing the didjeridoo and some fantastic free jazz blowers like Evan Parker ; there’s also a meaning of resistance towards the decline of the record industry, we started the shop in 2008, we keep on breathing, fighting the good fight…

Until two years, you were more focused on CD, with only a few LP’s. Why did you decide to switch for only, more or less, vinyls?
We started eight years ago with 70% of CD because many of our customers at that time that were between 40 and 60 years old switched to CD in the mid-90’s and sold their entire vinyl collection! Most of them didn’t want to go back to vinyl. But the ever better evolving quality of downloads is slowly killing the CD format. You can easily resell your CD’s, or give it or even throw it so what’s the point of buying a CD when you can go for high quality downloads? As well, CD have never replaced the feeling of the vinyl, the sound, the artwork even the gesture of changing the side. All this leads to more and more vinyl production, and many new records are only available on vinyl format, so customers are naturally returning to the vinyl format because true lovers do not download!

You released at first 3 Heldon 45’s on Souffle Continu Records. Why this choice?
Richard Pinhas is a key figure in the french electronic underground and we’ve been friends for a long time. He had already signed reissues contracts on Heldon LP’s with Wah Wah & Superior Viaduct when we started the label and we loved those singles, they were unavailable for years so we thought we could start the label with this cool 7’’ format ; we did 700 of each and these are almost sold out now.

Red Noise
Sarcelles, c’est l’avenir

After a year and half, you have added ten references. Why this urgency? To build a real catalog? And who are your buyers?
We have been thinking and working on the label way before its effective start last year, so we had more than ten titles signed at the very beginning, and yes we want to build a real catalog, it’s easier to work with foreign distributors when you have upcoming titles announced. We have buyers from all around the world, a big part in the US, England, Germany, Benelux, Scandinavia and Japan ; sadly french customers only represent 10% of the sales even if at this point we have only reissued french artists!

What could be your editorial/esthetic line?
Our esthetic follows our tastes which ranges from free jazz to improv’, cosmic prog to kraut, industrial to electro acoustic.

How do you decide on the choice of reissues?
At this point we’ve been reissuing much needed and wanted records made by friends and artists connected with our activities as a record shop ; the rarity of a record is definitely a decisive point of choice but of course it comes after the music interest which is very decisive.

You released few great references (as Bernard Vitet ‘La Guepe’ or Red Noise LP) from Futura, the cult label of Gérard Terrones. How do you work with him for the reissue’s choices ? What could be the next LP’s?
Gérard is really connected to our activities, however is a tough guy that doesn’t want to look at the past ! We suggested him to go for the Red and Son reissue series on vinyl almost five years ago, but he never believed that could work even if the counterfeists on some of these recordings exists ; finally after years of discussions he allowed us to do the job ! We suggested a list of titles and he came back with what he felt was ok ; for some reason he didn’t allow the Theatre du Chêne Noir “Aurora” or “Perception” for exemple. The next LP’s in the Futura series are Triode, Horde Catalytique Pour La Fin & Travelling.

Each LP comes in an edition of 500 for the standard version and 200 for the limited version. Why did this double issue? And don’t you believe you could put on a market more than only 700 copys?
We made 1000 of the first three LP’s, Red Noise, Mahogany Brain & Semool, 700 black and 300 colored and we still have some stock on these, not that much but we thought the interest would be bigger. Then we did 1000 for the two Heldon live recordings, those are now sold out but they were launched for Record Store Day which make sells easier, so we’ve made 700 of the two latest ; maybe we were a bit shy as Tacet is almost sold out now in 6 weeks time. We will adjust the quantities depending of each release in the future.

You organize monthly, even more, meetings & events with musicians (signatures…). This aspect, I mean live music, seems to be important for yours aesthetics views. Do you believe a part of the music you like are strongly connected to live (think about free for instance)?
When we started the shop’s adventure more than seven years ago, we wanted a lively place, not just a new record store ; as said before our activities are strongly connected with musicians and producers. I remember how happy we were to welcome Pauline Oliveros for an instore 9 months after the grand opening of the store. We’ve had Archie Shepp, Jean-Jacques Birgé, Saul Williams, Serge Teyssot-Gay, Joelle Leandre, Jac Berrocal, Michel Bulteau, Jacques Coursil to name a few. One of the highlights was Simon Finn playing in front of 15 people like if he was in front of a sold out crowded venue and François Bayle for his 80th birthday explaining how he wrote some of his musical pieces and the birth of the GRM, that was fantastic! And yes Free is definitely a live music.

There are more and more reissues of old LP’s, 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?
The reissue market is getting really crazy but there are so many needed reissues you know! People cannot go for 500 € originals and the reissues comes for 20/25€. The pollution comes from majors now, who the hell needs the complete Van Halen recordings boxsets or Edith Piaf ! The prices are going pretty crazy too since the dollar / euro rates are almost even, new records are definitely too expensive.

Heldon
Baader Meinhof Blues

Have you received many negative answers on some of the LPs, artists, unreleased tapes, you were trying to reissue?
No, not yet in our short lived experience as a label!

What are your next releases ?
Next we have Triode, Travelling & Horde Catalytique Pour La Fin due mid-January 2016.

What is the LP you dream of reissuing?
I don’t have a holy grail as I’m not a completist, but I’d be really happy to reissue some of the works of Kevin Martin with his past projects as God, Ice or Techno Animal ! He is definitely one of the best musician/producer of the last decades in my opinion.

http://www.soufflecontinu.com
 

Schizo
Le Voyageur

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
 

Check his special 45’s TOP5
 

Annette Poindexter
Mama