Introduction
Labelle69 :
- is not a music label.
- is a project by artists for artists (plasticians, musicians, …).
- uses the vinyl record vertically and horizontally as a stage for exposure, a space for exhibition, shaped in the groove of acetate and the layout of the cover.
- release the consequence of a collaboration. “Couples” take shape as an elliptical collective exhibition. One look and listen as much as the other does. Two artists meet.
- has no musical orientation. It endeavours a work of research and experiment, open, unconfined, decontextualised and free from musical or aesthetic codes.
- doesn’t distribute the records. The cover and soundtrack authors share the financial substrate of the sales. They collectively defines the means of distribution. Sales and deposit places are chosen with the editor.
Vinyl record is a transposition standard from an analogic audio source, it means that the information fixed “in” it has been trough mechanical means. It is thus different from Compact Disc. Standard on which the audio signal is digitally coded. The storage media and data source are un-merged. One can infinitely reproduces the information from the source to a potential standard. But vinyl records gets its mechanical nature degraded with the media and its the analogic restitution of its recorded signal will be degraded aswell (scratches and dust). The very notion of existence begins in the medium itself because it is at once source and matrix and opposed to digital record which only can or can’t be read !
Vinyl record crystalizes a meditation on our usages of music and its image-picture standard wich are at once merged and indépendent. Tributary of its very own material réality through its plastic properties, its means of fabrication and mechanical essence condensed in its pressing and engraving
The “Vinyl” is as much an object as it is an image. Its surface is as round as it is squared. Its format is its very own reference. Such records are as much a selective and intimist as collective and shared encounters : from the cellar to to the attic of our parents, from specialized (or not) record shop charts to collectors seeking the last avant-gardes and finally to the micro edition from artistic youth.
J.P.