Ethan contacted Matt Bickle (Slasher Records), to get a few facts and figures for the "Signals EP" page. Matt answered in a lot of detail and provided some nice background information on how stuff gets made at Slasher HQ. His reply is copied below, edited very slightly and illustrated with a few pictures....
Matt: The records came first and the covers were delayed so I made the yellow photocopy covers because we had some shows (I was driving them a lot for a while) in the U.S. And I probably wanted to sell a bunch to get some cash back. I made 250 to 300 of the yellow hand coloured ones. A handful maybe escaped with no colouring. Numbers I'm not sure 5 to 20?
About 50 were photocopied onto red paper with no colouring and sold on some weekend tour or something like that.
Matt: The records came first and the covers were delayed so I made the yellow photocopy covers because we had some shows (I was driving them a lot for a while) in the U.S. And I probably wanted to sell a bunch to get some cash back. I made 250 to 300 of the yellow hand coloured ones. A handful maybe escaped with no colouring. Numbers I'm not sure 5 to 20?
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| Yellow sleeve with hand-coloured red cross |
About 50 were photocopied onto red paper with no colouring and sold on some weekend tour or something like that.
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| Red sleeve |
There is also one with a black cross, I did a few like that, 5 to 10. Also we made about 5 "band" copies with black photocopied sleeves early in.
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| Yellow sleeve with hand-coloured black cross |
Martin's design was traced by hand and came out a little rougher on the yellow sleeves.
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Most of the yellow ones came with an early red insert
designed by me.
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| Bickle's Insert |
The real covers came and they were supposed to be pocket
sleeves and we were disappointed so I had pocket sleeves done locally by this
printer Charlie. He made a new die-cut and many Fucked Up sleeves were done
after that through him in Toronto. So the record was officially out in a pocket
sleeve.
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| Fold out (left) & pocket sleeves |
A new insert designed by Jonah came with the records which were all
hand cut.
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| Jonah's Insert |
The record was pressed locally when Toronto (Pickering) still
had a pressing plant. I did two or three runs of them but I think all of the
first 2000 records were identical.
The fold-over covers started being used once the others ran out although I'm sure a few came early on too, when the fold-overs were being printed.
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| 'Pickering Dot' Most records pressed at the Pickering plant featured a black dot on the label |
The fold-over covers started being used once the others ran out although I'm sure a few came early on too, when the fold-overs were being printed.
About 6 months after the record came out I made some blue
sleeves for the test pressings and gave a couple away with the slasher record
club. Some tests don’t have the blue sleeve because people got them way before.
There were about 8 tests, I got another back with the stampers later on so 9
and I made about 3 or 4 "tests" to sell when I repressed the record
with blank labels so about 13 tests all together maybe 7 or 8 have stamped blue
sleeves.
Maybe some blue sleeves escaped later on sent out at random, unstamped
10 to 15 copies. Probably with other sleeves too.
I was out of labels but had plenty of covers so I asked about a repress and the stampers were old so I ordered 500 records but really thought they would break and that I would only get about 100. The stampers held up much to my surprise and we got 500 with blank labels. A little disappointed they didn't break after 50 or 100 but I wasn't going to throw them out I still had lots of covers. Me and Jonah made a "Blitz" stamp for the labels, so they would look like the early copies of "All Out Attack."
Some were stamped right on the sleeve, with just a bit on the
label...
and some were done really well, right on the labels.
If it has any of the
"Blitz" stamp at all on the label it is not a test press. Later on
copies started being sent with both covers, fold-over and pocket and maybe
multiple inserts too because I still had red ones and I had redone Jonah’s
insert so it fit on an 8 by 11 paper and made 500 or so of those for the blank
labels records.
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| Jonah's insert got redone to fit on different size paper for the whit label pressing... |
Lots of potential combos sent at random to get rid of all the
leftovers (unstamped blue sleeves uncoloured yellow sleeves etc.)
Finally I came across the original 4 cmyk separations from
the printing and cut them to size and made 4 transparency sleeves so me and
Jonah, Martin and maybe Dave each got one.
