Cascade Record Pressing

By David Greenwald | The Oregonian/OregonLive

on July 08, 2015 at 5:05 AM, updated July 08, 2015 at 2:45 PM
Unless you've been living inside a Sony Discman, you've probably heard about the return of vinyl. The analog format, long beloved by purists and underground scenes, has been on a stratospheric rise in the last decade: should 2015's numbers hold, this will be the eighth year in a row the format's grown, with 2014's 9.2 million sold a SoundScan-era record. (The charts don't count the sale of used vinyl, either, which means there could be additional millions not being tracked.)

In the turbulent music business, record sales going up is good: making all those records, though, can be trouble. "It's literally a nightmare," Jared Mees of Portland label Tender Loving Empire said recently, thanks to high demand that have pushed turnaround times out as far as six months.

Enter Cascade Record Pressing, the first record pressing plant in the Portland area -- and in the Pacific Northwest at all. Launched by Mark Rainey (TKO Records), Adam Gonsalves (Telegraph Mastering) and Steve Lanning, the press acquired six 1970s Miller presses and set to work hiring engineers, building out a warehouse and putting the machines back online. I took a trip down to Cascade's Milwaukie warehouse last month: here's what I learned.

1. Want to buy a record press? Good luck.

At every turn, Cascade had challenges: no one's making new presses, which meant tracking down 40-year-old or older gear -- and competing for it with existing plants and a handful of other newcomers.

"Early in this hunt... we would flap our... gums every time we found something," Gonsalves said. "Either the price would go up or somebody else would grab it."

2. Old engineers give the best advice. If you can get them on the phone.

"There definitely was a period of us having to convince these folks that we were talking to that we were not wasting their time," Rainey said. "There (were) a few phone calls, 'Aw, that's cute, kid, yeah, you think you're going to make records, good luck with that.'" Eventually, they won over Dave Miller, who had built their '70s presses, and flew out in November to help them get up and running. So far, Cascade has two of its presses online, with the remaining four still being prepped.

3. Cascade will return record pressing "to the realm of sanity."

"We're shooting at about eight to 10 weeks from approval of tests," Gonsalves said. For one Tender Loving Empire release, they offered a six-and-a-half week turnaround. If all goes well, actually making a limited run of records takes about three days.

4. After records are pressed, they have to cool.

One common quality control issue is racing to meet a deadline and shipping records out before the plastic's had the chance to firm up, Rainey said. That adds a day to the process.

5. Labels aren't glued to records.

It's actually the sheer pressure of the press that attaches them. Seeing a bubbly label? That's because the plant didn't bake it first to get the moisture out. Cascade uses a pizza oven.

6. Car (and motorcycle) mechanics make great vinyl press engineers.

"When we were asking, there's no one who's trained in these things. They were like, find a race car mechanic. And we couldn't find a race car mechanic but we got motorcycle mechanics," Gonsalves said.

7. 10-20 percent of records get thrown away -- at least at Cascade.

The secret of good vinyl-making is quality control: every hour, Cascade checks in on the process. Eventually, something goes wrong, either a cosmetic or audio blemish, and records have to get tossed out. Then they trouble-shoot, fix up the press and get back to work.

"There's so many physical moving parts that you can't even say the amount of things that could go wrong," Gonsalves said. "There's nothing digital about it."

8. Plain black records sound the best, though Cascade offers a full array of swirls, marbles and custom colors.

"Then there's variations from there, clear vinyl is going to probably sound better than certain colors," Amy Dragon, plant manager and Gonsalves' assistant engineer at Telegraph, said. "(It) just depends on how good your ear is and how attached you are of whatever version of that audio you've heard before."

9. Pressing's just one piece in the chain.

Customers also have to get record jackets printed and over to the plant on time.

"You don't want to make records and put them in a corner and hope that they don't get damaged or something," Rainey said. "You could run a forklift into them."

10. The vinyl boom may be a bubble. But that won't kill vinyl.

"You're talking about a format that has endured and survived against all odds," Rainey said. "I mean, what are they going to do, invent CDs again? Vinyl's here, vinyl people are here."

"Through the years when vinyl wasn't sold at Urban Outfitters, it was indie rock, punk, hardcore, dance music and hip-hop, and metal, those subcultures kept vinyl alive," Gonsalves said. "And if you have people who are part of a culture that appreciates vinyl, that's going to endure."

11. Cascade will not be pressing "The Big Lebowski" soundtrack.

"No," Gonsalves said. "That would be funny."

12. Cascade is aiming to work with independent artists and labels. But all are welcome.

"I wouldn't want to exclude anybody," Rainey said. "We want to have this be as accessible as possible. If they're polite and communicate well, I think we'll be in good shape." Early customers have included Tender Loving Empire and Mississippi Records: having LPs locally pressed saves labels potentially hundreds of dollars in shipping costs.

13. Are there new presses, though?

"You hear rumors," Rainey said. "And this is really just in the last year. But as far as widely available, widely tested, proven in the field? Haven't seen it yet."

-- David Greenwald
dgreenwald@oregonian.com
503-294-7625; @davidegreenwald

28 September 2017

http://www.oregonlive.com/music/index.ssf/2015/07/13_things_we_learned_at_cascad.html

28 September 2017