To carry the reissue message further, Light In The Attic has set up the imprints Cinewax, Modern Classics, and Future Days. The former two are thematic; Cinewax focuses on films and soundtracks—such as “Winter’s Bone” and “Wheedle’s Groove”— while and Modern Classics produces vinyl reissues of music that was originally released in the last 30 years, such as Stone Roses, D’Angelo, and Public Image Limited. Future Days’ outlook is similar to that of Light In The Attic. For each release, their mastering engineers spend an excruciating amount of time cleaning up and fine-tuning the sound of the reissues—which are sometimes taken from a beat-up acetate that’s been scratched to death—all the while trying to retain the character of the original material.
INTERVIEW WITH FOUNDER MAT
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magine a record label with an artist roster that includes the following: Serge Gainsbourg, Noel Ellis, Sly Stone, Francoise Hardy, Mercury Rev, Lee Hazlewood, Thin Lizzy, Philip Glass, and Built To Spill. It’s like every release is a greatest hits collection. This is the situation at reissue specialist headquarters: Light In The Attic Records. Conceived in Seattle in 2001 by founder Matt Sullivan, the independent label released its first reissue— Last Poets’ double album Last Poets/This Is Madness—in 2002, and established a Los Angeles headquarters in 2010. Scrolling through Light In The Attic’s artists page, what immediately comes to mind is, “These guys have good taste.” That is their first requirement for a reissue: it has to be something they personally enjoy and would spend hard-earned money purchasing. Second to that is if it was previously reissued, or wasn’t reissued the correct way. Additionally, it may not have ever had a domestic release or reissue, or it could be a foreign language album that wasn’t released or re-
The parent label also serves as distribution for roughly 50 other labels. This started at the launch of Light In The Attic when they experienced resistance from reT SULLIVAN BY LILY MOAYERI cord stores because they didn’t issued with English liner notes. have a catalog. In order to creThe one thing you won’t see with ate one, they reached out to Light In The Attic is anything like-minded labels to band topredictable. Their catalog covers all genres from soul to rock to indie pop to hip hop and everything in between, including their new artists: The Black Angels, Sylvie Simmons, The Saturday Knights, The Blakes, and Nicole Willis & The Soul Investigators. “Licensing and archival assets” says Sullivan, citing the two biggest challenges with reissues. “We’re often trying to find out who owns these old copyrights, which could be the artist, the label, the producer, the family of the artist, next of kin. And then, the source material: are there photos? Old album cover? Audio sources? Master tapes? Vinyl transfers? Vinyl? Cassettes? Another thing is, we want to work with the artist, get them involved, and document these stories and music. A lot of times, these recordings were financial failures back in the day, so it’s pulling ghosts out of the closet that maybe the artists don’t want to talk about and confront. We want them to know we have good intentions, and hopefully, gain their trust.”
gether for distribution, beneficial to all. Now, Light In The Attic has the luxury of picking who they feel could use wider distribution and lending them a hand in that area, such as Mississippi Records, Waxwork, and Sub Pop, to name a few. “Every day, people are discovering music—regardless of how old the records are,” says Sullivan. “We intentionally want to regurgitate that stuff—be it Velvet Underground or NWA—how they originally should have been presented, but also give them context in the present time [for] why people should care about Donnie & Joe Emerson or should listen to D’Angelo’s Voodoo on vinyl. These things are timeless. There’s a reason why these records still sound good 20, 40, 50 years later. They’re special. Music deserves to have a life beyond the collector world, a world that reaches younger people and older people and people who aren’t just heavy musicheads.”
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