“For us, Roladex is a kind of science project. Our music is produced mainly with analog synthesizers, and when we started recording our first album, Anthems for the Micro-Age, there was no question—we were recording for vinyl. We hadn’t even really considered other formats.”
“The ‘sound in a room,’ like the sound that plays off a record, is analog by definition. Now the way a digital recording works is by taking millions of tiny binary snapshots of the sound, really just estimations at a predefined rate (for CDs it is 44,100 times per second.) In the end, this means that a digital recording is not really capturing the complete sound wave—it’s more like a Xerox copy of audio that uses clusters of ones and zeros as pixels.
Vinyl, on the contrary, has a continuous groove carved into its surface—an imperceptible squiggle that mirrors the waveform of the original sound. This makes the analog format more accurate and rich, very little sonic information is lost when the analog output of your record player is fed into your amplifier, carried out your speakers, and transmitted through the air—to you.
With vinyl, you are only limited by the mechanical parts of your turntable, the quality of the amplifier, leads, and speakers, and the physical material of the record itself, which can invariably add character. We hope this character is augmented through the packaging of our album.
Roladex is really interested in calling attention to the physicality and aesthetics of media delivery systems through our music. We hope our music accents the spinning disc that is in the room with the listener. We want the turntable to be like a device on display that broadcasts ultramodern sonic cascades—warbling and orbiting by way of analog synthesis.
One of our related obsessions, the medium of video, is also dependent on the transfer of electronic signals in constant movement. Video is on perpetual circulation between camera and monitor. It is this reflexive process of simultaneous production and reproduction that we find attractive about the medium of video. This is why Roladex prefers to appear photographed on television.
Post-Modern media theorist, Marshall McLuhan was known for distinguishing between “hot” and “cool” media. He describes “hot” media as engaging in a single sense but ostensibly requiring little participation or imagination from a viewer (for example, watching a conventional narrative film in a movie theater.) Cool media, by contrast, requires more active participation (as in listening to vinyl, where you have to physically get up and flip the disc.) By these standards, vinyl is a “cooler” form of media than listening to an iTunes playlist, for example.
We are lucky to work with the wonderful vinyl-only label Medical Records, out of Seattle. Medical caters to the ‘obsessive collectors’ market. Their customers are enthusiastic record store combers and compulsive mail-order junkies, the kind of collectors who often spend their weekends coming up with new systems of organizing their record shelves.
That being said, all Medical releases are super heavyweight 180 gram vinyl in every Technicolor imaginable—Anthems for the Micro-Age is transparent electric blue.”
—Tyler Jacobsen and Elyssa Dianne
Roladex’s Anthems For The Micro-Age is on store shelves now via Medical Records. On vinyl.
