Kutmah

As some of you will know, the Secret Archives of the Vatican empire started back at the tail end of the tape trader scene at the end of the 80s. We wrote a little about it in an earlier post HERE.

One of the exciting aspects of that scene was the use of innovative marketing techniques, crazy ideas and truly counter-cultural ways of doing things. Today I was in Rough Trade, one of our last remaining independent record shops, and found something that genuinely excited me. I can understand if you think 'what's so exciting about that?' but it got my attention and it got me thinking.


I found a CDR by Kutmah, famously deported from the US in 2010 and now residing here in his country of birth, England. He had been unable to get to a Japanese radio station for some reason and had instead recorded them an hour long mix containing, among other things, unreleased tracks by Flying Lotus, Gonjasufi and Madlib.

The mostly non-existent packaging includes some stickers and the mix is on a silver CDR that has been beautifully hand illustrated. There are only 20 copies and it was on sale for £9.99. I couldn't afford it but bought it anyway.

This is art! £9.99 for a CDR with crap packaging? It's value is not based in the cheap CD or the scanty packaging but in the fact that it is unique and there is a human quality in this item that bridges the divide between modern digital music and a physical, hand-crafted form of presentation. It's also a superb collection of musical creativity!

It got me thinking of maybe producing some very small run, special, unique Secret Archives releases that we'll sell for cold, hard cash. Only joking! Well, kind of....I love the idea so we'll have a think about what we might do along those lines.