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Six "Sided" Record from Dr. Dog's Dimitri Manos


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Check out this Six "sided" record I just made. 5 holes... 2 grooves around the outside (middle hole), and a Venn Diagram of groove on each side (rotated 90 degrees on the B-side). 

 

This is by far my favorite record I've ever made. It is the product of many hours of experimentation, measurements, blind luck, and dumb jokes being made real by sheer force of will.

This is, however, no longer a joke. This is a real 5 holed record that plays.

This Six "Sided" 10" record is composed of six distinct groove rings. Each side has a Venn Diagram of Groove in the middle and a short ring on the outside of the 10". As the grooves of the Venn Diagram cross, they make a little chirping sound. They will usually not skip, but you may need to adjust your tonearm weight and anti-skating a little. Dimitri specifically composed a 16 minute sound collage with this chirp in mind.

Each Great Six Sider 10" is somewhat unique, in that the rings were cut using an unspecific portion of Dimtri's composition and were then locked off into locked grooves when the ring ends. No rings or locked grooves are the same.

Buy them at: www.PIAPTK.com

 

Six_Sider_Small.jpg6_sider_in_sleeve_small.jpg

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This is a completely hand-made art record guys. It is not a mass-produced industrial product.

 

Needlessly fancy, definitely. And you haven't seen anything yet... my next several are needlessly fancier.

 

And I know it's expensive, but it's expensive and time consuming to make.

 

The breakdown: $3.50 worth of plastic, the time to route out the disc on a circle jig, drill the holes, $4.50 for a full color 11x17" transparency, $1 for a picture disc sleeve, Paypal fees + Online Store costs = $1.50ish. Plus the time to make them (about 45 minutes each to prep the disc, cut them, flip them, clean them up, package them in the sleeve, process orders, mail them, etc etc. ), plus add 1/3 to the total for the cost of the free copies given to the artist which I never see a dime for. . So, when it comes down to it, I am essentially making far less than half the hourly wage I used to make as a high school teacher to make these. Maybe $15/hr (that I use to feed/clothe/house myself, my wife, and 3 year old daughter), not accounting for all the time and money I've spent on buying and learning how to use the specialized equipment required to produce these. 

 

I can certainly sympathize if $35 is out of your price range for a weirdo art record by a band you may have never heard of, but please understand the reasoning behind the price. If Jack White can sell an industrial mass-produced product for $200 a piece, I feel like my asking $35 for a labor intensive, hand-made record is not that far out of line.  

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BallisticGoat: Keep an eye out, I've got lots of Dr. Dog related stuff coming down the pipe. 

 

Re: Skipping: If you have a decent turntable that has a tonearm weight adjustments, these won't skip.  Only people with $50 Crosleys may (or may not) have problems... I don't have a Crosley to test it on, but they play fine on my old Elementary School Califone from the 60s. 

 

Re: Price... I really had no idea how well these would sell, and I wanted to pay myself at least minimum wage to make a few vs selling them super cheap and selling a whole bunch that I just lost money on. I didn't necessarily limit the quantity initially, but from current sales, I doubt I'll make or sell more than about 50-75. 

 

Honestly, I was hoping this was at least weird enough to go viral and have people see it, but since I'm not already a wealthy rock star, I'm probably permanently relegated to the "obscure eccentric" category I've been in for the last 8 years of my label making X-Ray Records (before that other guy), Laserdisc Records, CD-Records, Transperency picture discs, weird shaped records, Chocolate Records, etc etc... Obscure Eccentric is pretty decent title, though. 

 

If you at least appreciate the idea behind this record, and would post it on your social media, whatever, it would be greatly appreciated. 

 

My next release in this series has a much better chance of breaking through, as it is a collaboration between two well-known, world renown musicians, and the format is even freakier. 

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I never questioned the price being too high for what it cost to make, but that when it comes down to it, it is six songs by a guy in a band we like, but no idea if this is going to sound like Dr. Dog or something all together different and not good, and for that I think the price is too high for me to spend on it. If I knew what the songs were, or had a stream of them then it might push me into buying it.

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Oh, the audio for this was recorded specifically to fit this medium. It is a 16 min sound collage piece recorded to work in any length segments and to fit the chirp that happens whenever the grooves cross each other (not very pronounced on the second ring cut). It's not a group of "songs" as you might expect. It's a conceptual art record, really. A Bunch of intentionally arranged beats and sound effects.

But, if you are into the "song" type of stuff from the Dr Dog crew, between PIAPTK And Soild Gold (the label I run that is curated Dimtri from Dr Dog), we have some weirdness and rarities coming down the pipe very soon....

On a side note one of my lathes is named Townes.

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So this is for ART, and not the music is what I'm getting from you.

Truthfully, I watched your video and Ii clearly states that anyone who purchases one of these should have at least a 1 inch clearance. My turntable doesn't have that. So why the hell would I buy this if I can't even play it? Plus from the video, the audio just sounds like noises.

Those two things are why I am not buying it. Yeah the concept is neat but the execution is flawed. It's not practical, it's a gimmick.

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