Pound Records

Pound Records, a Melbourne-based vinyl label, is a family enterprise that records new music and original artists using old, old, techniques. Pound harks back to the dawn of band recording; one microphone, the musicians clustered around it, an acoustically 'live' room, and ambience - breaths, chair scrapes, departures from the script - all kept in.... Founded by Martin Martini, The Pound is run with his partner Laurie Campbell. It's a return to, and a capturing of, the days when music was a natural extension of life. Friends and family gathered together, in lounge rooms and houses, to play instruments, improvise and sing. Music was conversational, it was story-telling, it was relationship. The Pound is about simplicity, original music, and capturing a moment. The first recording was an accident, a group of friends jamming late at night in a 19th century dairy shed and one-time coffin factory. This recording, 'The Smallest Band In The World', has become The Pound's third release, and set Martini off on this creative, Quixotic, personal course. The artists who are invited to record and release through The Pound tend to be outsider artists. Part of the root system of Melbourne's musical ecosystem, they're brilliant but a road less travelled from mainstream. Songwriters and composers who have talent to burn, and probably have. Pound Records is a musical community, a place of collaboration and self-expression where Martini takes pride in fostering the creative flame. All Pound recordings are done live in acoustically beautiful spaces. Either The Pound (aka that ex-coffin factory in Malvern), or in an old church, a town hall, or by the fire in a friendly house. Think of Japanese pottery, which is celebrated for the beauty in its imperfections, the individual cracks in the glaze. Martini has slipped purposefully away from the current normality of high production values, and vacuum sealed studios where musicians aren't even playing in the same room. Or on the same day. Music that has to be rebuilt, soundwave by ...Read More