Other Music to close and the SAY Award

Not a great week in the world of Avalanche. Following soon after the closure of Origami Vinyl in LA Other Music in New York announced it will be closing in June. As sales of physical music continue to plummet, a no-frills independent record store makes increasingly less sense as a business says the New York Times. Co-owner Josh Madell then sums things up well “We still do a ton of business — probably more than most stores in the country. It’s just the economics of it actually supporting us — we don’t see a future in it. We’re trying to step back before it becomes a nightmare.”

I’ve never been to New York so all I know is from the many customers we have had from NYC but both from reputation and personal recommendation Other Music was always clearly a very important record shop. Having played host to Neutral Milk Hotel, The National and Interpol to name just a few bands Avalanche are also well known for supporting they obviously had our admiration but they were much more than that covering a wide range of underground and experimental music along with a fantastic choice of soul, funk, jazz and disco. One NYC customer described it as like several of the best UK record shops all mashed into one.

If new music is going to survive on the high street these are the shops that matter. Any number of second hand shops dabbling in new vinyl can pop up and that is fine but unless new music is to move completely online its fate is left in the hands of a dwindling few. While the way people choose to listen to music is a factor the elephant in the room is that even the best of shops are faced on a weekly basis with releases by some of their best selling artsists not available to shops. The profit from the latest Radiohead 7″ would pay a member of staff for a day. The profit from the very limited indies only vinyl version of the new Radiohead album might pay the rent for a few days. However the £60 box set is only available from the band and the last album as a £40 box set grossed them 4 million pounds more than the yearly turnover of all but a handful of shops worldwide.

Of course the irony with Radiohead is their label XL is owned by Martin Mills who of course also owns Rough Trade. Other Music will also continue with their label so maybe labels are the future ! I can only wish everyone at Other Music all the best.

I waited with interest to see the longlist for the SAY Awards and it did surprise me a little. It is set up in such a way that all genres will be represented and what tends to happen is the small to medium sized indie bands Avalanche supports get squeezed out as the indie sector votes for the big indie bands. However one or two do normally sneak in more often than not to do with friends amongst those contributing than anything else but this year there are none. Obviously artists like Admiral Fallow, Steve Mason and Emma Pollock do well for Avalanche but this year there were no less well known “indie” artists to benefit from the publicity the award brings.

I know in previous years many of the artists I would have hoped to see included have hovered just outside between 20 to 30 but this year I held out hope for only a couple. Our best selling album from Laurie Cameron which was well received elsewhere doesn’t feature of course and I thought the Filthy Tongues might have had a chance being in everybody’s minds as it was only recently released but it was not to be. What was of course unforgivable was the exclusion of the There Will Be Fireworks album “The Dark, Dark Bright” a couple of years ago ! Others previously like Star Wheel Press despite being championed by not just Avalanche but others like Ian Rankin only made it to that 20 to 30 ranking.

The Scottish media are always keen to show how diverse the Scottish music scene is maybe sometimes at the expense of music people actually prefer to listen to but from Avalanche’s viewpoint we are always looking for the new Frightened Rabbit, Twilight Sad, Withered Hand, Ballboy, Belle and Sebastian or indeed Mogwai. Record companies meanwhile still seem to be searching for the next Biffy Clyro  or The View !

Of course as Avalanche resurrects its own label and looks to the History of Scottish Music maybe we will discover the new Josef K or Orange Juice !