small run vinyl

Nathan sawford and holly canham cut vinyl records one by one.

Flying halfway across the world to sit in a snow-covered, mountaintop barn with a revered guru teaching you how to hand-cut vinyl records sounds like something from a Wes Anderson film – but for Melbourne fellow Nathan Sawford, it’s the true story of how his business, Small Run Vinyl, began.

“One day my friend got a record in the mail with a poem he’d written for a girlfriend,” Nathan says. “I was like, ‘How did you get just one record done? I didn’t even know that was possible.’ He told me he got it from a guy overseas, so I did some googling and contacted the man who sold the machine that made it. To buy one, I had to actually fly to Germany with cash.”

Nathan’s partner Holly Canham, co-owner of Small Run, remembers the moment vividly. “I was having a panic attack the whole time he was over there, because he had no reception and some guy from the internet had just picked him up in a truck and driven him through rural Germany in the snow,” she laughs. “He couldn’t contact me for days, and I was like, ‘Oh my god, what have we done?’”

Thankfully, there was no funny business – just an intensive crash course on how to lathe-cut records in a place called Friedrichshafen. Nathan trained for up to 14 hours each day to learn the tricks of the trade, then brought his experience back to Melbourne to begin cutting records for his own band. Five years later, Small Run is a full-time gig – Nathan takes care of the technical stuff, while Holly masterminds design and branding – and it’s filling a gap in the market for emerging musicians who can’t afford the minimum order quantities demanded by most pressing plants.

Lathe-cutting is a meticulous process where each record is engraved individually and in real-time, so, if a band wants 50 records made, Nathan sits and listens to the same recording 50 times over, ensuring there are no bumps as his machine does its thing. One skip and he has to start again; nailing the craft has been a process of trial and error. “We did a trip to the tip a year-and-ahalf ago, dropping off maybe 2000 blank records that were ruined,” Nathan says. “There’s one single groove through the whole thing – if it has a skip halfway, you just have to throw it out.”

It’s not just bands who get wax cut by Small Run, though – Nathan and Holly have created all kinds of weird and wonderful records for their varied clientele, including a recreation of Carl Sagan’s famous Voyager Golden Records. As for the most memorable order? “There was a guy who did a thing where he dropped various plates and ceramics on the ground,” Nathan recalls. “There were like 30 tracks on a seven-inch, each track going for three seconds, and it was just like… explosions.”

With the option of ordering just one lone record, Small Run is often approached by romantics and nostalgics looking to create unique gifts for loved ones. “We’ve done a few where someone has found a track of their grandparents singing a song when they were young, and they’ve wanted to put it onto vinyl as a birthday gift,” Holly says. “A lot of people like having a karaoke song going in the background as they sing for their boyfriend or girlfriend, which is pretty cute,” Nathan adds.

Their newfound skills have also given the couple the opportunity to create something special for their own family – a keepsake for their first child, Scout, who they welcomed earlier this year. “When our baby was born, Nathan made a tiny little record and put her heartbeat on it,” Holly says. “It goes for like 30 seconds,” Nathan adds. “When I posted it online, I had a bunch of people asking about it, so now they’re just waiting for their own kids to be born.”