Robyn Raymond
Is Helping Cut Through the Vinyl Crisis
having more time with their turntables, the COVID-19 pandemic has left vinyl record manufacturers literally pressed to meet the global demand for LPs, and for Arkells, that meant Christmas had to come a little early. To get a series of limited edition, signed holiday 7-inch records in the hands of their fervent fans, the band found a seasonal saviour in fellow Canadian Robyn Raymond, who made all 500 copies by hand via the process of lathe cutting.
Recognized as a quicker and more cost-effective manufacturing method than pressing, lathe cutting records remains a popular avenue for artists looking to get their music on wax without big label budgets or constraints of minimum and maximum orders.
“Usually, because of the price point lathe cuts, I don’t entertain anything over 100 or 150. Historically, that’s kind of a pressing plant number,” Raymond tells Exclaim! “Now that the plants are not able to deliver until [late] 2022 or 2023 depending on the project, the work is now trickling down from major labels who are like, ‘We need to circumvent the plant and figure out a different way to get products out.’”
Raymond is Canada’s only female record cutter, and speaks to Exclaim! of music, vinyl and the world of record making with the warmth and detail listeners of her chosen format have come to extol. Previous projects include cutting 125 7-inches of a City & Colour live performance for Dine Alone Records, 10 LPs for Prada that were auctioned by Sotheby’s for the Italian fashion house’s Fall/Winter 2020 show, and both standard and deluxe edition LPs of the Polaris Music Prize shortlisted DNA Activation from Toronto-based Witch Prophet. From one-off home recording anniversary gifts to X-ray records made using radiographic film, there is little that Raymond is unwilling to cut.
A native of Calgary, Raymond’s love of records began in childhood, rifling through the sizeable collections of her parents and grandparents. This connection to music led to her fronting Calgary rock outfit 40 Gun Flagship, working for Canadian festival and concert promoter Union Events, and amassing a record collection of her own. Learning as much as she could about the physical form led Raymond to land on a Vinyl Recorder T560 lathe as her entry into the cutting community.
To get in the groove with a T650 lathe, Raymond reached out to German engineer and inventor Ulrich Sourisseau, who requires all buyers travel to rural Germany for a crash course in record making and Vinyl Recorder operation under his tutelage. As a woman in a historically male-dominated field, Raymond recalls of her early 2018 trip with a laugh, “He picked me up at the train station, and said, ‘But you’re a girl.’ I said, ‘Yeah,’ and he said, ‘Girls don’t do this.’ I replied, ‘Well, I do now!’”
Raymond has been at Lacquer Channel since July 2019, and being approached by one of Canada’s biggest bands for a 500-unit project gives a glimpse of how bogged down the world’s vinyl manufacturing infrastructure is at present. She says, “You have a global hunger for this physical format now that people are in their homes, able to interact with their record collection a little bit more, and we have the ability to order a record one day and get it the next. There are people logjams, infrastructure logjams, and material logjams all in confluence, jamming up the industry.”
All the while, Raymond continues to cut and collect with the mindset of making vinyl more accessible, carving space for listeners of all levels in hopes of making this personal and professional pursuit a little less patriarchal. When not at the lathe, she co-hosts a podcast for Women in Vinyl, an American site seeking to empower women, female-identifying, non-binary, LGBTQ+ and BIPOC in the industry.
“I feel like records are for everyone, and it doesn’t really matter what you’re listening to them on,” she says, sharing how she’s found the world of audiophilia to be “very exclusionary and misogynistic at times.” She adds, “There’s no reason for anyone to talk down on you because you have a budget record player. I still have my mom’s Dual 506 [turntable] from 1967, and I’ve never changed the cartridge on it! But I also have a [ Technics 1200] with an Ortofon Blue — I can hang, but, really? Is this the hill you want to die on? Life’s too short, just love the record.”
What are your current fixations?
I had never really been a big TV person, and then after having a baby you have a lot of downtime and you have the opportunity to watch a lot of TV if you want. So I am very grateful that there are about 14 or 15 seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race that I’ve caught up on in the past nine months. I love watching these people who are so talented and so passionate about their art form. I feel like it has changed my perspective on my own work.
Why do you live where you do?
I live in Montreal because it’s the city that gave me a lot of songs and a lot of inspiration. It’s where I met the love of my life and where my daughter was born. It’s a beautiful, complicated city and I love it a lot.
What’s the last book or movie that blew your mind?
Crying in H Mart,