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Moshe · 10.10.2007, 01:06 AM

http://www.foxydigitalis.com/foxyd/f....php?which=273

Three Lobed
by Cory Card

When it comes to consistently releasing high quality music from some of the biggest names in the underground scene, one should look no further than Cory Rayborn’s Three Lobed Recordings. Over the past seven or so years, Cory has been releasing some real choice cuts, from the likes of Bardo Pond, Davenport, GHQ, Wooden Wand and the Vanishing Voice and Heavy Winged.

This year has seen a slew of activity in the Three Lobed camp, with a triumphant return to releasing vinyl, as well as launching several successful cd releases, many of which have sold out in a matter of a month’s time. On top of all that Rayborn just recently announced another amazing CD subscription series entitled Oscillation III, that will feature the likes of Lee Ranaldo, Tom Carter, Jack Rose, Bardo Pond and many more. 2008 will also see Three Lobed continuing on the vinyl path with five or six new releases slated.

When and why did you decide to begin Three Lobed?
All through college and immediately thereafter I was involved in all kinds of music-related activities – booking shows, putting together a short-lived zine, doing lots of live recording on top of other stuff. I thought it would be a ton of fun to at least have one release out there that I had a lot of involvement with and, to the degree it remained fun, it could be something that I could keep up. Everything came together to do a 10” for Bardo Pond in 2000. That release moved along quickly and smoothly and I am still enjoying it all here seven years later. I have a semi-stressful job and over the last couple of years the label has offered me a great relief from some of that. Sure, not everyone would consider hand-numbering, boxing up and shipping hundreds of records “stress relief,” but it works for me. That’s a big part of why things have been busier, label-wise, with release schedules and whatnot over the last 2+ years.

Speaking of the actual act of making, there seems to be a focus on the visual presentation of the project. Do you feel it’s important to make some sort of visual connection with the sounds contained within?
I feel that an album’s packaging should be a reflection of the music it accompanies. That overall relationship is very important – I always want the music Three Lobed releases to be married to the visual aspects of its packaging. A lot of thought and planning goes into the preparation of the packaging to all of our releases.

Do you do any of the artwork yourself, or do you mainly recruit others to do so? How much are the bands involved in this process?
While I would love to have a bit of a role in helping to make the conceptualized appearance a reality, I have not really had much of anything to do with the overall design of any Three Lobed release. The majority of the items in the catalog have artwork that was initially cooked up by the bands, themselves. More often than not, there is a specific look they want to accompany their music. When a band has no preference, I have a particular friend who I have turned to for from-scratch design jobs.

Where does the name, Three Lobed, originate?
It is much less complicated than a lot of people would probably think. Short answer – I’m a big H.P. Lovecraft fan. In one of his stories, “Haunter of the Dark,” he describes the elder Old Ones’ messenger, Nyarlathotep, as the “three-lobed burning eye.” If you happen to have a copy of our first release, the “Slab” 10” by Bardo Pond, check the center of the way for the inscription of “I see it-- coming here-- hell-wind-- titan-blur-- black wings-- Yog-Sothoth save me-- the three-lobed burning eye...” from this same story spanning the A and B sides. Similar descriptions pop up elsewhere throughout his works. Maybe it’s dorky - well, OK, it’s certainly dorky - but I’ve always thought that was fun.

You’ve released a number of albums by Bardo Pond and their various side projects. How did that relationship come about?
I have a close relationship with the band that stems out of the fact that I have been running Bardo Pond’s primary website, Hummingbird Mountain, since late in 1998. Those guys (and gal!) are close friends and I love them dearly. That relationship has helped explain both the constant appearance of Bardo (and related) releases in our discography as well as the fact that lots of folks have always assumed that Three Lobed is actually the band’s house label. Now, how did the website stuff come out? It is a long and rambling story that’s probably not all that interesting to read.

After releasing a couple individual releases you did your first subscription series; Purposeful Availment, how did this come about? What were some of the advantages and disadvantages to releasing albums in this manner?

It has been a while now and I am not 100% sure what the impetus behind that original series was anymore! Putting the first series together was an interesting project – I was working with a few folks I knew well and a lot of folks I really didn’t know at all. At that point the label didn’t have a huge track record either – a lot of folks who hopped in were just doing so on faith. I’m still wildly proud of that series and how well it worked out.

Working with the series concept is nice in that you help expose people to some music that they have never heard before and may not have gone out of their way to check out otherwise. It is really cool when I get an email from a subscriber who states that they had never heard X band before and really, really love what they’re doing. That’s a lot of fun.

There is one main disadvantage – scheduling. Sometimes things that seem to make total and complete sense when you’re setting a series up fall apart and get a little crazy on the execution-end. At the point where I was in my record-releasing knowledge I probably should have allowed for more time between the mailings in the Purposeful Availment series – I just didn’t know any better! That said, lessons were learned and by the time Modern Containment rolled around I had a better grasp on how to make timeliness happen with a project of this nature. Look for similar strides of timeliness (I hope!) with our upcoming Oscillation III series!

This year you’ve seemed to focus a great deal of energy on vinyl, will this continue in the future? Do you prefer doing vinyl only releases?
About a year ago I decided that I wanted to play around with some vinyl again. It had been a while since that first 10” release and I was inspired to dip back into it all by a lot of the great vinyl-only work that Time-Lag and Mad Monk, etc. were doing. That decision coupled with the early response to our first vinyl releases combined to result in 5 vinyl releases in 2007 and plans for another 5 or 6 in 2008. I love doing them so there is a good chance that we might move towards being a primarily vinyl label within a year or so. Don’t worry – we’re not going to stop with the bonus CDs and things of that nature…

With one of your next releases, Basalt Fingers, you are going to including an actual cd of the record with the lp, what sparked this idea?
With our drift towards more vinyl and fewer CD releases, I did not want anyone to feel left out. Since a lot of these records are ones where neither the artists nor I wanted to release them simultaneously in both formats, we were trying to figure out the best way to handle the situation. Obviously there is the whole “free mp3 download of album” approach. Personally, I am not a big fan of mp3s as anything more than a portable media. They are too limited. Whatever you get sampling-wise is what you are going to have forever. Lossless audio formats are a much more interesting long-term solution in my mind. By presenting someone with a CD you are allowing them to determine how they personally want to make use of it – convert it to mp3, convert it to lossless formats, simply throw it in their car CD player... the list goes on. So, from that overall approach I thought that tucking in a pretty no-frills CD version of the vinyl would be a good pairing of the twin goals of 1) keeping the record vinyl only and 2) allowing folks without turntables the ability to hear the material in a non-mp3 format. Hell, maybe we will have a few folks pick a record or two for the CD up and be inspired to buy turntables. I am totally in favor of that. I am anticipating continuing this trend, artist willing. There will be some times when the artist just doesn’t want there to be any sort of CD, even a little add-on version, so I cannot say it will be every vinyl release.

10.10.2007, 01:06 AM	#21
Moshe Super Moderator Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 5,862	http://www.foxydigitalis.com/foxyd/f....php?which=273 Three Lobed by Cory Card When it comes to consistently releasing high quality music from some of the biggest names in the underground scene, one should look no further than Cory Rayborn’s Three Lobed Recordings. Over the past seven or so years, Cory has been releasing some real choice cuts, from the likes of Bardo Pond, Davenport, GHQ, Wooden Wand and the Vanishing Voice and Heavy Winged. This year has seen a slew of activity in the Three Lobed camp, with a triumphant return to releasing vinyl, as well as launching several successful cd releases, many of which have sold out in a matter of a month’s time. On top of all that Rayborn just recently announced another amazing CD subscription series entitled Oscillation III, that will feature the likes of Lee Ranaldo, Tom Carter, Jack Rose, Bardo Pond and many more. 2008 will also see Three Lobed continuing on the vinyl path with five or six new releases slated. When and why did you decide to begin Three Lobed? All through college and immediately thereafter I was involved in all kinds of music-related activities – booking shows, putting together a short-lived zine, doing lots of live recording on top of other stuff. I thought it would be a ton of fun to at least have one release out there that I had a lot of involvement with and, to the degree it remained fun, it could be something that I could keep up. Everything came together to do a 10” for Bardo Pond in 2000. That release moved along quickly and smoothly and I am still enjoying it all here seven years later. I have a semi-stressful job and over the last couple of years the label has offered me a great relief from some of that. Sure, not everyone would consider hand-numbering, boxing up and shipping hundreds of records “stress relief,” but it works for me. That’s a big part of why things have been busier, label-wise, with release schedules and whatnot over the last 2+ years. Speaking of the actual act of making, there seems to be a focus on the visual presentation of the project. Do you feel it’s important to make some sort of visual connection with the sounds contained within? I feel that an album’s packaging should be a reflection of the music it accompanies. That overall relationship is very important – I always want the music Three Lobed releases to be married to the visual aspects of its packaging. A lot of thought and planning goes into the preparation of the packaging to all of our releases. Do you do any of the artwork yourself, or do you mainly recruit others to do so? How much are the bands involved in this process? While I would love to have a bit of a role in helping to make the conceptualized appearance a reality, I have not really had much of anything to do with the overall design of any Three Lobed release. The majority of the items in the catalog have artwork that was initially cooked up by the bands, themselves. More often than not, there is a specific look they want to accompany their music. When a band has no preference, I have a particular friend who I have turned to for from-scratch design jobs. Where does the name, Three Lobed, originate? It is much less complicated than a lot of people would probably think. Short answer – I’m a big H.P. Lovecraft fan. In one of his stories, “Haunter of the Dark,” he describes the elder Old Ones’ messenger, Nyarlathotep, as the “three-lobed burning eye.” If you happen to have a copy of our first release, the “Slab” 10” by Bardo Pond, check the center of the way for the inscription of “I see it-- coming here-- hell-wind-- titan-blur-- black wings-- Yog-Sothoth save me-- the three-lobed burning eye...” from this same story spanning the A and B sides. Similar descriptions pop up elsewhere throughout his works. Maybe it’s dorky - well, OK, it’s certainly dorky - but I’ve always thought that was fun. You’ve released a number of albums by Bardo Pond and their various side projects. How did that relationship come about? I have a close relationship with the band that stems out of the fact that I have been running Bardo Pond’s primary website, Hummingbird Mountain, since late in 1998. Those guys (and gal!) are close friends and I love them dearly. That relationship has helped explain both the constant appearance of Bardo (and related) releases in our discography as well as the fact that lots of folks have always assumed that Three Lobed is actually the band’s house label. Now, how did the website stuff come out? It is a long and rambling story that’s probably not all that interesting to read. After releasing a couple individual releases you did your first subscription series; Purposeful Availment, how did this come about? What were some of the advantages and disadvantages to releasing albums in this manner? It has been a while now and I am not 100% sure what the impetus behind that original series was anymore! Putting the first series together was an interesting project – I was working with a few folks I knew well and a lot of folks I really didn’t know at all. At that point the label didn’t have a huge track record either – a lot of folks who hopped in were just doing so on faith. I’m still wildly proud of that series and how well it worked out. Working with the series concept is nice in that you help expose people to some music that they have never heard before and may not have gone out of their way to check out otherwise. It is really cool when I get an email from a subscriber who states that they had never heard X band before and really, really love what they’re doing. That’s a lot of fun. There is one main disadvantage – scheduling. Sometimes things that seem to make total and complete sense when you’re setting a series up fall apart and get a little crazy on the execution-end. At the point where I was in my record-releasing knowledge I probably should have allowed for more time between the mailings in the Purposeful Availment series – I just didn’t know any better! That said, lessons were learned and by the time Modern Containment rolled around I had a better grasp on how to make timeliness happen with a project of this nature. Look for similar strides of timeliness (I hope!) with our upcoming Oscillation III series! This year you’ve seemed to focus a great deal of energy on vinyl, will this continue in the future? Do you prefer doing vinyl only releases? About a year ago I decided that I wanted to play around with some vinyl again. It had been a while since that first 10” release and I was inspired to dip back into it all by a lot of the great vinyl-only work that Time-Lag and Mad Monk, etc. were doing. That decision coupled with the early response to our first vinyl releases combined to result in 5 vinyl releases in 2007 and plans for another 5 or 6 in 2008. I love doing them so there is a good chance that we might move towards being a primarily vinyl label within a year or so. Don’t worry – we’re not going to stop with the bonus CDs and things of that nature… With one of your next releases, Basalt Fingers, you are going to including an actual cd of the record with the lp, what sparked this idea? With our drift towards more vinyl and fewer CD releases, I did not want anyone to feel left out. Since a lot of these records are ones where neither the artists nor I wanted to release them simultaneously in both formats, we were trying to figure out the best way to handle the situation. Obviously there is the whole “free mp3 download of album” approach. Personally, I am not a big fan of mp3s as anything more than a portable media. They are too limited. Whatever you get sampling-wise is what you are going to have forever. Lossless audio formats are a much more interesting long-term solution in my mind. By presenting someone with a CD you are allowing them to determine how they personally want to make use of it – convert it to mp3, convert it to lossless formats, simply throw it in their car CD player... the list goes on. So, from that overall approach I thought that tucking in a pretty no-frills CD version of the vinyl would be a good pairing of the twin goals of 1) keeping the record vinyl only and 2) allowing folks without turntables the ability to hear the material in a non-mp3 format. Hell, maybe we will have a few folks pick a record or two for the CD up and be inspired to buy turntables. I am totally in favor of that. I am anticipating continuing this trend, artist willing. There will be some times when the artist just doesn’t want there to be any sort of CD, even a little add-on version, so I cannot say it will be every vinyl release.
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