<h1>DIY Record Making</h1> Matt Bickle on putting the Signals EP together

Ethan contacted Matt Bickle (Slasher Records), to get a few facts and figures for the "Signals EP" page. Matt answered in a lot of detail and provided some nice background information. His reply is copied below, edited very slightly and illustrated with a few pictures....



Matt: The records came first and the covers were delayed so I made the yellow photocopy covers because we had some shows (I was driving them a lot for a while) in the U.S. And I probably wanted to sell a bunch to get some cash back. I made 250 to 300 of the yellow hand coloured ones. A handful maybe escaped with no colouring. Numbers I'm not sure 5 to 20?

Yellow sleeve with hand-coloured red cross

 About 50 were photocopied onto red paper with no colouring and sold on some weekend tour or something like that. 

Red sleeve

There is also one with a black cross, I did a few like that, 5 to 10. Also we made about 5 "band" copies with black photocopied sleeves early in.

Yellow sleeve with hand-coloured black cross

Martin's design was traced by hand and came out a little rougher on the yellow sleeves. 

Most of the yellow ones came with an early red insert designed by me.

Bickle's Insert

The real covers came and they were supposed to be pocket sleeves and we were disappointed so I had pocket sleeves done locally by this printer Charlie. He made a new die-cut and many Fucked Up sleeves were done after that through him in Toronto. So the record was officially out in a pocket sleeve. 

A new insert designed by Jonah came with the records which were all hand cut.

Falco's Insert

The record was pressed locally when Toronto (Pickering) still had a pressing plant. I did two or three runs of them but I think all of the first 2000 records were identical. 

'Pickering Dot'
Most records pressed at the Pickering plant  featured a black dot on the label

The fold-over covers started being used once the others ran out although I'm sure a few came early on too, when the fold-overs were being printed.

About 6 months after the record came out I made some blue sleeves for the test pressings and gave a couple away with the slasher record club. Some tests don’t have the blue sleeve because people got them way before. There were about 8 tests, I got another back with the stampers later on so 9 and I made about 3 or 4 "tests" to sell when I repressed the record with blank labels so about 13 tests all together maybe 7 or 8 have stamped blue sleeves. 

Maybe some blue sleeves escaped later on sent out at random, unstamped 10 to 15 copies. Probably with other sleeves too.

I was out of labels but had plenty of covers so I asked about a repress and the stampers were old so I ordered 500 records but really thought they would break and that I would only get about 100. The stampers held up much to my surprise and we got 500 with blank labels. A little disappointed they didn't break after 50 or 100 but I wasn't going to throw them out I still had lots of covers. Me and Jonah made a "Blitz" stamp for the labels, so they would look like the early copies of "All Out Attack."

Some were stamped right on the sleeve, with just a bit on the label...

and some were done really well, right on the labels. 

If it has any of the "Blitz" stamp at all on the label it is not a test press. Later on copies started being sent with both covers, fold-over and pocket and maybe multiple inserts too because I still had red ones and I had redone Jonah’s insert so it fit on an 8 by 11 paper and made 500 or so of those for the blank labels records.

Lots of potential combos sent at random to get rid of all the leftovers (unstamped blue sleeves uncoloured yellow sleeves etc.)

Finally I came across the original 4 cmyk separations from the printing and cut them to size and made 4 transparency sleeves so me and Jonah, Martin and maybe Dave KW each got one.