Oregon’s first vinyl pressing plant is now open for business.
On May 28, Cascade Record Pressing began accepting orders for vinyl projects, with runs of 500 records and up, at their brand-new plant in Milwaukie.
The transformation of Cascade from wild idea to economic reality is the work of three partners: Mark Rainey, Adam Gonsalves, and Steve Lanning, all vinyl devotees and music obsessives. Rainey, Cascade’s chief operating officer, started TKO Records in the 1990s, a label that has released landmark punk albums by Dropkick Murphys, Poison Idea, and Giuda. But in December 2013, he started talking to Gonsalves about moving to Portland, Oregon.
Gonsalves’s passion for music led him to become a mastering engineer. His Telegraph Mastering business is one of the only places in Portland that can cut a record—i.e., take a vinyl master from the original recording and cut a lacquer on a Scully lathe, which chisels out grooves in the lacquer with a ruby stylus. And Gonsalves is all too knowledgeable about the problems that can arise when you turn a master into a finished run of records. He thought he’d be able to talk Rainey out of starting Cascade. “I think there are a lot of people who romanticize [record pressing],” Gonsalves said. “It’s fucking factory work. It’s not the music industry. I thought that would discourage Mark, but it didn’t.”
However, the biggest problem with vinyl manufacturing is that recent demand exceeds supply. In 2014, 9.2 million vinyl records were sold in the United States, an increase of more than 50 percent from 2013. Fewer than 20 pressing plants exist in the US to meet the market’s current demand. But it’s tough to open a new one for a very simple reason—no one is making new record presses. They’re expensive, they’re complicated to build, and they use technology from a now-bygone age of manufacturing. And all of the old presses are either in use or in serious disrepair.
Rainey, Gonsalves, and Lanning bought their presses from the now-defunct RIP-V pressing plant in Montreal. They had to do a fair amount of research before getting them across the Canadian border, but the most difficult part of the acquisition was navigating the tiny, cutthroat market of existing record presses. “It’s actually a pretty small world,” Rainey said. “There’s a handful of people in North America. If you start sniffing around, they’re going to know about you. The default setting with those guys is to try to scare you away.”
Witnessing the manufacturing process at Cascade is pretty exciting. Tiny PVC pellets are warmed into a “biscuit”—a hockey puck–like chunk of vinyl that’s then pressed by 150 tons of compression molding. The stampers—metal plates that contain reverse images of the disc—are pushed into either side of the hot biscuit, ingraining the grooves into the vinyl, which is then trimmed of excess material to form a perfectly round disc. Cascade estimates that each machine, once it’s properly aligned and fitted with the correct stampers, can make a new record roughly every 30 seconds. Soon they’ll be able to press 20,000 to 24,000 records a week.
Every hour, a record is pulled from the finished pile and scrutinized in the quality-control suite. One main component of quality control requires patience. The records must cool once they’re pulled from the machine. If a record is improperly cooled or stored, it can result in warped vinyl. This defect is a common pitfall of newly manufactured records, and Cascade is determined to avoid it.
The local support from the Portland music scene has been gratifying. Cascade is prioritizing small and independent labels as their client base, which includes Portland’s thriving network of DIY music. Andrew Sloan of Tender Loving Empire was quick to embrace a local vendor; their upcoming release of Willis Earl Beal’s new album will be a Cascade pressing. “Those guys are super knowledgeable and passionate about delivering a quality product. If we can save time and money by going local, then everybody wins,” said Sloan. Eric Isaacson from Mississippi Records also gave numerous projects to Cascade, including local punk albums from Sad Horse and Sun Foot. “It’s always been my dream to press in Portland, so it’s like they’re from heaven,” Isaacson said.
Cascade understands that vinyl fanatics want to experience a recording in its absolute best setting. “The frequency response of vinyl pins pretty closely to the way that humans hear,” said Gonsalves. “It’s not as accurate as digital, but it’s a pleasing sound to us. You can’t make music a disposable afterthought. You have to sit down and engage with it, one side at a time.
“And turns out, people really like that.” 