Weekend Offender Records bring vinyl production back to Portsmouth after taking the same training as Will Ferrell and Jack White
A Portsmouth record company have brought vinyl production back to the city after undergoing training from an eccentric German record cutting inventor.
Matt Piper is one half of the record company Weekend Offender, which has supported local artists for the past four years by providing affordable options to produce their music on a physical format. While previously the record company outsourced their vinyl production, this year they made the leap of buying their own record cutting machine.
While that may sound like a standard transactional decision, the inventor of the machine only sells it to people that undertake training with him directly in Germany. Ulrich Sourisseau (known as Souri), is believed to have sold machines to celebrities such as Will Ferrell, Norman Cook, Jazzy Jeff and Jack White. All of whom have to visit him in a small German village to undergo training before being allowed to purchase the machine.
Matt said: “He has a number of celebrity customers but whoever you are, whether you are famous or someone like me, you have to go through the same training and stay in a little hotel in a village in Germany with four bedrooms and one shower.”
Matt joined the fraternity of people that have been accepted by Souri to buy his invention earlier this year, all to the benefit of local musicians in Portsmouth. Matt said: “The big benefit of producing vinyl this way is we can make it to order, a bit like Amazon do with books.
“Usually, if you went down the route of ordering vinyl to be pressed, it would be minimum orders of 300 to 500 copies. A lot of local bands can’t afford that and it would be unlikely that they would be able to sell them all. This way it doesn't cost the artist as much and they get to their music put onto a physical format.”
Matt added: “The artist can make more money with the sale of one vinyl than they could with 500 or 600 Spotify streams. It is also just nice of an artist to have a physical product with their music on.”
It is the first time that vinyl production has taken place in Portsmouth since Lathe to the Grave relocated to Cardiff at the start of 2022. Weekend Offender have now filled that void and can produce music on CD and cassette as well as vinyl.
Producing music is not the only thing that Weekend Offender does to support local musicians. Matt said: “We do a lot of live events and festivals, we did a cider festival this year for example. We combine it all, for the artists benefit we give them an opportunity to release music on vinyl and also give them a place to play.”
More information on how to order vinyl as well as the company’s other services can be found at weekendoffenderrecords.com