To CD or Not CD

Their MySpace page says they play “Psychedelic/Experimental/Christian Rap” music. “Actually, we were just joking about the Christian rap,” says ST 37 bassist/singer SL Telles on the phone from his home in Austin. “But yes, we do play psychedelic/experimental music. Actually, some people call it space rock. For better or worse, we’ve been branded space rock. I’m not really that fond of the term, but that’s the little niche that we’ve managed to find a toehold in. We’ve even developed a little bit of an international reputation in space rock circles.”

International space rock circles?

“Yes, we do very well in Italy, actually,” he continues. “The Italians have always had an appreciation for progressive rock, and that leads them into a spacy, psychedelic direction as well. We’ve had three different records out on Italian labels.”

ST 37’s latest release, And Then What, is on the Texas label Noiseville Records. It’s more space rock, but this time it’s on vinyl. That’s right, an old-fashioned LP. Five hundred copies were pressed in a limited edition, each with a numbered hand-silk-screened sleeve.

Why did ST 37 (which also includes drummer Lisa Cameron and guitarist Mark Stone) go vinyl? Telles says the group had three basic reasons. “First is length. Usually when we make a record, we’re pretty long-winded. Our records tend to push 70 minutes, and anything over 70 minutes you have to get a double album to do [on vinyl].

“We had a set of songs here that seemed to make a pretty good, coherent little record and they were only 47 minutes long. So when we were talking to Jim Gibbs [from Noiseville], we were like, ‘Hey, this record is actually short enough to fit on one vinyl album.’ That was one consideration.

“Jim also wanted to make sure that it would at least be a little more difficult to proliferate immediately on the Net, because when you have a vinyl record you at least have to be dedicated enough to take a few extra steps to get it converted to MP3 and get it all over the Net,” Telles continues. “There’s a limited number of people who are into this sort of music, and if everyone can get free copies, they’re not going to buy the record. Jim, being a record label guy, of course wants everyone to buy records.”

Telles admits that the band usually sells CDs in the low thousands, sometimes even hundreds. He says that especially at those small numbers, a hundred fans getting free CDs impacts the band’s bottom line.

“We’re not the world’s most popular band, and we’re not playing the world’s most popular genre of music, so we don’t have any illusions that we’re going to sell millions of copies or anything. We just want to sell at least all 500 copies of the record [from the first run].”

Telles says that the final reason for choosing a vinyl format was aesthetic. “We just wanted to make a record, an LP. There’s such a glut of CDs these days, they’ve become such disposable, throw-away objects. Hopefully, just that it’s a record and not a CD will make this a little more special. That and the fact that it has this really nice silk-screen on the cover should appeal to people.”

ST 37 might find some problems with their vinyl-prevents-copying approach. First, transferring an LP to an MP3 is no more difficult than transferring it to a CD. Many folks who are vinyl-philes already have the technology to transfer LPs onto CDs at the click of a mouse, so the vinyl edition will likely find its way onto the Internet just as quickly as a CD edition. In fact, vinyl might encourage fans who would otherwise pay for their music to look online for MP3 versions, even if that means unpaid-for MP3 versions. Most people (including this writer) no longer have record players, and if they want a copy of And Then What, an illegal version online might be their only choice.

Meanwhile, band member Joel Crutcher (guitars/vocals) has a slightly less considered opinion than Telles’s three-point rationale about the vinyl edition of And Then What. “My point of view is that I’m just glad that anyone is interested enough to put it in whatever format,” he says matter-of-factly. “I don’t have an opinion one way or the other, vinyl over CD. They’re both wonderful. Now, I do think that vinyl sounds a little bit better, but since almost nobody has it anymore, CDs are fine.”

ST 37 performs Saturday, January 13, at notsuoH, 314 Main.