The Spank! Records Blog

Mark Dynamix's Long Distance Recordings now available

We've very excited to announce that we've just signed up Mark Dynamix's 'Long Distance Recordings' label to our digital roster, and to celebrate we have the newest release available EXCLUSIVELY right now. The official release date is not for another week.

The release is from newly signed artist Mortlock, and is called the Mortlock EP. We've known Michael (Mortlock) for years as a loyal Spank! customer, so we're thrilled to see his first release on such a great label - congratulations Michael!

The Mortlock EP has been garnering some really impressive feedback from DJs around the globe - check these out:

Mark Emerson
very very groovy! love it, will def be playing Taucherglocke
a lot

Deepchild
Mortlock is the perfect spearhead for the Long Distance sound - deep, 
well produced proggy-tech sounds. A top-notch export of the highest 
grade. Things will only be heating up for this boy in future...

Jeff Drake
quality underground dance music

DJ Mozaic
WOW. This is incredible....love the textures....some of the most 
interesting sounds I've heard in a while. Can't wait to hear more!

Kris Swales
'Taucherglocke' is deeeeeeeeep! Mortlock is a quality producer who 
seems to be getting better with each release. Great EP.

Robbie Lowe
Really nice deep / progressive tracks . Loving 'Nine' in-particular.

Adi Dumitra
I've been really keeping an eye open on Mortlock ever since I got that 
remix of his from you guys. Impressive package this one as well, very 
deep, dark and touchy EP , so im not even sure on which to pick as favorite. 
"Taucherglocke" and "Nine" should be though...loving the deep flow of 
"Treacherous Waters" too, will definitely play this out at both radio 
and live.thanks guys, and keep them goods coming!

Mike Kelly
Like the EP, but for me SNOWCAKE cetainly hits the spot. This is 
"echt fliegen muzik" (real flying music) and Extrawelt must smile 
hearing this surely. good tune, will hammer it. Taucherglocke is very 
cool too, and i think it will get some attention in Germany.

Jamie Stevens
What a brilliant EP! My favorite [LDR Release] so far! loving the vibe 
of all the tracks here but Taucherglocke and Treacherous Waters are two 
that I'll most likely be playing a lot of. Top work and thanks a lot!

Chopstick & Johnjon
Taucherglocke & Nine are going to be huge in Germany!

Rich Curtis
Mortlock's creations exceed the scope of typical electronic
music, especially when considering his young age and relative recent
entry into the production game. I've played each of his tracks in
sets the very day that they've been transmitted to me and they piece
very well into progressive, tech-house, and even techno sets
alongside those of worldwide top-notch experienced producers.

You can grab the Mortlock EP from here

And the entire Long Distance Recordings catalogue is here

Enjoy!

New digital distributor online...finally!

The digitally inclined amongst you will have noticed that our releases have been somewhat lacking the last few weeks, despite our announcement about our new German digital distributor, Word And Sound.

Well, see what happened was this.

The content started to get delivered to us. Then more of it was delivered. And more. And more. And suddenly we realised that we wouldn't have enough room on our existing web server to hold it all!

After hitting the panic button for a bit, the decision was made to rewrite our delivery system and upgrade our server. All of which takes, well, a bit of time. Time to write it, time to test it, time to, er test it again.

Anyway, we are pleased to announce that as of this week we are up and running again. Part of the new catalogue has been uploaded and the rest of it will get released over the coming days. We also have a couple of new genres available - deep house and trance.

We now have over 30,000 DJ quality digital tracks available for download, with plenty more to come.

Enjoy!

Border Community now available for digital download

We're very pleased to announce that we now have James Holden's seminal Border Community label available for digital download. Genre-defying and with an insistence for high production value, this label continues to innovate. Look out for the new one from Luke Abbot called the 'Tuesday EP', which will be available for sale on the 23rd of March. Click here for more details

5,000 new digital tracks online now

We're very pleased to announce that this week we've added a ton of tracks from one of our new distributors. 5,000 tracks have been put online, with another 3,000 scheduled to go up in the next few days.

Labels added to our digital catalogue include:

• Get Physical Music
• Turbo Recordings
• Kling Klong
• Ministry Of Sound
• Peppermint Jam
• Superstar Recordings
• Moon Harbour

...just to name a few.

Lots more content to come, we'll let you know when the next lot are online.

3Beat Digital Partnership

We've very excited to announce that we've just signed up an agreement with 3Beat Digital in the UK to sell tracks from their fantastic roster of labels. With labels like Vapour, Extrema, Boss, Mashtronic, Forensic, Tornato, Fokused, Red Seven and loads more, they're a great addition to our download section. We'll start to add some of the latest releases from them over the next week or so, and we'll be adding back catalogue from them over the coming months.

Digital Downloads Update

A lot of you have been asking us when we'll be getting more digital content onto the website, so we thought we should let you know how it's progressing.

The short answer is we have a lot of content on the way, but it's taking a lot longer than we would have liked. It's a very complicated process to get digital content, both technically as well as from an administrative point of view. We currently have about 6 contracts in the pipeline, representing a huge number of labels and artists, and we expect that over the next couple of months we will have the bulk of it online.

To whet your appetite a little, here are just some of the labels that we expect to be online in the next few weeks, with more to follow:

• Get Physical
• Great Stuff
• Superstar
• Punx
• Moon Harbour
• Stereo Deluxe
• Neopren
• Red Leather
• Peppermint Jam
• ...and more!

Stay tuned!

Digital Downloads :: Stage One

Yesterday marked a big milestone for us as we finally put our brand spankin' new digital download section online. Woohoo! We have been working on this for such a long time now so it's great to see it go live.

We are in the early stages of developing this, hence the title of this post. At this time we have around 1,000 tracks online. We are in a kind of probationary period with our distributor whilst they make sure all our systems run smoothly, so we are limited to this many tracks for the moment. Once they're happy with our progress then we'll get access to their entire catalogue of tracks, so there'll be a lot more to come.

To a large degree they'll also be watching to see how many sales we put through, so the more support we can get from you guys the better. We've priced our downloads competitively against the overseas sites and all of the tracks are encoded as 320kbps MP3 files.

We're carrying some pretty big labels, including tracks from Different, F Communications, Goodlife, Soma, Defected, Global Underground, Renaissance, Southern Fried, Finger Lickin', Leftroom, Strictly Rhythm and more.

We're also in the process of finalising some agreements with some big local labels and artists, and they should be online with us in the next 4-6 weeks.

So, this is stage 1. We have a LOT more planned for this exciting new addition and you'll see quite a few new features over the coming months.

In the meantime, we would LOVE to get your feedback. Opinions, ideas for improvements, dislikes - we'll take 'em all. Send them to feedback@spankrecords.com.au. We'll definately read every one and if there's enough interest in a particular feature then we'll most likely implement it if technically possible.

Digital Downloads available soon!

This is quite possibly our biggest announcement for quite some time. Over the past 12 months we have been working hard to introduce digital downloads to our website, and we are very proud to announce that we are now only a few short weeks away from launching.

This new section to the site will allow you to preview, buy & immediately download 320kbps MP3 tracks. You can then either burn these to cd to play or they can also be used in various digital DJ software programs such as Serato, Torq, Traktor Scratch, Ableton etc. For those of you who aren't DJs but want the latest dance tracks to listen to, they can also be put on your iPods or other MP3 players.

The move to bring digital to our store was an obvious one. Over the last couple of years technology has advanced in ways that no one could have imagined, and we're seeing more & more people embrace digital either as a part of or a total replacement of their vinyl collection. Although we began as a vinyl only store, over the last few years we've continued to expand our product range to encompass a wide range of DJ products, including equipment and software for digital DJs, and we see digital content as just another part of that expansion.

Our initial range of digital catalogue will be fairly limited whilst we ensure that all the new parts of the website are working the way they should. We will slowly introduce new catalogue over the next 3 months, after which we'll load up the site with as much content as we can get our hands on. A lot of this will come from overseas, but we're also going to have a real focus on Australian produced content. We feel that there's a ton of stuff made right here that hasn't had an opportunity to see the light of day, so we'll be looking to play a big part in helping that situation.

As we get closer we'll release more details as to the final launch date. In the meantime, any record labels who'd be interested in selling their tracks through us can contact us for further details (ph (02) 9360 0548 or email digital@spankrecords.com.au).