Is it a blogpost or a mini novel?
Hello Everyone.
As usual lots of changes! Phew, it seems like its always lots of changes at the moment, but maybe that is to be expected if you move from one country to another haha! Ah yes, I mentioned this on Facebook, but will confirm it here: My family and I recently moved back from the USA to live in the UK. I wont go into all the reasons, but in a nutshell, the USA has rubbish healthcare, too many guns in the hands of too many stupid people, and we had no family there. Now that I have children, I think they should grow up with thier aunts, uncles, cousins and grandmother...and be able to go to school without getting shot, and then be able to go to the hospital without their parents going bankrupt!
Plus also, Kniteforce is doing pretty well right now, and I kinda have to be here in the UK for it!
So there is that. I am glad to be back to the sportsball and the rain. Ha.
Now, on to music related infos!
ACEN BOX SETS AND CURRENT BUNDLES
FINALLY, the 100 missing Acen Box Sets are going to start going out. We got them this week, so we will be packing and sending those as fast as we can! I realise this still leaves nearly 600 of you waiting for the second batch of Acen Box Sets to arrive, and I know you are all anxious to get your hands on it - believe me, so am I. I am pressuring the pressing plant every few days about that. And we may end up getting them sooner than the expected Mid February date. I say this because in the last few days we got notification that NINE new releases are on their way to us, after nearly 3 months with only 2 deliveries.
This means that the pressing plant is getting back up to speed after being pretty knocked down by the three horsemen of the 2020 apocalypse - Covid, Brexit and Xmas lol. So fingers crossed there.
Unfortunately, NONE of those nine releases are Breed31 - Worldwide Epidemik or KF142 - Remixes 15.
Fortunately, we have been told those are pressed and are coming this week as well as the other nine.
So, here is what we are doing in order!
1. We will pack and send as many of the Acen Box Sets as we can!
2. We will pack and send ALL the delayed orders and bundles that contain Breed31 and KF142.
Likely this will take us until the middle or end of next week, but then they should all be on their way. Please be aware that we often send the records and only hit “dispatched” on the website a few days later. Its just quicker if we get the records out, then click “dispatched” en mass on the site, rather than doing each order and clicking dispatched one at a time. And also be aware that post worldwide is still a total mess and things are literally taking 2-4 weeks longer than they usually would to get to people. We cannot do anything about that :( Our aim, as always, is to get the records in your hands as fast as humanly possible, but we are a little hampered by the whole entire world being a colossal dumpster fire!
Anyway, lets move on and talk about...
NEW RELEASES and CHANGES TO THE STORE
Yes, we have new releases. Quite a lot of them actually. Nine, in fact. So far. And we will be releasing them over the next few weeks...And this is in line with some of the changes we are going to be making. So on the 5th of February, we will be (finally) releasing these four bad boys into the world:
Yes, the much delayed KJAL01, Sunshine Productions finally arrives, along with the superb new KBOOM07, A-Sides Boombastic Plastic EP. Both of these are must haves in my humble opinion, gloriously remastered from DAT in the case of KAJL01, and gloriously found on DAT for KBOOM07, as these are previously unreleased tracks.
Meanwhile, we have two lovely new releases in colored vinyl. Wait, is clear a color? And now that I am back in the UK, do I have to spell it colour? I guess so. Anyway, my “Fucking Grateful” EP has been widely commented upon, usually things like “its the best Luna-C in ages", which if true, is quite annoying because I gave it to my friends at SDR rather than selfishly keeping it haha! of course, then it would have been a Fucking Selfish EP....wait...er....I shoud doa Fucking Shellfish ep in a Sean Connery style maybe? But anyway, clear vinyl, limited to 300 copies, in the store on Friday.
And that brings us to Influentials return, in the aptly named “The Return” EP. This is the first new Influential record since the late 90’s, and we have revamped both the logo and the style of music the label will be releasing. We are definitely gonna lean more jungle, and INFL20 and INFL21 have already been cut and they are ferociously good. They had to be to match this one, INFL19, which is 4 simply amazing tracks, all on gloriously green vinyl. Again, limited to 300, I genuinely feel like this and the SDR are going to sell out and be changing hands for silly money within the next few months.
Lets talk about the other changes…
1. I have mentioned this before, but we are going to become more like a specialist record store. In other words, we are going to start releasing material most Fridays, on a weekly or bi-weekly schedule. We are also going to be regularly stocking music from other labels. To that end, we will restock on some of the “Friends of Kniteforce” tunes, plus we will be getting some of the Fat Controller - In Complete Darkness remixes, we have a new release from Ant To Be on his label, and we will have the Liftin Spirit EPs etc. This is taking a little while to set up, because I am going to be personally handling that part of the record sales, while Lee Idealz continues to handle the vast majority of the major orders, and this means some reshuffling behind the scenes in terms of what stock is where etc. So give us a few weeks for that to come into play!
2. Another part of that is that we have here a bunch of records that are “out of stock” on the store, even tho we do actually have some. Keeping track of stock has been pretty tough to do due to how we were doing things, but now we are getting more organised. Once we have all the stock in place, I will update the store with new releases from other, non KF labels, and the extra stock we have here that is missing from the store. For example - we have left over KFW00 and KFW05, a few 06 - 10. We have a few KHECT03s, and various other releases that we just have one or two copies of, but we have never had time to really get in order and put back on the store.
3. Another thing we ended up with a lot of is Test Presses. We are going to start selling excess test presses. Glyn Lowercase will be handling that from here on out as it will NOT be done thru the store but directly with him. I will get you more info on that as soon as I have it, likely next week.
4. We are going to be holding stock on our store for MUCH longer. Previously, we would press a release then pass it to SRD for distribution quite swiftly. But from now on, most of our releases will be exclusive to the Kniteforce store for 6 months or more, and only then will a few copies be going for global distribution. Likewise, more and more releases will remain exclusive to our store, such as KFWs and Ks.
5. Not a fun one, but prices are gonna have to go up. And down lol. Kniteforce has kept prices as low as possible for longer than many labels, and we could do that because we had an advantage - as KF was based in the USA, we did not have to pay VAT. Now we are back in Blighty, so we do. That and the ever increasing cost of vinyl production means we simply have to go from £10.99 to £11.99 on most releases. I am sure you were expecting this anyway, £12 seems to be the average cost even for records that do not have the full sleeve etc, but even so, I had hoped not to have to raise prices. Alas, here we are.
On the plus side, the “Bargain Bucket” part of our site, that we used for the recent Boxing Day sale, was a huge success. Due to finding some excess stock as mentioned in point 2, we will also have a bunch of records we can sell quite cheaply. I like the idea of a bargain bucket - I always used to look through that in “real” record stores, so I think that will be a permanent feature. Basically, when you see it on the store, it means there are bargains to be had.
OTHER NEWS
Oh mate, there is so much other news, I dont know where to start. Lets see…high profile projects first: Yesterday I sent the NRG box set to be cut. It is following the same format as the Acen box set, in that it is a 5 vinyl set, with a 6th bonus vinyl. Only this is a complete NRG release containing every track he has ever done across various formats (vinyl, CD and digital downloads), along with rarer stuff and new remixes, so it totals nearly 50 tracks in all. Remixes from Altern 8, Hyper On Experience, Bay-B-Kane, New Decade and others lead the pack…its an immense release.
It is going to be limited to 500 copies as an initial run. I do not want the chaos we have seen with the Acen Box Set, so I will order the 500 and then when it is very close to arriving, it will go for sale. This way, we wont all be waiting forever. IF demand is high enough, I can always repress and do the same thing again - sell it once it is back in stock. Obviously I want people to be able to buy these things, but the delay on the Acen Box Set is really not ideal, so.
As far as track listing and other details go, that will be revealed nearer the time, but we chose the best tracks that are the more difficult to get over the obvious ones you can pick up on Discogs for a few quid. In a nutshell, this is an amazing release.
We also have managed to secure the rights to release the much sought after Baraka EPs on Boogie Beat. The first one, Nutty Bass / I’ll Be There is about to go to cut. The second one, featuring A Million And One, is proving trickier due to not being able to find the master DAT as of yet. We still have like, 200 to go through. But we hope for that to come soon as well. People have asked if repressing Boogie Beat back catalogue is an option. I have asked about this, and it is possible, but not yet.
The House Crew and Acen - we are planning 2 House Crew box sets, one in summer one in winter. I am trying to space these larger items apart by at least 3 months. The current plan is NRG in March, The House Crew Part 1 in June, Acen Window In The Sky / Close Your Eyes / Other Stuff in September, and The House Crew part 2 in December.
On all of these, the line up of remixers is jaw dropping - I find myself speaking to artists I have admired from a considerable distance for a long time, and who I never expected or dreamed of working with haha!
And I might as well mention this, we have been talking to Ray Keith re a box set too. WHAT? I know.
Other than all of that, there is of course a ton of new stuff bubbling up - Kniteforce Prime, our 1990-1992 proper old skool styled label has gone to cut, as have new releases from Lazarus and 4 The Core and a new jungle label from our very own Mr Arthur! Knitebreed has a forthcoming run of colored vinyl remix EPs featuring Liquid, NRG, Ron Wells and more…We have remixes part 16 and 17 on the go…a repress of the rare Eclipse Records EP, a repress of Future Primitive about to drop, plans for a few more JKFs, new EPs from Phuture Assassins and Jonny L, the 99Red Balloons EP coming on Remix Records plus new stuff from Stu Chapman…and I havent even mentioned the forthcoming 4 vinyl Hectic Bundle, which will come with a free 7”. Or the new KFWs arriving in a few weeks. Or the new Scartat EP on KFA. Or, or, or….
So yeah. Its a little busy.
And I think that is the longest blog post ever! Hoorah! I hope you havent fallen asleep, and I will let you know more as I know it myself!
Nice one,
Chris