Imagine walking out to your mailbox. Okay. It's
a typical quiet afternoon, and you're expecting
a package that you ordered, I don't know, a few
weeks ago. So you open the little metal door,
you reach inside, and you pull out a brand new
vinyl record. Standard stuff so far. Right. But
as you hold it in your hands, you realize something
is entirely wrong. Yeah. This isn't housed in
a standard flimsy cardboard sleeve. Instead,
the record you just bought is physically bolted.
heavily and permanently bolted to an actual industrial
metal saw blade. Just a literal saw blade in
the mail. A literal saw blade. Or maybe instead
of that, it's a compact disc, but it's completely
encased in this cold, heavy metal sheath. And
you have to somehow figure out how to pry it
open. Right. Or perhaps it arrives in a plastic
sleeve that is literally filled with actual sloshing
water. Which is just terrifying for a collector.
Exactly. So you're standing there in your driveway,
completely perplexed, holding this object that
feels, honestly, less like a piece of entertainment
and a lot more like a physical challenge. So
today, we are taking you right into the heart
of that incredibly strange, highly tactile. and
just completely uncompromising world. It really
is a world that systematically dismantles almost
everything we assume about how audio should be
consumed, really how art should be handled. We
are looking at the legacy of Manifold Records.
Yes. This was an obscure U .S.-based label that
didn't just push the boundaries of musical genre.
They actively pushed the physical boundaries
of consumerism itself. Yeah, they really did.
We're going to explore how a single independent
operation in the 19... challenged the very definition
of what a record label is even supposed to be.
Right. Creating these artifacts that were as
bewildering as the sounds they actually contained.
So the mission of our deep dive today is to really
get into the weeds of how this label, which was
born back in 1993, just completely defied commercial
success. Actively avoided it almost. Right. Actively
ignored the rules of musical categorization and
fundamentally altered how a listener physically
interacts with the audio they buy. I mean, it
makes you wonder how... business model like that
even gets off the ground in the first place let
alone leaves this massive lasting legacy well
it requires us to look past the sheer novelty
of the weird packaging you know the saw blades
and the metal sheaths they're incredible conversation
starters but they actually point to a much deeper
philosophy it's about The very definition of
music, the forgotten art of intense curation,
and really what we as consumers are actually
paying for when we exchange money for a physical
object. Okay, let's unpack this. We really have
to start at the beginning, right in 1993. Right.
Manifold Records was started by a guy named Vince
Harrigan. And the crucial detail that stands
out to me here is that Harrigan was a writer.
He was a zine publisher. Yes. He wasn't some,
you know... corporate music executive in a suit.
Not at all. He didn't come from a traditional
A &R background where he's out scouting the next
big pop star. No. He came from the DIY stapled
together zine world. But my question is, how
does writing an underground zine translate into
running an entire record label? Well, you really
have to understand the specific mindset, the
cultural mechanics of a zine creator in the early
1990s. Right. Pre -internet. Exactly. Pre -internet.
A zine publisher is fundamentally a curator of
the fringe. They were the people who actively
spent their time seeking out the obscure, the
ignored, the highly specific. Stuff nobody else
cared about. Precisely. And then disseminating
that information through the mail. So when Harrigan
started Manifold Records, he didn't set it up
as a traditional label aiming for, you know,
record store dominance. Right. He structured
it strictly as a mail order store. And this store
specialized specifically Specifically, and this
is a, quote, experimental, ambient, and other
hard -to -define audio materials. Man, I'm just
fascinated by that specific phrasing. Hard -to
-define audio material. It's great. It's an act
of refusal to even call it music right out of
the gate. It strips away all the expectations
you might have of melody or rhythm, and it's
just presented as raw sonic matter. And that
framing is incredibly intentional. By running
a mail order store with that very specific focus,
Harrigan was utilizing his zine background to
build an underground network. He was facilitating
a whole community for sounds that entirely defied
easy categorization. It was an ecosystem built
for the unmarketable. Wow. Because a zine publisher
naturally understands how to connect disparate,
isolated pockets of culture through physical
mail. Right, sending well - concealed cash and
envelopes. Yes, waiting weeks for a package to
show up, building trust through genuine curation.
That entire ethos of hunting for the obscure,
that became the blueprint for Manifold Records.
For you listening right now, just think about
your own curated collections. Yeah. Maybe it's
a highly specific digital playlist that you've
spent years perfecting or some niche hobby you
dedicate your weekends to researching. Think
about the sheer dedication it takes to actively
seek out the hard to define. It requires so much
more effort and patience to hunt down these obscure
artistic statements than it does to just, you
know, accept whatever is algorithmically spoon
fed to us by the mainstream. Absolutely. And
Manifold Records was built entirely. on demanding
that effort from its audience. And the wild part
is that uncompromising demand for effort actually
led them to become a massive critical darling
in the underground music press during the mid
-1990s. Which seems counterintuitive. It does.
But they found themselves at the forefront of
a very unique, somewhat short -lived genre. Yeah,
the genre was called isolationism. Yes. Which,
just the name itself paints such a stark picture.
It really does. And the way Manifold championed
this genre was primarily through their compilation
releases. But I'm looking at how these compilations
were actually structured, and it honestly seems
like a terrible listening experience. Oh, jarring.
Right. They would take traditional ambient and
new age artists and place them on the exact same
record as incredibly noisy, edgy, aggressive
acts. Yeah. They'd put the quietest, most expansive,
soothing sounds right next to absolute harsh
noise. Just wall of sound noise. Right. So from
a consumer standpoint, why would anyone want
to listen to a record that constantly jolts you
out of a peaceful state? Well, what's fascinating
here is the underlying psychology of that specific
Sonic Clash. Okay. It wasn't about creating a
seamless, relaxing background mix for your dinner
party. Clearly not. Right. These compilations,
despite the massive... So the contrast is the
actual point. Precisely. Oh, wow. feel desolate
and lonely rather than peaceful. It creates an
environment of total sensory isolation, hence
the genre name isolationism. It forces the listener
into a very intense, almost uncomfortable psychological
space where they cannot let their guard down.
It's like an exercise in tension. You're just
constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Exactly. I'm looking at the roster of artists
they involved to achieve this, and it is just...
All over the place. I recognize some of these
names, but they seem to belong to completely
different universes. Yeah, it's a wild list.
How did they pull this off? The sheer diversity
of the roster is really what makes the label
so historically significant. To give you an idea
of the extremes we're talking about, Manifold
released works by an artist named Final. Okay.
Now, Final is actually a project by Justin Broderick.
Wait, really? Yes, who is best known as the driving
force behind the legendary, punishingly heavy
industrial metal band Godflesh. Wow. Okay, so
you have literally a pioneer of industrial metal
on the roster. Exactly. And alongside Broderick,
you have Mick Harris, another giant. in extreme
music with his dark ambient project, Lull, but
then sharing that exact same label space, you
have someone like Steve Roach. See, I know Steve
Roach. He is known for those massive, floating,
atmospheric synthesizer expanses. Yes. His music
is practically designed for meditation. Yes.
And Steve Roach is sitting in the exact same
catalog as Jeff German, Maratry, and Ultra Milkmaids.
That is just bizarre. It gets weirder. You have
Maurizio Bianchi, who is infamous for creating
some of the most abrasive early industrial noise
recordings on the planet right alongside Aub.
Wow. They even worked with DJ Spooky. bringing
in elements of highly experimental turntablism.
And he's sharing a home with the avant -garde
guitar work of Alan Licht and Ardo Lindsay. That
is an incredibly jarring mix of human beings.
I mean, the catalog lists an act called Sleep
Research Facility. Right. With a name like that,
I imagine it's deep subsonic sensory deprivation
audio designed to physically put you to sleep.
Pretty much. And you're telling me that exists
on the same label as a group called Mandible
Chatter? That is the Manifold Records experience
in a nutshell. You also have Robert Rich, who
is a pioneer of deep, tribal, ambient music.
And he's sharing a roof with completely uncompromising
experimental noise acts like K .K. Null, Crawl
Unit, Illusion of Safety, and Voice of Eye. It's
almost comical to think about. Yeah. Imagine
ordering a compilation from a mail order catalog
in, say, 1995. You've waited weeks for it. You've
waited weeks. You put the CD on. You're expecting
this serene, peaceful tones of Robert Rich to
wash over your living room. Right. And suddenly,
without warning, you are absolutely blasted by
the aggressive, jagged soundscapes of K .K. Null.
It's an ambush. It really is. It demands total
presence. You cannot put a Manifold Records compilation
on while you were cooking dinner or reading a
book. No. The transition from new age to noise
will physically startle you out of your seat.
It completely eradicates the concept of music
as audio wallpaper. Yes. It demands your undivided
attention. And that demand for intense awareness
brings us to perhaps the most infamous and physically
imposing aspect of the label's history. Here's
where it gets really interesting. We tease this
at the very beginning of the deep dive, but we
have to look. closely the physical packaging
of these releases. We do. Because the audio wasn't
the only thing that was uncompromising and challenging.
Manifold Records became notorious for their special
packaging releases. To put it mildly. Right.
We are talking about compact discs that were
housed entirely inside heavy metal sheaths. We
are talking about vinyl records that were physically
attached to literal industrial saw blades and
records that were shipped to your house in water
-filled plastic sleeves. If we connect this to
the bigger picture, Manifold wasn't just selling
a delivery mechanism for audio. They were selling
an intimidating, fragile, and sometimes deeply
impractical piece of physical art. Very impractical.
Exactly. When an artist or a label decides to
bolt a record to a saw blade, they are entirely
changing the ontological nature of the object.
Absolutely. The packaging forces the listener
to be hyper -aware of the physical item occupying
space in their home. But from a consumer standpoint,
isn't releasing a record? You can't even easily
store a bit hostile to your own audience. Well...
Because I'm trying to imagine the logistics of
this. You can't just slide a Sawblade record
onto a crowded shelf next to your Beatles albums.
It's going to destroy the other sleeves. That
is exactly the point. It completely upends the
casual nature of a record collection. Right.
You are forced to treat this audio format with
a level of physical respect and caution that
borders on reverence simply because the object
itself demands it. You have no choice. Right.
You have to figure out a completely separate
storage solution for it. It becomes a... sculptural
presence in your room. And the water filled sleeve.
Think about the psychological anxiety that induces
for a record collector. Oh, it's a nightmare.
Collectors are notoriously obsessive about keeping
their media pristine. Yes, they are. Giving them
a record encased in sloshing water introduces
this constant low level dread. What if it leaks
onto the cardboard inserts? What if it bursts
and destroys the other rare records nearby? It
introduces a real element of physical jeopardy
to the act of buying music. It creates a massive
amount of physical and emotional friction. Yeah.
It entirely removes the comfort of passive consumption.
By making the packaging an active hazard, or
at least a significant inconvenience, the label
forces you to confront the art as a tangible,
imposing object. You cannot. take it for granted.
You really can't. I want to ask you, listening
right now, how would you handle a CD encased
in a welded metal sheath? Seriously, picture
the process. You want to listen to a new album
you just bought, but before you can hear a single
note, you have to find a tool, sit at your table,
and physically pry open a metal casing just to
access the disc. Just to play the music. Exactly.
It points out this incredible stark contrast
with our modern era. Today, our default desire
is for ultimate frictionless convenience. We
want to tap a glass screen once and have millions
of songs instantly and perfectly beam into our
ears without moving a muscle. Manifold Records
did the exact opposite. They made you work for
it, physically and psychologically, just to earn
the right to access the audio. And that level
of physical and artistic friction, while conceptually
brilliant and incredibly bold, comes with a very
steep cost in the real world. Which brings us
to the inevitable decline of the label's core
operations and the ultimate price they paid for
their artistic purity. The historical record
is very clear on this. Manifold Records was never
a prolific label and they never achieved wide
mainstream distribution. Right. The history points
to two main culprits for this lack of wide distribution.
First, there's the unusual nature of the material
itself. You know, the harsh noise, the weird
isolationist compilations that we've discussed.
Yeah. But second, and perhaps more crucially
from a business perspective, it was the label's
absolute refusal to stay within any single genre
from release to release. Right. They just wouldn't
pick a lane. So what does this all mean? Was
Manifold Records a failure because it never grew
into a massive, prolific or profitable company?
Or was it a massive success precisely because
it stayed so stubbornly true to its weird, uncompromising
roots? This raises an important question about
how commercial distribution systems actually
function. Okay. The reality of the music industry,
especially in the physical media -dominated landscape
of the 1990s and early 2000s, is that it absolutely
demands categorization. Oh, definitely. Record
stores, massive distributors, and even large
-scale mail -order catalogs need to know what
bin to put a record in. If a label is known for
ambient music, the distributor puts all their
new releases in the ambient section. Buyers know
exactly where to find it. It's all about making
it easy for the consumer to locate what they
already know they want. Exactly. But because
manifold records jumped from ambient to noise,
to turntablism, to isolationism, sometimes on
the exact same disc, they made themselves virtually
impossible to market. it at scale. Yeah. You
couldn't tell a record store manager where to
stock a heavy metal saw blade record that featured
both soothing new age synthesizers and ear piercing
industrial harsh noise. They wouldn't know what
to do with it. Exactly. The commercial system
simply isn't designed to handle that level of
artistic whiplash or physical impracticality.
It's like they essentially built a label that
was fundamentally allergic to commerce. That's
a great way to put it. Their artistic vision
was incompatible. with mass distribution by design.
And according to the timeline we were looking
at, the mail order side of things eventually
ran its course. Manifold Records officially ceased
operating its mail order website in 2007. However,
the story doesn't end with a complete shutdown
and disappearance into history. Really? While
the primary mail order website ceased in 2007,
the Manifold Records label actually continues
to exist today. That's amazing. It survives through
limited online sales via other niche distributors
and notably on platforms like eBay. You know,
that feels incredibly fitting, honestly. It started
as an obscure DIY mail order network born from
a stapled together zine ethos in 1993. And now,
decades later, it survives in the modern equivalent
of an obscure mail order network. Right. The
deep scattered, highly specific archives of eBay
sellers and niche online distributors. It's still
hard to find. It's still completely impossible
to categorize. And it is still out there waiting
for the dedicated collectors who are willing
to do the hunting. What a wild journey. Yeah.
To quickly recap the ground we've covered today,
we explored the unlikely 1993 origins of Vince
Harrigan's manifold records, starting as a zine
-inspired mail -order experiment. We unpacked
how they championed the incredibly tense paradoxical
genre of isolationism by mashing up soothing
ambient tones with aggressive industrial noise.
We explored the deeply psychological era of their
hazardous packaging CDs and metal sheaths, vinyl
records bolted to saw blades, and water -filled
plastic sleeves. Still blows my mind. my mind.
We trace their path to a quiet, stubborn survival
on modern platforms like eBay. It serves as a
perfect historical case study in what happens
when the desire to create a challenging, tactile
experience completely overrides the desire to
make a conventional profit. It really does. And
before we wrap up this deep dive, we want to
leave you with a final thought to mull over,
building on everything we've talked about today.
Go for it. In today's modern world, almost all
of our music lives invisibly in the cloud. It
is totally weightless, perfectly safe and endlessly
categorized into neat little algorithmic bins
that never challenge our tastes. But in gaining
all of that perfect convenience, have we lost
something essential? Have we lost the sense of
danger, the genuine surprise, and the sheer demanding
physical effort of engaging with a piece of art
that actively refuses to be easily defined or
even easily held? That is definitely something
worth thinking about the next time you effortlessly
summon a perfectly curated playlist on your phone.
Thank you so much for joining us on this deep
dive into the fascinating, hazardous and brilliant
world of manifold records. We loved unpacking
this one with you and we will catch you on the
next deep dive. Keep looking for the hard to
define and goodbye.