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In the wake of Indonesia’s new vinyl record pressing plant
The analog format finds firmer footing 50 years after the country’s only vinyl records pressing plant closed down.
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The 2012 vinyl re-release of Jakarta band Sajama Cut's 2005 LP 'The Osaka Journals' by Elevation Records. (Archive/Courtesy of Table Six)
A
fter Surakarta record company Lokananta (then PN Lokananta) switched to cassette tapes and stopped operating its vinyl pressing services in 1972, Indonesia’s music industry essentially lost its only means of encouraging vinyl records in the country.
There have been times when the format was thought of as dead, but later generations of music listeners have rekindled their interest in the analog format, enchanted by its grooved, tangible charm and the ritual-like process of soaking in the whole context of an album –particularly noting vinyl records’ large artworks and lengthy liner notes.
It became a novelty as it offered an experience that some would note as the ultimate inconvenience, and the antithesis of the instant gratification that digital music releases today have to offer – most of which are distressingly myopic in their delivery with the sense that they lack imagination and depth.
Vinyl records, nevertheless, have managed to stick around, even in the domestic context, as local players turned to press plants and suppliers abroad. Yet they were always subject to significant barriers to pressing music in the format and distribution in Indonesia.
Will PHR Pressing, the new, and currently only, pressing plant in Indonesia, be a catalyst in reshaping the country’s physical release landscape?
The kindling
“It’s 2022 now, and it’s no longer a fad,” Detroit musician/producer Jack White calmly said in a video uploaded on his record label Third Man Records’ YouTube channel on March 14, 2022. The video appealed to the three significant global labels, Warner Brothers, Universal and Sony, to “finally build your pressing plants again.”
