Category: Commentary

For better or worse, welcome to 2025. It seems to be shaping up to be an eventful year, to put things lightly. I hope you have resolved to take care of yourself this year, and if you haven’t, I hope that you will consider it.

There is some great music coming on Coraspect from Xenon Masters (available now), blip_, THEUKIYO 浮世, Tony Fawkin Heal and 회사AUTO. I’m currently working on some other projects and things that I hope to be able to share with you soon.

In August, I secured a spot on a Nashville radio station for a weekly one-hour radio radio show to play Future Funk and Vaporwave, and “The Aesthetic” has just crossed it’s twentieth episode! The show has been received well so far, and putting the show together each week has only deepened my love and respect for the discography created by this scene. I hope at some point to get the show onto some more stations, but getting it started on the airwaves of one of the most musical cities in the world is an extremely fortunate start. The program airs on Thursday nights on WRFN-FM (103.7 and 107.1) at 9:00pm Central Time, with a re-broadcast on Saturday afternoons at 2:00pm CT. It can be streamed from the station’s website, or directly from the stream feed. I also keep an archive with streamable/downloadable episodes and complete track listings. I hope you’ll tune in!

Now for the serious stuff: 2025 brings with it so many uncertainties. For US-based record labels, those uncertainties include the incoming administration’s threat of import taxes (aka tariffs). Coraspect has long-established working relationships with manufacturers in Canada, the United Kingdom, Taiwan and China. We have worked together over the course of seven years; these manufacturers know exactly what I expect, and none of them prioritize major label orders over independent ones. After having one LP project getting pushed back for eight months while CBS paid to cut the line to press a half-million copies of Adele’s “30”, I’ve come to respect the business relationships I have forged.

So my plan for 2025 is to continue to release physicals for as long as it is economically-feasible for me to do so, and as long as the audience is there for it. I live very frugally in order to keep the label going, as it is one of the few things in my life that bring me genuine joy. Headaches and heartburn as well, yes. But knowing that I’m helping put something out into the world that will make others happy makes me want to never stop doing it. There is nothing like opening a crate of vinyl or a box of cassettes and pulling out that first copy and knowing you played a part in making it real.

If you’ve managed to make it to the end of this announcement, congratulations! Please enjoy a link which includes like a bazillion Bandcamp download codes for every album released by Coraspect in 2024.

Thank you!
Alan