A book update

It’s that time to update you on what’s been happening here at Dust & Grooves in the past few months.

After coming back from 35 days on the road—driving 10,000 miles across the country—I settled down in Brooklyn and got right back to work. One of the first things was to edit down the selected photos out of the massive archive that was built in the past 5 years. I had my friends help me with the initial edit, trying to visualize how it would work as a sequence of photos in a book. I was lucky enough to have friends in one of Manhattan’s largest photo studios, so I asked my friends Marie and  Lily to come over and help with edit. We laid out ALL the proposed photos on the floor and started sequencing them in many different ways, trying to follow a few themes. Eventually, my friend Marie, a professional photos editor, came along and shuffled the whole thing into the current order of photos.

At the same time we were editing,  we had to start working on a layout with our Brazilian designers Juliano and Marcelo from 45JJ, a multidisciplinary design studio in Sao Paulo, Brazil. As record collectors themselves, they were the natural choice when it came to designing the book.

The design period of the book was a long and fun hard work. There were a lot of great ideas being passed back and forth, and after wavering between a few, we locked on to a grid and started rolling.

This project has been embraced by so many good people, and I’m thankful for the presence and help of Lily, Sam, April, Marie, Jamison, Pat, Matt and others who have volunteered to work with me along the way: Lily was digging out quotes and gems from the past Dust & Grooves interviews; Sam was the main editor for the captions; April writing and proofing the stories; Marie doing the photo editing; Sheila took the heaviest and most demanding job of editing the book and Matt was doing the final proofing.  As well as friends and volunteers, I also commissioned music writers to conduct some of the interviews in the book: Kevin Foakes (DJ Food) interviewed Kieran Hebden (Four Tet), Dom Servini interviewed Gilles Peterson, Josiah Titus interviewed The Gaslamp Killer.

Deciding on the cover was the most challenging part. It was the last push towards the finish line, but since this was such an important element of the book, it definitely took some time. I asked for input from my peers, whose opinions would steer me in one direction and then another. There were many “final” decisions that ended up being changed at the last minute. As Pat put it, “second thoughts are part of the decision making process.”

We have a hard deadline in mind: to have the book ready for Record Store Day 2014 (April 19). Because of this rapidly approaching date, the book was simultaneously being designed, written, and edited—a very unorthodox approach. In a perfect world, I would have more time to take it easy and move at a steadier pace.

But by some magic, the proofs arrived from our printers (they weigh 20 pounds!) and the book design is finally done! The size of it is astounding—it’s 416 pages!

I’m currently looking for distribution deals in books stores, and venues to host a launch party and exhibition in NYC, london and LA (any suggestions would be most welcomed.) A new website layout is in the works, and it should be ready in the upcoming month. None of this would have been possible without the help and encouragement from the vinyl community, and I’m grateful for the continuing support of so many people around me.

Lily, April, Me, Sheila, Jamison and Pat. My dream team! Love you all