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Our Policy and Our Product Range
The aim of Mayfield
Records is to develop a range of limited edition cds and cdrs of
historical and archival significance. The label is characterized by a
passionate interest in the history of the widest possible range of
musical forms and so, over the forthcoming months and years, Mayfield
will release archival material representing great cultural and musical
diversity.
Each release will pose
fresh questions about how to grapple with the tensions that lie at the
heart of any reissue label and its marketing of archival resources
i.e. between the desire to re-create the past and the urge to
interpret it. Mayfield Records will strive to create in the
listener and collector the illusion of direct experience by evoking an
atmosphere, setting a scene. This, of course, requires imaginative
powers and an eye for detail. Wherever possible, therefore, our
releases will not be re-mastered, re-edited or generally fiddled about
with. Thus, their musical authenticity will not be in doubt, and the
passage of time - the primary concern of any historical record label -
will not be sublimated to the trendy re-creative techniques used by a
great many larger and less thoughtful reissue labels. Furthermore, our
packaging will be utterly unique, designed in all cases by artist
Steve Hardstaff. Wherever possible we shall dispense with conventional
jewel cases and package the music in a vicarious yet sympathetic (and
collectable) manner.
So, both the music and the
packaging (including extra detailed ‘sleeve notes’ posted on our
website for the aficionado to down load) will be historical in the
truest sense of the word i.e. representing as effectively as possible
the difference between our own time and that period presented on the
recording. By doing this, we feel that the musical material will not
simply be an exercise in resurrection, but an attempt to present
musical archives as part of an on-going process of historical
interpretation.
We, at Mayfield, feel that
major labels have severe problems of presentation when it comes to
reissues. The unravelling of consequences surrounding such musical
‘events’ as Mersey beat calls for analytical skills of the highest
order. Yet, indispensable though their back catalogues are, most major
labels do not confront these musical archives in anything like a
‘historical’ manner – something we intend to do from the outset.
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