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Acid house pioneer Andrew Weatherall unveiled details of his new record label Bird Scarer this week and said that the strictly vinyl only label will be manufacturing just 300 copies of each release.

Kicking off with a release by London analogue aficionado Timothy J Fairplay, he also revealed he’s made ‘a limited edition lino print to accompany the first 20 copies’ of the John Carpenter/ Klaus Schulze- esque release.

“Remember,” the website blurb stresses, “Bird Scarer is a download free project.’

Details of the new label emerged just two weeks after US veteran house DJ Francois K issued a detailed defence of both digital DJing and digital releases and challenged vinyl enthusiasts for failing to buy records in significant numbers.

“It cracks me up a bit when I see all of these people up in arms about supporting vinyl, yet when anyone looks at average sales figures for most recent vinyl releases, they are usually around 500 units per pressing worldwide (dubstep a little more),” he wrote on Facebook.

“How can thousands of people loudly complain about something that only sells five hundred copies,” he continued, “I find it peculiar that those who do the complaining sure aren’t doing an equivalent effort to support those vinyl releases themselves, or going to buy them at the store, or ordering them online.”

“Do you really think that record labels wouldn’t like to press up more units if there was a demand?” he asked.

Always outspoken punk polemicist Henry Rollins, meanwhile, ridiculed record collectors as‘ scum’ last week and accused labels who release collector editions with rare B sides and gimmicks such as coloured vinyl of providing ‘yet another example of the cruel and unusual machinations of predatory capitalism.’

“Collecting records is, for many, beyond a hobby. It is an obsession,” he noted. “Do this kind of thing in high school and you can play the youth card. Do it at 50 and you have some issues you really need to deal with.” (LA Weekly)

Henry Rollins: The Column! Are You Collector Scum?

Jonty Skrufff: http://listn.to/JontySkrufff