Around the time I wrote about Martin Rev’s Strangeworld album for issue 11 of Plan B, I wrote to Tommi Gronlund of Sahko recordings, the Finnish label who originally released the album, to ask him if he could tell me a bit more about the album and how it came to be (and why no one seemed to have heard of it). He wrote me back this lovely reply, which didn’t make it into the magazine for deadline reasons, but which serves as a nice footnote to my Music That Time Forgot piece. Someone re-distribute this album! Please!

“I met Martin Rev for the first time in Washington Square park in 1997. I think I got his number through Mika Vainio [Pan Sonic] or Lary Seven.We got an idea with Jimi Tenor that we should ask him to produce the new Brandi Ifgray album. I gave him Brandi’s first album in the park and he gave me his new songs in exchange. Martin didn’t get so excited abut the Brandi album and finally Jimi and Maurice Fulton produced it.

In Barcelona I made a copy of Martin’s CD for Mika Vainio. Then it somehow got buried in the CD mountains. After a year or something Mika played the record in some laidback after hours boozing session. He said that he was strongly convinced that Martin’s unreleased album was the best record of all time. After that I took the record in consideration again and released it in early 2000.

Everything was really slow with that production. We had a marvellous photo session with Martin and Lary Seven on the Lower East Side in early summer 1999. After the session we went for dinner in an excellent Indonesian restaurant in Chinatown. Martin made an impression on me by ordering only a plate of plain white rice. He liked it so much that he ordered another plate to take away in a doggy bag. Mika Vainio has told several times that Martin has very extraordinary taste – also when it comes to food.

At the time when Strangeworld came out, our exclusive distributor EFA started to do worse and worse. I was expecting some sales for this album and I remember making 3000 LP sleeves, which was (and is) much for us. Only 1000 sleeves were used, and of those 1000 pressed records I still have half left. I made more CDs and I think I still have at least 500 left. We were lucky that EFA send the stock back before they went bankrupt in 2004.

I personally feel that Strangeworld is still very fresh and strong, and looks awesome with Lary’s beautiful covers.

Martin sent me another unreleased CD around the year 2000. Maybe I should check it out once more…Maybe there’s another forgotten treasure that the world is more ready to understand this time.”

Posted on Tuesday, February 14th, 2006by Frances May Morgan