‘This Is A Record That I Would Want To Buy’: Caps Lock & Impressed Recordings Take Adelaide Acts Global With New Vinyl Compilation

At the tail-end of 2024, a DIY record label called caps lock records, based in Tarntanya/Adelaide, released a lovingly curated compilation. 

Borrowing its title from a Paul Kelly lyric, Sitting In The Same Chairs consists of sixteen tracks from a diverse range of up-and-coming Adelaide-based artists, including the likes of Twine, Swapmeet, and Any Young Mechanic, and was released onto Bandcamp and via handmade cassette tapes and CDs. 

As compilation curator and caps lock co-founder Thea Martin explained to The Music in January 2025, the compilation “features released, unreleased and demo tracks to push against the notion that artistic work can only be legitimised in complete and fully produced formats, and only when distributed through the major streaming services.”

Though the passionate team behind caps lock records were prioritizing nothing more than archiving the Adelaide scene as it stands, crafting a unique, homemade memento of a quiet, complicated city, the project caught the eye of Impressed Recordings, the renowned independently-owned, ARIA accredited, Australian record label. 

They reached out to caps lock records, offering to facilitate a limited vinyl release of Sitting In The Same Chairs. 100 of these records will stay in Adelaide to be sold to artists on the record, with the other 200 being distributed nationally and internationally by Impressed through their mailing list and in-store, including the likes of Rough Trade in the UK.

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Luke Bevans, the managing director and founder of Impressed Recordings, reveals that the collaboration was kickstarted by The Music’s reporting of the caps lock compilation.

“I saw the article and reached out,” he says. “We have a broad A&R policy here at Impressed, and our model and our business is set up for collaboration with other labels. If they want to, they can do their pressing and their vinyl distribution through us.”

Bevans explains that the current modern emphasis on music existing primarily in digital spheres means that “there’s a lot of music that doesn’t make it onto vinyl or that wouldn’t be able to be a physical artefact, and that’s something that I really passionately believe in.”

“I’m always on the hunt for new music, I’m always looking for new opportunities, and this was definitely one of them,” he adds.

He describes having a “personal affinity” with Adelaide, despite being originally from England. “I have family in Adelaide,” Bevans explains. “There’s a band from Adelaide called Sincerely, Grizzly about 15 years ago who I managed for a brief while.” 

He was, therefore, “intrigued,” invested in staying in the Adelaidean creative loop. So he reached out to caps lock records.

“They were wonderful humans who I thought had great values and were making great music, and then on top of that Any Young Mechanic started to happen,” he says, referring to the indie folk band – currently touring Europe and the United Kingdom, after having just signed for management to Various Artists – who were deeply involved in the project. The band’s frontman, Sam Wilson, had a major hand in the CD and cassette production.

The momentum Any Young Mechanic were starting to experience – booked at the time to play such major events as Rock En Seine and Reading Festival – acted as a further “signal” to Bevans that this collaboration was meant to be. 

“And that was it really,” he says. “On top of it, I was like, well, very much so, this is a record that I would want to buy. I always try to think, ‘Would 16-year-old Luke like this?’”

He concludes, “It’s good music, good people, and also the kind of record that if I was in Rough Trade in London, or somewhere in the world, I would pick it up and go, ‘Oh, that sounds interesting. Let me buy this.’”

Both Martin and Wilson have nothing but praise to heap upon Bevans.

“Luke has been so fantastic to work with,” Martin says. “I’ve never met someone who knows so much about the Adelaide music scene who is not from Adelaide. Straight out the gate, he has really believed in the story of this record, and helped me believe in the value of this story as well, and what this record means, and what it could mean beyond Adelaide and beyond Australia as well. 

“It’s almost been like a mentorship for this tiny label that is caps lock records about vinyl production and to learn about what it takes to create really beautiful bespoke physical media in a way that is ethical and considered and artists-first. I cannot recommend working with Impressed Recordings enough. 

“The whole team is just fantastic, so easy to communicate with,” adds Martin. “I’m just so grateful for the opportunity.”

Wilson, similarly exuberant, adds, “Working with Luke was very freeing. He has a real care for this iteration of the DIY music scene that’s been growing in Adelaide for the last few years. There were multiple times where Thea and I would have an idea and think, ‘Okay, this is where the label guy’s going to tell us “no way.”’ But that never happened.”

He continues, “Because we were getting to press the thing to vinyl, we were thinking a lot about how to make the process and final product more personal and grounded. I love LPs and have tons of them, but sometimes the experience of pressing a record today can feel quite detached. You put your .wav and design files into a dropbox folder and one day a record arrives on your doorstep. That’s fine, but it’s very different to the way that burning a CD or making a tape for someone feels. 

“We wanted to bring that feeling to the caps lock LP and its packaging,” Wilson adds. “So we suggested that we hand-stamp cardboard sleeves and use a printed outer paper sleeve to use less plastic. We were bracing for a kind of ‘computer says no’ response, but Luke was super into it!”

Bevans also put Martin and Wilson in touch with John Gray of Analog Dreams, currently the only pressing plant in Adelaide.

“Luke thought it would be great to have the music written, recorded, and pressed in South Australia,” Wilson explains, adding, “John was incredibly accommodating and brought that personal care that I felt had been missing from the record-pressing experience.”

Impressed Recordings’ ethos quite pointedly centres on the significance of wax, and the way that vinyl allows music to become a holistic, engaging experience. 

“It’s not for everybody,” Bevans acknowledges. “It’s a big ask, you know, in a time of economic variability, to ask people to spend upward of $50 on something they can get for free. But in a way, that’s what’s important.

“The tangibility, the imperfections of vinyl, are something that make it really valuable. I also think that in the fast-moving pace of digital music, being able to hold and play an artefact for years is something that’s really, really important. 

“Let’s just say I’ve lost more downloads than I’ve lost vinyl records in my life,” he says.

Martin feels similarly. “Music is an invisible art in some ways, and when it’s only available digitally I think it can feel quite immaterial, or intangible. So having an accompanying physical vehicle for the art is really important, and it’s another way that artists get to be creative about the way that their work is shared, in the way that vinyls or CDs or cassettes look and feel. 

“Keeping music away from streaming services is obviously something that’s very important to me,” continues Martin, citing the CEO of Spotify’s billion dollar investment in an AI military start-up, as well as the “general lack of financial viability and respect” for artists that the world of streaming can facilitate.

Martin adds that, given that many of the musicians featured on the compilation are DIY artists, “We wanted to give them an avenue to be able to release music without the pressure of a PR campaign or having to be a polished product, telling them that art is worth sharing, worth engaging with in whatever form it currently exists in.

“That’s why we have demos on this record, we have some live tracks,” Martin continues. “There’s a whole range of ways that people made this music, so having it in physical format feels like a way to affirm that what they’re doing is meaningful and valuable.”

Wilson simply states, “People want to hold things again!” 

“Streaming is getting more and more expensive, and artists still aren’t being paid properly through that avenue,” he continues. “When I head to streaming to listen to music, I find it so hard to narrow down what it is I actually want to listen to. It’s so infinite. 

“With something like a record collection, you’ve only got so many records, and it’s way easier to remember what it is you actually like, and actually engage with the music you’re listening to. Plus buying a record pays an artist a million times better. One record sale is equal to about 1500 streams.”

Though this collaboration has been ongoing, leading Bevans’, Martin’s and Wilson’s lives to become intricately enmeshed, they only properly met on July 31st at the AIR Awards, to which Any Young Mechanic was invited.

“Any Young Mechanic is hopefully a band that people will be talking about for years to come,” Bevans states emphatically. “They’re on the cusp of something great with an amazing team. It’s a kind of really Australian thing to not know that something great is going on underneath your nose. 

“And I was really pleased that AIR invited them to the awards and they could be there to celebrate independent music.”

On that note – how does he think the music industry in Australia could be better supporting independent artists right now?

“How long have you got?” he laughs. “For me, the most important thing is around funding. Australia has the second highest cash reserves of any country in the world, so for me, I spend a lot of time really thinking about how we can change the way that we fund independent music, how we can unleash creativity a lot better, how the strictures and structures of the music industry don’t work for the level of quality of artists we have. 

“It’s something that I think is really important here at Impressed. And I’m working diligently with like-minded people behind the scenes to try to solve these issues.” 

From Martin’s perspective, one of the “key” issues is regulated pay. “I almost never see the $250 minimum fee for live performances enforced. The few times in my life I have had it enforced is when the event is organised by local council or by Music SA. But other than that, even major venues don’t enforce the $250 performance fee. 

“I’m an advocate for some kind of universal basic income system for people in general, but particularly for artists,” Martin adds. “The nature of what their work looks like doesn’t really fit into the workplace traditionally. Regulated pay, financial support for artists, would be awesome. 

“In general, the more people who are happy to push against the system and to do things in DIY and rebellious ways, the better we can support each other as an artistic community and move ourselves away from the mainstream options we’ve been provided to make a living from our art.”

Bevans is feeling hopeful about the future of independent music in Australia. “I feel that it’s something that, with the right people, with the right thinking, there can be some real impact in terms of how artists are funded in this country. That can be outside of the current grant system, which I think, whilst really well-intentioned, probably has some holes in it. 

“And that can also be outside of the current label and distribution system, which again, whilst containing some incredible humans and some really well-intentioned decisions and incredible talent, I think there’s more that we can be doing, both on a societal and an economic level,” he adds. “And on a political level. 

“To be able to make sure that artists can be funded in a way that means that they firstly can get their money upfront, but also secondly that they don’t need to be able to give away their masters for a significant period of time – a period of time that would enable them to benefit from working with a team that can grow the value of them.”

“There’s lots that we can be doing,” he concludes. “I would be inviting local government to have more impactful conversations with local bodies of talent, rather than just engaging in a top-down approach.”

Wilson notes, “In Adelaide, the path to industry is not exactly very obvious… So much of the great stuff that gets made in Adelaide barely gets an audience in Adelaide, let alone anywhere. 

“Most of the work that’s made here that’s off the beaten path doesn’t get tons of industry support to make it out of the state either,” he concludes. “It makes me so happy that, with Impressed’s help, music like this from our town is going to be stocked in Rough Trade in London.”

The momentum of this project is continuing to propel caps lock records forward. 

The label is continuing to curate live shows at the second-hand bookshop Goodwood Books. Their fifth show there, with a line-up consisting of Koleh and The Mule Trade, will be taking place on October 15th.

“We are also working on a Live At Goodwood Books album. We’ve been joined by Jae Bird at all of our shows so far, who has been recording the sets,” Martin says. “And,” they add, “Volume II of Sitting In The Same Chairs is underway, with some of the artists returning from Volume I, and some new artists from Adelaide as well. 

“So you can expect to hear more about that in the very near future.”

Vinyl copies of Sitting In The Same Chairs can be purchased now.

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