I mean it seems to have been totally deleted. I and I really love it. It’s a drone album, very soothing. It’s Two Lenses by Bryter Layter. Here’s a review:
and here’s the Discogs reference:
I bought it on MP3 (like I normally do) so I don’t actually have it physically anywhere. I got it from Boomkat but:
and yet:
Anyway, is this common? Is it just a genre thing? It doesn’t help they named themselves after a Nick Drake album so there can be confusion.
I can totally believe no cares about this but I am actually this close to creating some alt accounts to make it look like they do.
Come, on sure @xylo at least ‘likes’ this?
I don’t have much to add either, other than I work for a record label that makes a key feature of its non-deletion policy (everything we’ve ever released from the last 30 years will always be available on CD or digitally as a download).
Apparently it was a big deal and fairly unique for a while, in the genre we work in at least. For years releases by other labels would go out of print quickly, and not be repressed. It’s less of a USP now though, with the increased use of Spotify, downloading etc meaning it’s much more cost-effective to keep something available easily for longer.
My guess would be that Boomkat was never their primary label.
They’re American and their American label is listed as Students of Decay. My hunch is that they were licenced to Boomkat in the UK for some period of time – and given that they remain so obscure and that any ongoing sales are probably minimal and download based – there’s probably little incentive to maintain an ongoing overseas licencing arrangement.
Dunno whether this is correct or not.
Either that or it turns out one of them is a nonce
The nonce drone market is surprisingly lucrative, so not necessarily the barrier you’d expect.
I thought Boomkat was just a store, to be honest.
I guess my point was more how weird to have deleted it completely. I can understand physical copies not being made but surely MP3s cost nothing. I wondered if something had happened in the background, some kind of issue around royalties or something.
But also I wondered if this is a common thing at all? It just seems crazy that a relatively recent album can just disappear (it’s been a few years actually so it was only about 3 years after that it was gone).
Hmm, well bugger me, I actually just fed the two names from the review into Google and this time I hit:
First authorized digital release featuring two newly unearthed bonus tracks recorded in 2009, unavailable anywhere else.
Release date is January 2016. I wonder if maybe the whole thing was just tied to the original limited Vinyl release and so the digital version had to be deleted when that sold out?
You should read the Borges short story “tlon uqbar orbis tertis”, it’ll pretty much explain exactly why stuff like this happens.
They’re a few things I think. There used to be a shop in Manchester called Pelican Neck Records which specialised in leftfield hiphop, electronica & indie - Boomkat was formed when the physical store closed. They release some stuff on their own label and run some distribution too, so I thought you meant you had originally bought it in that capacity as opposed to just wondering why some store was just not selling something indefinitely.
From the last post, it looks like you’ve now got to the bottom of why anyway.
There are a few artists with stuff like this, my favourite is Hills West - he released a bunch of albums and uploaded them to Netlabels, but has since vanished. I catalogued the released for the Monday Graveyard, just so after days of searching they would all be there.
I couldn’t even find a link to who the artist was or where to contact them. Weird eh?
An impressively highbrow reference Scagden. Good work!
I just tried reading the Wikipedia page of this and it made my head spin. Couldn’t make head nor tail of the plot summary, so don’t think I stand any chance with the actual story: Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius Wiki
In true Borges style the story itself is probably both shorter and more comprehensible than any attempt to summarise the story. 
Borges.
Theo you should definitely check out ‘Husk’ by Raglani (it’s on that Bandcamp page) if you like the Bryter Layter LP - think you’ll dig it.
Think the disappearance was a licensing issue. Boomkat were probably allowed to sell the digital while they were selling the vinyl, but once that sold out, the label/band may have wanted all digital sales to be via their Bandcamp. Agree that it seems weird to stop Boomkat selling it too - you would have thought it was better to have two avenues to the digital market open rather than just one - but it’s probably just some contractual term that governs future sales
