In By The Numbers, FADER looks at a big record release and breaks it down in basic digits. In FADER #82, we actually took on a record label: Gothenberg, Sweden's Service, which, with 19 albums and over a decade of experimental pop under its belt, plans to close up shop next year following a final release from its flagship group, The Embassy.
Update 1/31/2013: The Embassy have opted to self-release their album, so Jens Lekman's 2012 LP will be Service's last. The label has at last shuttered its doors and given away one final compilation, accompanied by this note:
Service lived forever.There is no "cause" for this. Except, possibly, the effect: desire already spreading along new lines, multiplying endlessly.
Service was a free zone, pop lab, gang turf and permanent vacation. Never an object, always a territory (the uncertainty principle). That's the main lesson I've been trying to teach. In that sense I gave to you my life, my ambition, my hope. And some haine of course.
And, as promised, Service is deterritorialising. Both are carbon, remember, the diamond can turn into a pencil. It's traces will always be there. And I hope they will live on as ever new paths, merging with their users, the nomads. That the music become weapons in the hands of new partisans.
Now take it, it's yours.