Matador (un)loses vinyl masters in pressing plant bankruptcy

The Guardian is reporting that Matador Records has lost many of their vinyl masters due to the bankruptcy of 33 1/3 - a vinyl pressing company - in 2006.

Among them were albums by Mogwai, Yo La Tengo, Cat Power, Pavement, The New Pornographers and others. Matador's director of production, Jesper Eklow, told Comcast News:

We lost everything. The doors were locked due to the Chapter 11 bankruptcy. [The label lost] pretty much everything up to May 2006. Some titles prove difficult to reissue unless we go back and basically remaster the albums from scratch. It's a slow, expensive and quite an annoying process.

There shouldn't really be any titles that we couldn't ever bring back but the question of course would be if it's worth spending a lot of money on remastering and reprinting components we already should have on hand on certain titles. The money lost on the 33 1/3 adventure is quite substantial.

Update: Though the Guardian story was published just this week, Matador has sent out an update indicating that things are just fine now. The label has made new masters since then and are re-pressing records now.