DFA Records : the early years

BONUS 4x6” C-print made from the original negative

Print of homemade DFA logo slipmat at DFA studios, 2003

Edition: 600 copies

Cover: Hardcover, tipped in photo of DFA drum kit in studio, embossed letters with title and author

Size: and Page Count: 8.25 x 9.5 inches, 160 pages with 111 color and 35 black and white photos; portraits, parties, candids, office and studio documentation, live performances

Preface: Tim Soter

Forward: Mike Wolf, Music Editor, writer, Time Out New York 2000–2008

New interview: with The Rapture, Gabriel Andruzzi, Vito Roccoforte and Luke Jenner

Discography: 2002-2007

As the photographer Tim Soter says in the preface, “This book is for the fans. It’s for the gearheads, the photo nerds, the party people, the music historians and the completists. It’s for the guest list beggars, the friend of a friend, the plus ones and the plus nones. It’s for the artists themselves, who can expect to see a few photos they haven’t seen before. This book is for those who got turned on to DFA after the fact and of course, it’s for the ones who were there.”

After Y2K proved to not be the end of the world, youth of New York were ready for a release of anxiety in the form of more dancing, more beats and, of course, more parties. There wasn’t a camera in every pocket in the early aughts and photographers were often the only ones to document rare moments in real-time. Tim Soter is one of these few photographers. A devoted music fan of the ’90s, he’d grown up with the dissatisfaction of limited coverage of his heroes within magazines and wanted to change that for underground music fans. While he was shooting for Rolling Stone and other music mags back in 2003, he simply reached out to label manager Johnathan Galkin and asked, “Hey, can I photograph everyone at DFA?”.

DFA Records: The Early Years captures a unique place and time for the studio that would ultimately give us LCD Soundsystem and presents the DFA bands in their raw beginnings. From candid Polaroids of Tim Goldsworthy and James Murphy to rare band press shots, Soter uses his photography and primitive Hotmail correspondence to tell the story of DFA from 2003 to 2007. He presents a visual diary for fans, taking them back to a unique time in NYC’s music history—before streaming services and before price-gouging ticket hubs. Within these 160 pages are photos from shows at Roseland, Hammerstein, and the Bowery, parties at Tonic, Volume Club, private lofts and never-before-seen images of the founders just being kids together. The story reveals the beginning of a collective that started with the likes of The Rapture, Black Dice, The Juan MacLean, Gavilán Rayna Russom, Delia Gonzales, and, of course, LCD Soundsystem. Vivid and energetic, this is a book for fans to find themselves in the crowd and quite literally point and say, “I was there.”     

EUROPEAN/OVERSEAS Shipment: UK orders please UK button, All others please email and I’ll try my hardest to accommodate

ISBN: 978-0-578-44045-3