Memphis Record Pressing

Memphis Record Pressing (MRP) is a vinyl record manufacturing plant founded in 2014 with equipment purchased from Will Socolov's EKS Manufacturing. The company is a partnership between Matthew Johnson (4) and Bruce Watson (2), of North Mississippi record label Fat Possum Records, and Mark Yoshida and Brandon Seavers, of Memphis-based media manufacturers AudioGraphic Masterworks (and previous owners and founders of Rockingchair Records, Rockingchair Studios and Rockingchair Productions). The company was acquired by GZ Media on December 31, 2015, although it is not obvious from either of the companies' websites. This might be an indication they are allowing MRP to continue to operate as an independent entity. Identified by matrix scheme MRP####. Many releases contain the MRP catalog number and the GZ Media catalog number in the runout. For US releases, it can be assumed that plating was performed by GZ Media (Mastered At credit for now), as well as cutting the lacquer or DMM if not done by another mastering facility, and record pressing performed by MRP. Use Manufactured By if not sure about pressing. EU releases are typically pressed at GZ Media. MRP uses some additional internal stamper IDs for their pressings, e.g. hand-etched A4, B1, C2. Therefore records with such hand-etched IDs were really pressed at Memphis Record Pressing and "Pressed By" will be the correct tag here if these additional etched stampers IDs are present in runout. E.g. [r11190117]. If there are some notes about Made in the EU or Made in the Czech Republic present on the artwork and there are no hand-etched MRP stamper ID codes in runout, it means that such records were either pressed at GZ Media (Pressed By tag) or the printed material was made at GZ Media, and MRP was acting as a broker or presser (Manufactured By tag). Even one color version of a particular title can be pressed at GZ and the rest of color versions can be pressed at MRP or vice versa. As such it is unclear if the record was pressed or the sleeve was printed at GZ Media, don't credit GZ Media for pressing, just manufacturing as it's unclear which part they are responsible for.