Les Quais, Bassin à Flot: how the sides were swapped

The fourth repress of GLB014 arrived on Tuesday, a year after the first pressing came out, so this seems the right moment to set down how it happened.

Les Quais signed in 2022 on a plan for two singles. The first was delivered that autumn, and the three of us agreed it should not come out. So the next single became, on paper, their first. The A-side was to be "Bacalan", a correct club track with a good bass line, which Tom Ashby liked. The B-side was a track with a saxophone on it, which Yanis Belkacem had recorded one night in the lock-up in Bacalan, called "Bassin à Flot" after the docks.

In January 2023 the test pressing came to Clapton. I was alone in the office with Mark Neilson, who was packing orders. I put it on the wrong way round, looking at my phone, and played side B.

After about a minute I noticed the tape gun had stopped. Mark was standing with a box in one hand. He said, "What's that?" I said it was the B-side. He said, "Is it?" and went back to the box.

I rang Bordeaux and said I wanted to swap the sides. Yanis laughed until he understood I was serious, and then he passed the phone to Théo Marchand.

"I play that solo badly, on purpose, for the first half. We put it on the B-side so that nobody would hear it." Yanis Belkacem

Tom objected, and his objections were reasonable: the track had been made as an aside, and leading with it changed what the record was. He also pointed out that swapping an A and a B needs no recut. The stampers stay the same. You change which label goes on which side and reprint the sleeve sticker. It cost the reprinting of 500 labels, and it had to be done in two days.

The record came out on 10 March 2023 in an edition of 500. On the 18th they played it twice at I.Boat, at the release party, on the boat where they used to work. The second time was by request, from the bar staff.

The 500 went in eight days. Then came 1,000, another 1,000, then 1,500, and now 2,000, which takes it to six thousand records. For a label this size that is a very large number. The extra pressings have paid for a good part of what the label has done since.

"Bacalan" is still on the record, side B, track one, and it is a very good track.