Phonotograph Records is an independent record label based in The Netherlands.
Founder and singer Korine Varekamp decided in 2019 to make her hobby of writing, singing and recording a profession.
Together with a number of team members Phonotograph Records was first and foremost established to release Kae West’s repertoire.
“Credit Where Credit’s Due“
Edouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, phonautography and the story behind our name.
Edouard-Léon Scott de Martinville invented sound recording 20 years before Thomas Edison invented the phonograph. Sound had been invisible and transient since the beginning of time. Scott’s phonautograph recorded it and made it both visible and permanent. It was a technological breakthrough, ahead of its time. He did not intend for his phonautograms to be played back; that concept was another 20 years away.
When Edouard-Léon Scott de Martinville first conceived of sound recording he was an editor and typographer of manuscripts at a scientific publishing house in Paris. One day in 1853 or 1854 he was pouring over a text on human physiology when he envisioned an amazing new possibility. He called it “the imprudent idea of photographing the word.” If photography could capture fleeting images with lenses modeled on the eye, might not a replica of the ear similarly capture spoken words?
Scott called this process “phonautography” – the self-writing of sound.