Cajual Records – Digging Backwards

Cajual Records — Digging Backwards

My first Cajual record wasn’t actually a Cajual record. At least not exactly. It was The Wanderer by Romanthony,
released on Prescription. But there was a Cajual logo on the B-side label.

At the time, I didn’t really understand the connection between the two labels. Years later, I learned that Cajual had distributed the release.
The record itself contained almost everything I normally didn’t want from House music. Proper singing. And a guitar. I don’t particularly like guitars either.

So, naturally, I loved it. Well, at least two mixes of it. I think I bought the record in 1996, although I had already heard it several times at Rote Liebe before that.
Still, the Cajual logo didn’t immediately send me searching through the label’s catalogue. That happened a little later.

Three Records

In 1997, three Cajual releases suddenly changed everything for me:

Glenn Underground – G U’s 70’s Trip
The Chicago Connection – Dancin’
Moon Man – Big Fat Woman

They must have arrived fairly close together because I remember hearing them at parties around the same time — even on the same night.
Suddenly, Cajual had my full attention. There was just one problem. I had arrived at the party rather late. Not the actual party. The label.
Just as I became really interested in Cajual, there were no more new releases to follow for a while.

So instead of waiting for the next record, I had to go in the opposite direction. I started digging backwards. Looking for What Was Already Gone
Today, discovering the history of a record label takes a few seconds. Back then, it didn’t.
There was no complete online discography waiting for me. No marketplace showing copies for sale around the world. If I wanted older Cajual records, I had to find them.
Sometimes another record shop still had old stock. Usually, of course, it wasn’t the record I was looking for. And quite often, the records that
were still sitting around were sitting around for a reason. Then Discogs appeared.

In the beginning, plenty of releases were still missing from the database, but even then it changed everything. Suddenly there was a way to see more of a label’s history and discover records I hadn’t known existed.
Later, the Marketplace arrived. That was dangerous. Very dangerous. Collectors all over the world selling records, and all I had to do was click.
For someone trying to complete a record label’s catalogue, it felt like heaven.

Over the following years, I managed to collect almost every Cajual release from that original period.
I don’t remember the exact number anymore, but it must have been more than seventy records.
At some point, it became slightly less like buying music and slightly more like collecting stamps.
There was another catalogue number. Another gap. Another record that needed to be found.
And another small feeling of satisfaction when the gap finally disappeared.

The Record I Didn’t Know

One of those missing records appeared unexpectedly in 1999. I was at a DJ flea market in Münster when I saw a Cajual record I didn’t have.
It was a release by Braxton Holmes, Mark Grant and Ron Hardy. Thirty Deutsche Mark. So I bought it. Not because I had been searching for a particular track on it.
Not because I knew it contained a record I already loved. It was simply another Cajual release missing from my collection.
Then I got home and listened to it. And suddenly I knew exactly what I had bought.

The Revival.

I had heard that track at Rote Liebe in 1997.
Many times. I had danced to it. I had celebrated to it. I just never knew what it was called. What had stayed in my memory was the break.
The beat disappears. Gradually, more and more of the track fades away. A short vocal phrase repeats while almost everything else has gone,
leaving percussion and a Disco horn behind. And the room waits. On one particular night at Rote Liebe, the lights on the dancefloor
were lowered as the track stripped itself down. Darker and darker. The vocal kept repeating. Then the elements slowly began to return.
The beat came last. And as the break ended, the dancefloor lit up again. The reaction in the room was almost impossible to describe.

I had remembered that moment for two years without knowing the name of the record that created it.
Then I bought a missing Cajual release at a flea market, put it on at home and found myself back on that dancefloor.
Sometimes you discover a record by finding out what it is. Sometimes your body already knows the record long before you do.

6,000 to 500

For many years, collecting records was a huge part of my life. Eventually, my collection grew to around 6,000 records.
And then, some years ago, I decided I was done with it. Maybe it was a kind of midlife crisis.
I started thinking that the records didn’t give me anything anymore. Maybe I needed different hobbies. Maybe it was time to let all of this go.
So I started selling them. And I was quite successful at it. Perhaps too successful.By the time around 6,000 records had become roughly 500,
I began to realise something. I wasn’t done with records after all. So I started collecting again. Which introduced me to one of the
more ridiculous parts of record collecting: buying records I had already owned before.

Some Cajual releases found their way back into the collection. Today, I have 21 of them. And there was one record in particular that I wanted back.
The Revival, Again! Unfortunately, finding another good copy of The Revival was not easy.
Sometimes a copy appeared, but the seller was outside the EU. Sometimes the price was too high. Sometimes the condition simply wasn’t good enough
for a record I wanted to put back into my collection. So I waited. Then, a few years ago, I played a DJ set at a bar in Heidelberg.
I didn’t earn a fortune. My fee was a low three-digit amount. On Sunday, after I had returned home, I looked through Discogs.
And there it was. An original sealed copy. In Germany. The price was almost exactly what I had earned from the DJ set.
I thought about it briefly. Very briefly. Then I bought it.

I had first discovered The Revival on a dancefloor in 1997 without knowing what it was.
I discovered it a second time in 1999, when I accidentally bought the record at a flea market in Münster and recognised that break at home.
And years later, after selling my original copy, I found it for a third time. Two purchases. Three discoveries.
There is one final detail. The record is still sealed. It has been sitting on my shelf ever since I bought it.
Somewhere inside that shrink wrap is a Cajual record pressed in 1997 that has apparently waited all these years for someone to put a needle on it.
I could open it today. But somehow, I don’t want to waste the moment. One day, when it feels right, I’ll cut open the shrink wrap,
take the record out and listen to The Revival again.

For the first time.