Test Pressing is a not for profit website funded by "day jobs". It's done for the love of it. We pay to run this site as we believe it's important to support knowledge on our culture and the new music being created that we like. We believe it's important to go backwards as well as forwards. We have no funding or brand support in our work.
Test Pressing was founded in October 2008 by Paul Byrne a.k.a Apiento and exists at the intersection of music, design and art. Originally we covered and promoted mixes channeling a sound that stemmed from the balearic sound of Ibiza in the mid to late 80s but this has now expanded to a modern ‘anything goes’ attitude. We promote music that we find interesting and inspiring and share that which we feel passionate about.
Our website consists of three key areas – Magazine, Mixes and Archive. Our magazine is home to our reviews, news, event information, interviews and anything of interest to us. The mixes contains an ever growing archive of 100s of mixes brought to you by some of the finest DJs and selectors around. The archive is a home to scans of anything that we feel contributes to a history of our culture and understand of how we got here.
Note – The advertising you see on the home page is merely place holder so if anyone wants to sponsor our site so we can do more good things we'd love to speak to you.
Test Pressing Merchandise
Test Pressing have been producing merchandise since its inception. From the infamous ‘Got Any Chris Rea?’ tee to many designs. We make cassettes, tees, sweats, totes, jackets and whatever we feel in short runs. Visit our Shop for more information.
Test Pressing Publishing
Test Pressing is a loose fit of print. A series of publications surveying the scenes, characters, music and graphics that we love as well as an open door to further exploration and investigation of these areas. The series launched with a print piece containing interviews with Ibiza DJs from 1976 - 1988 by Robert Harris aka Dr Rob. More will follow.
Test Pressing Forum
Our forum is a polite place for music discussion and more. There is so much good music bring shared in there I don't know where to start. I almost don't want to say too much but if you dig about you'll find it.
Contributors & Contributing
Content on Test Pressing is written in the main by Piers Harrison, Martyn Peperrell, Bruce Tantum and Apiento. If you would like to send music, events or similar for potential review or are interested in writing for Test Pressing please send a short bio and recent examples of your work to [email protected].
The goal of the site is to inform people about the things we love but please don’t hesitate to email us at [email protected] if you have any problems with the music or archive we are hosting.
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See our current site Terms and Conditions.
Site Credits
The current site would note exist without the incredible work of both Stuart Hardie on design and Adrien Picard on coding for which we are extremely grateful. We recommend them both highly. Stuart Hardie also designs our merchandise and publications.
Graphic Design — Stuart Hardie
Development – Justen Barget