There is a moment Jeff Beaulieu remembers clearly. Orders are rolling in, the phone keeps ringing, and a client who started by asking about a run of 1,000 records keeps calling back with bigger numbers. Two thousand. Then five. Then ten. Then fifteen. “As we were talking with him, everything was growing at the same time,” he says. “It was just fascinating to see this happening on the horizon, and to be a part of it, in the back alley of it all.”
The client was Banzai Records. The band was Angine de Poitrine. The pressing plant in the middle of all this? Drummond Vinyl, a Quebec City operation that launched in 2023 and has quietly become one of the most interesting players in the Canadian vinyl revival.
From Pellets to Polka Dots
Jeff Beaulieu is a musician first. As a member of Alex Henry Foster, he has toured Canada, United States, Europe and even China. He pressed his own records, and lived the whole independent artist experience from the stage to the shipping dock. That background is exactly why he and his partners started Drummond Vinyl. “We got the pressing plant in the first place just to have no limitations for ourselves,” he says. But demand from other artists followed quickly, including orders from U.S. acts like 0930 and Shinedown, who wanted something beyond standard black.
The coloured and splattered vinyls Drummond Vinyl produces are not just aesthetics. There is actual craft involved. Jeff walks through the process with the kind of enthusiasm that makes you want to watch it happen. PVC pellets get melted down into a puck, other coloured fragments are pressed onto the warm surface, and then the whole thing goes into a heat press. The result is a one-of-a-kind slab that nobody else has. “These are all recipes we sometimes have to build,” he explains, noting that every formula gets documented precisely so reprints can match the original. “The fun part is cracking the formula.”
They even built what they call a “LiteTone machine” that introduces controlled variation into each pressing. Every record comes out slightly different.
Does Colour Kill the Sound?
The obvious question for any audiophile is whether a splattered, multi-coloured vinyl sounds as good as a classic black pressing. Jeff is honest: if you own a $10,000 turntable and your ears are trained to catch tiny imperfections, there might be marginal differences you can detect. “But honestly,” he says, “I’ve seen black vinyls sounding terrible. It really depends on how things are done.” For the overwhelming majority of listeners, the colour is a non-issue. What matters is the mastering, the quality control, and the attention to detail during pressing.
Detail is where Drummond Vinyl makes its case. Every record that comes off the line is inspected individually by a machine operator under dedicated lighting. No batch approvals. No shortcuts. “We treat it as if it was ours,” Beaulieu says. “And I just don’t want to say it lightly.”
There is something that happens when you hold a beautifully pressed coloured vinyl, as I can attest with my own collection. It stops being a music delivery format and becomes something you want to frame.
Let’s Address the Polka Dot in the Room
You cannot talk to anyone in the Quebec music world right now without the name Angine de Poitrine coming up, and Drummond Vinyl was right there in the middle of it. The masked, chaotic, beloved band that has become a genuine cultural moment pressed both volumes of their catalogue through Drummond Vinyl, and the orders kept climbing in ways nobody had planned for.
Jeff sees their success as part of something bigger. “Montreal is literally back on the music map on a worldwide scale,” he says. His sound engineer, who is based in Germany, keeps asking about the band. People from New York bring it up in meetings. Beaulieu connects the enthusiasm directly to the hunger for something real. “It’s not TikTok, it’s not AI, it’s music, it’s art, it’s a band.”
In an era of AI-generated playlists and algorithm-driven content, bands like Angine de Poitrine and Alex Henry Foster are offering something that cannot be faked. “It’s creative, it’s raw, it’s human,”
He draws a direct line between the vinyl renaissance and the same impulse. People have spent years letting algorithms curate their listening, and they are walking back to something more intentional. “Some friends, the moment they get home, they tell Alexa to play them some indie pop from the 90s. There’s no relationship with any artist at all.” Vinyl, he argues, forces a different kind of attention. You choose it. You handle it. You commit to a side. “It’s a ritualistic, almost a holy thing. Time stops, and then you just fly somewhere else.”
For collectors, the hunt is part of the ritual too. Flipping through bins at a used record store, passing over a hundred records that aren’t for you, and then pulling out that one gem. “It’s like gold digging,” Jeff says, and he’s right. It’s the analog version of a treasure hunt, and no algorithm can replicate it.
What Artists Always Get Wrong
Ask Jeff what labels and artists consistently underestimate when they come to Drummond Vinyl, and he does not hesitate. “The time. People always want their vinyl for yesterday.” Lead times in the vinyl world are not short, and new artists often arrive with tight release schedules and artwork files that do not meet print specifications. There is almost always back and forth before a project is press-ready.
The other common issue is test pressing feedback. A client listens to the test pressing, calls to say the quality is unacceptable, and a careful back-and-forth process reveals the issue is in how the source files were prepared, not in the pressing itself. “You just narrow it down with them,” he says. “And then you realize, this is it. This is what you gave us.”
He frames all of this with patience rather than frustration. Being independent artists themselves, Jeff and his partners understand the anxieties on the label side. “We know what it’s like. We want to keep that sacred bridge aligned.”
Where to Find Drummond Vinyl
Drummond Vinyl records are available at record stores across Quebec, and the company works with most labels operating in the province. You can check their roster and availability at their website. Keep an eye out for a limited Record Store Day pressing from Alex Henry Foster that Jeff hints at during the conversation. Those will go fast.
And by Quebec law, I am required to confirm: Jeff Beaulieu is not Angine de Poitrine. He says so himself, though I note we have never seen the two of them in the same room. The investigation continues.
Writer: Randal Wark is a Tech entrepreneur, Managing Partner of MTech Cyber with a focus on cybersecurity along with a passion for live music. You can follow him on Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. His Podcast RockStar Today helps musicians quit their day jobs with out-of-the-box advice from Ted Talk Speakers, Best Selling Authors and other interesting Entrepreneurs and Creatives. He created the Rock Star Today Music Business Jam Session for musicians. Randal is a collector of signed vinyl, cassettes and CDs.
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