There’s an alternate timeline in which, just a few weeks ago, Kings was packed for the annual Hopscotch day party hosted by WXDU 88.7 FM and Three Lobed Recordings. Always a festival highlight, the party tends to be an experimenting ground for artists outside of their official sets, regularly featuring one-off collaborations and some of the more far-out sonic experiments of the weekend (and more than a few references to the occult). As Three Lobed founder Cory Rayborn puts it, the only expectation is “to have no expectations.”

Rayborn’s vinyl-centric label, which he runs when he’s not working his day job as a business lawyer, turns 20 this year. When the coronavirus shut down live music in the spring, he was deep into planning an anniversary festival in collaboration with WXDU and Duke Performances.

Although the festival never made it past the contracting phase, one can’t help but imagine what might have been: a three-night concert series across three venues on Duke’s campus, featuring the roster of left-field musicians who have forged longstanding relationships with the label: artists like Philadelphia psych-rockers Bardo Pond, Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon, harpist Mary Lattimore, and virtuosic guitarists Daniel Bachman, William Tyler, and Chuck Johnson.

Rayborn has put a pin in these plans until fall 2021, public-health conditions permitting. But Three Lobed is starting a series of releases in subscription form to celebrate two decades, with seven new records arriving every two months for the next year. The series begins October 9 with the release of Gunn-Truscinski Duo’s Soundkeeper.

Calling from his law office in High Point, Rayborn recently spoke with the INDY about the upcoming release series and what it’s like to run a record label from home for 20 years.

INDY: You’ve always described Three Lobed as something you do for fun, part-time, even as it’s gained considerable influence. After 20 years, does it still feel that way?

CORY RAYBORN: It does. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t do it. Every now and then people ask me, why wouldn’t you do it full-time? Music is weird. It’s taste-driven, to a degree. And it would be very worrisome to me to have to find a way to contribute toward my family financially through something based entirely off taste! But also, I think all the parts of the label would be less fun if they had different levels of weight placed on them due to it being a full-time job.

It’s definitely still fun—it’s different today than it was five years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago. But it’s still just me. If you order a record, I’m the one putting it together. If you write to the label, I’m the one reading and writing back. If I’ve got to stuff a couple hundred records, I’m the one doing it while my kid’s asleep and then drop them off at the post office with my hands covered in corrugated-cardboard cuts.

Why do you think so many “big” artists, at least in indie terms—like Sonic Youth and Yo La Tengo—seek out Three Lobed for some of their projects?

I think as people have gotten to know me in various capacities, they realize that I do what I say I’m going to do. I’m not flaky. There are tons of people who have great ideas and never follow through on them. I try to come up with things that are doable, that you can actually see through to the end. Sometimes—like right now—things run on a slightly different schedule. But they still run the way they’re supposed to run, and they still look the way they’re supposed to look.

I like to think the body of work has set an example of what the output will look like when I work on something with you. You’re not having to talk to 10 different people. In the same way that, when someone orders a record or writes with a question, they deal with me, if I’m working with an artist on something, I’m the only person they have to ask any questions to. It’s them and me working together on whatever the end result is going to be. It’s probably more streamlined that way, especially to folks who are used to working with multiple layers of input.

In place of this year’s Hopscotch, WXDU spent a weekend broadcasting recordings of previous WXDU/Three Lobed day parties. What was it like to hear those shows again?

It was fun. I listened in as much as I had a chance to over the course of the weekend. I’ve had copies of all those recordings the whole time, but some of them I hadn’t played in a while. And it was nice listening to everything in sequence and looking at input from people on social media who were listening along at the same time. It was not a substitute for the real thing, but it certainly was not bad.

Are there any releases in the anniversary series that stand out to you?

I adore all the Gunn-Truscinski Duo output, so having the series kick off with [Soundkeeper] was very intentional. I really, deeply resonate with that material and being able to continue being involved with it means a lot. It was nice to be able to have that record be a part of this, and then have it be the lead-off record.

Of the seven records, everything’s great. Of everything I’ve heard so far, a lot of this stuff leans to a certain degree into the slightly weirder side of what you may expect. Rather than have these things be safe and more traditionally accessible, a bunch of them are just weird, which is kind of fun. The Six Organs of Admittance record is very different from what people may think of from Ben [Chasny]’s catalog, and it’s kind of crazy.

The Daniel Bachman is cut from a similar cloth as his last album, [The Morning Star]—it refines what he was trying to do to a degree, but it’s still a decent bit removed from his old solo guitar records. The Body/Head record is going to be a little bit different than the rest of their catalog. I’m excited for people to check everything out.

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