Trace Elements Records was founded by Robert Poss, Ron Spitzer and Andrew Halbreich in around 1980. It originally was set up for their band Tot Rocket, which released two 7" records on it. With the recording of the Western Eyes LP Western Eyes, electronic music composer Nicolas Collins, who produced the record, became involved in the label. Trace Elements released the Collins LP Devil’s Music, a Collins/Poss cassette called Inverse Guitar, and 100 Of The World’s Most Beautiful Melodies, a CD of Collins' duets with musicians such as John Zorn, Zeena Parkins, Shelley Hirsch, Christian Marclay, Tom Cora and Elliot Sharp. The label also released Poss's 1986 Sometimes cassette and the debut 7" EP When People Were Shorter And Lived Near The Water, but is best known for the 1987 release of Band Of Susans' first record, Blessing And Curse, a 12” EP, and Nicolas Collins’s 1992 CD It Was A Dark and Stormy Night. Poss currently runs the label himself. The most recent releases have been his two companion solo CDs, Distortion Is Truth and Crossing Casco Bay, both released in late 2002, and Settings: Music For Dance, Film, Fashion and Industry, released in the autumn of 2010.