The month of December is upon us and with it the last installment of our 2017 White Label Series. This month our curator is Devendra Banhart, with his choice of Noah Georgeson, Osian. This album is a bit different than the other White Label offerings, for one Noah is a Grammy winning record producer, engineer, mixer, as well as being a solo musician. Georgeson has produced four of Banhart’s albums, including co-writing a number of the songs, and frequently tours as a member of his band. Read Devendra's note below:

This album is Noah Georgeson’s score to the fear-joy-exhaustion-wonder-bewilderment-awe that comes with the first days of being a parent.

It is a gift, a tangible expression of love…in that sense, it is a concept album, and perhaps the most tender and beautiful concept I can imagine, I’ll let Noah further explain…. for now, I just want to thank you for taking this journey with a human being so very close to my heart.

Love above all,
- Devendra Banhart 

We are sold out of our 2017 subscription series, but you can connect and purchase the LP Osian on his website. 

www.osian.pro 

The great month of July is here and we have another release for you in our year long White Label Series Subscription. This month, multi-instrumentalist Rob Crow (Pinback, Goblin Cock) is our esteemed curator. Read on below as he imparts some words on his connection and selection of The Jade Shader.

"I knew Jade Shader was gonna be great. I just didn't know in what way. A few things I knew for sure:

1. Terrin Durfey was in the band.

I knew Terrin (since before he was in Boilermaker) as an affable yet determined kid who seemed to enjoy making me uncomfortable in a cheerful way. The first time I met him, he snuck up to me in a local record store with a grey hoodie pulled over his head, and tapped me on the shoulder like he was gonna start some shit. "You know what I really like?" he asked gruffly, brandishing his Walkman like a concealed weapon and revealing the cassette inside to have the words Heavy Vegetable Demos scrawled on it.

"Thank you?"

As with anyone who ever met him, we became fast friends. It was instantly obvious that Boilermaker was going to be a big part of the wave of interesting music that was happening around then. I got to book their first show and was even in the band, briefly, till they realized my "style" was just a distraction from their true purpose.

Terrin's powerful voice and linebacker-style bass playing were a force to be reckoned with and those Boilermaker LPs were filled with innovative emotional gut-punching hooks that still hold up. My own sons have organically gravitated to those records, and often listen to them when they lay down at night.

2. Chris Prescott was in the band.

Not only was Chris the drummer of lunatic local band Fishwife (which later became Tanner), but he had also penned many monster riffs in Hemlock, a group in which he shared singing duties as well as sculpting amazingly perfect guitar tones.

I was at the old Casbah the first time I met Chris. He creeped out from the shadows of a nearby doorway with a grey hoodie pulled over his head, acting like he was gonna start some shit and said gruffly, “Hey, I really like your band.”

I swear.

Like Terrin, we made fast friends. Chris would often spend his lunch breaks at the apartment I shared with Travis Nelson and Elea Tenuta, all of us playing each other our current ideas and sharing new musical discoveries.

Fast forward many years to a night when I was playing the last show of a long US Pinback tour in front of one the largest, craziest crowds I’ve ever performed to. But the only thing I could think about was that after the show, Chris and Terrin were playing at the Casbah for the first time ever as The Jade Shader and I absolutely could not miss it.

Like I said, I knew it was gonna be good.

Thereafter, I never missed an opportunity to see them play. ABSIV and I eventually drafted both Terrin and Chris into the live Pinback touring band. I can’t tell you how excited I am to FINALLY HEAR THESE SONGS AGAIN after all these years. Terrin was one of the kindest and most inspiringly fun people I have ever known. When he passed, he left a lot of amazing memories behind for the rest of us, and now—somehow—he’s still creating new ones.

All right, for real now.

I'm sorry if the above description is too self-referential, but I was trying to think of a fun anecdote to draw away from how much of an incredibly emotional impact this album has had on me and sometimes it's difficult to write about something you really care about without sounding like an asshole.

It's curl-up-into-a-ball good.

I miss Terrin and they were such a fucking great band. It was an honor to sing on “From Above,” but I know how much better Terrin would have sounded. I gotta hand it to Allen Epley for putting his spin on there, yet nailing the context of the songs he sang on (“The Sky is a Sea” might be my favorite song on this album). I literally haven't gotten these songs out of my head since hearing the masters. They really do speak for themselves, even after all this time and all the work Prescott and company did to patch it all together into something tangible. It's so fucking good. I hope you hear what I hear."

Never be afraid to tell your friends you love them,
Rob Crow

Even though our copies have been sold out, Chris Prescott from The Jade Shader has copies you can grab!

The Jade Shader // Bandcamp

Follow them on Facebook.

The month of June is upon us and we have another wonderful pick for the White Label Series. This month's curator is non-other than Chris Schlarb. You may know his work as Psychic Temple, or as the varied and accomplished composer/arranger/producer that he is. Here is his statement on his choice for this month.

"I got a phone call from Eamon Fogarty in the Spring of 2016. We’d never met but I just finished producing an album for Brooklyn singer/songwriter (and Eamon’s roommate) Jay Hammond. Eamon was in Los Angeles on vacation but his girlfriend couldn’t make her flight. He decided to go surfing and record vocals for his new album, “Progressive Bedroom”. Jay gave him my number.

Eamon has a wonderful, confident voice. I’ve heard him make reference to Scott Walker on occasion but most young artists don’t realize how much they sound like themselves. I was so impressed that I called him back for a recording session on my album “Psychic Temple IV” (soon to be released on Joyful Noise Recordings!) before he could return to the East Coast. That summer I asked him to go on tour with me. He did.

My attraction to honesty is relentless. Eamon Fogarty has no guile. He is as true as a bird singing in the trees. His music, like life itself, contains the beautiful and the grotesque. Some artists demand love from their audience. I don’t know how or why it works but I love Eamon’s music. I feel protective of it. When something that powerful calls out... you should pick up the phone."

−Chris Schlarb

While the White Label Official Series might be sold out on our site, check with the artist for copies on his page Bandcamp and follow him on Facebook! 

Instagram / Twitter Handle: @eeaammoonn

April's White Label Series brings us The Warm Hair. Read about Curator Doug Martsch, lead singer and guitarist for Built to Spill, on his pick for this month. 

"This record is a compilation of songs that I picked from the ten or so Warm Hair albums I have heard so far. Not even The Freebird knows how many Warm Hair records there actually are. He writes and records songs, and before he is able to release them, he has written a new batch of songs. He loses interest in the already finished material before anyone else ever gets a chance to hear it, and it gets stored in a closet. In the last few years he has remedied this to some extent by making several LPs available on Bandcamp. He is currently working simultaneously on six LPs of brand new material."

You can follow The Warm Hair on bandcamp and on Facebook @therealwarmhair

Lou Barlow picks our February Artist - Waveless from Minneapolis, MN

"My wife Adelle is a Twin Cities (Minneapolis-Saint Paul) native and she reads their weekly 'City Pages' online. Like, the one in every big city with the snarky reviews and doom-y articles about local politics. We were hanging out post-dinner one night and she thought it would be interesting to listen to some of their picks for Best Local Music. One of them was this band called Waveless. We clicked on a link, plugged in the Bluetooth speaker and out came "Nausea". It sounded like it was recorded in a warehouse, a similar sound to the first Hüsker Dü 7-inch, "Statues b/w Amusement". (I like to force comparisons with artists from the same city. It's fun and totally unfair. Also, it probably wasn’t recorded in a warehouse.) Even more than early, early Hüsker Dü, it reminded me of the great heyday of New Zealand noise-pop in the late 80s and early 90s. The big, rainy, echoed sound of Bailter Space and other bands on the Flying Nun record label. Shranging guitars with male and female voices floating in the din.

Waveless trigger a lot of nostalgia for me but I don’t think anyone could have hit these chords quite like this 30 years ago. The guitar is in a unique tuning, and the drums pound in such a way that you don’t hear much beyond "heavy" music. They are definitely of their time and, because of that, somehow, I don’t think many people have processed how great they are just yet. Although youngsters continue to gravitate to the sounds of the 90s,, the bands that embody the best aspects of the era often go under-appreciated.

I downloaded (purchased!) this EP immediately from Bandcamp and have listened to it regularly since, more than any other new music. I am not sure why this record wasn’t released on vinyl (or even CD... they did self-release it on cassette but I refuse to count that).Their second EP did make it to vinyl recently and it’s every bit as good (or better!?) than this baby. Weirdly, it’s on a label that seems to specialize in 80s style hardcore. Waveless are lovely though. Sweet comfort for my ringing ears."

Check out Waveless on Bandcamp! Connect with them on Facebook!

Yoni Wolf on The Ophelias

"I first randomly came across The Ophelias a couple years ago playing a gig on the 4th of July at a park near my house. I had just been in the parade playing a kombucha bottle with a stick stick (like from a tree, not a drum stick) and found myself in a tincture and rhythm fueled trance, dumped out of the parade into this little park. And there they were— The Ophelias: four teenage girls up on a temporary stage, playing, what to me at the time, sounded like a mix between Velvet Underground, underground British psych-noise-folk-rock from the late ‘90s / early 2000’s (think Hood, Movietone, Crescent), and some kind of softer side of punk. I had a little conversation with myself. “Is this good?” “Yeah this is good.” “Fuck yeah this is good.” But with the makeshift PA in the outdoor acoustics, I couldn’t even really hear what the singer was saying.

Flash forward a month or so and I ended up at a weird little show at a community center for another young band I had met at the Music Resource Center where I volunteer. Lo and behold, three of four Ophelias were side-women in that band (The Wonderful Sadists). I was able to buy The Ophelias’ hot-off-the-press CDR there with handmade collagey album art. It contained the very songs you hold in your hand now. I went home and popped it in. Now I could hear the lyrics and the arrangements more clearly. Wow! So intuitive and naturally inventive arrangement-wise and the lyrics were so honest and emotional, with a sense of humor and not at all cliché. And the singer was so dry and understated. I was IN. I listened to nothing else for the next month or two. All I wanted to hear was Creature Native. I’m listening to it again now as I write this and I have to say, I still feel the same way."

Follow the Ophelias on Bandcamp! Connect with them on Facebook!