There was a pretty big musical party going on by the mid-1990′s and it was named Shoegazing by iconic UK music mags NME and Melody Maker (named after the way bands would stand stoically, in an introspective manner, and stare at their shoes while they played their instruments). Wild guitar loops and effects with droning vocals were (and still are) the trademark sounds of this sub-genre’s distinction. Melody Maker even went so far as to dub it “The Scene That Celebrates Itself,” as the members of the various bands were always attending every other bands gigs and often would join in or simply join the other bands. The scene was powered by groups that went on to bigger things like Blur, My Bloody Valentine and Ride, as well as lesser known but no less important groups like Slowdive, Chapterhouse and Spacemen 3. Add Pale Saints, Catherine Wheel, Swervedriver (!) and Lush to this original list for a sufficient introduction to the sound, which gave way to the Dream Pop scene (The Verve, Kitchens Of Distinction, Spirea X and especially The Church being fine prime examples thereof).
By the late 90′s to early in the 21st century, Dream Pop began morphing into what is now sometimes called the “Nu-Gaze” era. Inclusive to this movement are many bands and artists that have music available from great labels like Tee Pee Records and Sonic Unyon (through The Orchard, of course), such as The Joy Formidable, Whirr and Ringo Deathstarr. And although the current list would also include some crossover acts like M83, Silversun Pickups and Beach House, Shoegaze/Nu-Gaze has come full circle twenty years on.
One of The Orchard’s newest labels, Slumberland Records, has been releasing like-minded singles and albums since 1989, and has put out recordings in the past by groups like Velocity Girl, Stereolab and The Lilys. More recently, they’ve struck oil with The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart and Frankie Rose and The Outs, among others. Look for the new Veronica Falls album on February 12.
Happy New Year to everyone reading and hopefully we’ll all be able to “get our gaze on” in 2013!
This is it… our last 15th anniversary post for the year. It’s been a great one, and as we shared in last month’s post, we’re so very grateful to have these incredible years behind us and such promising prospects ahead.
For this post, we got all Orchardite minds together to assemble our trimmed down 15 most likely predictions for 2013. The product you see below is a carefully crafted selection of scientifically backed probabilities, and we stand behind these insights 100%.
1. Cleopatra will release Sounds Like… The Sound Of Music Meets Gangnam Style.
2. ICQ will launch a major comeback including direct chat lines with your favorite artists.
3. Our Compilations department will invent a new genre called “PUBSTEP,” Irish folk tunes set to dubstep beats. It will become so popular that iTunes will create a new genre page for it.
4. Apple will introduce iChew, described by Phil Schiller as “an amazing leap in chewing gum technology.” Each iChew will be WiFi and Bluetooth enabled, letting you download new flavors from the Cloud, or if you’re an AT&T customer, using your 4G connection. It will be Siri activated by double-chomping with your canine tooth and speaking the flavor you want to download. Within seconds, the iChew will taste exactly like the requested flavor. Each flavor will cost 99 cents, and each stick of iChew will cost $399.99 for the Trident size, $499.99 for a “Hubba Bubba” size.
5. Lychelle [our wonderful receptionist] will forget to send out an email about washing the fruit before consuming and someone will consume before washing.
6. Tee Pee Records will issue a vinyl release with blotter acid in the label ink. Lick, spin and enjoy!
7. One of Richard Gottehrer’s YouTube ideas — a cooking show filmed at CBGB with recipes sung by The Raveonettes — will become so wildly popular that Honey Boo Boo will mention it on her show.
8. We will be approached by a startup that would like to offer our clients the ability to automatically send their fans customized Happy Birthday songs on their birthday. This startup will have just received 6 million dollars in funding.
9. The Orchard’s Got Talent will beat The Voice in a ratings war.
10. What.cd will be heralded as the future of record stores.
11. Microsoft will announce a bold new direction for the Xbox platform: video games.
12. After several more rennovations, the kitchen will become self-aware, reveal itself to be Hal9000, and turn on Mike P. Fueled by its own supply of caffiene and energy drinks, it will begin sabotaging the music distribution operations and give us no choice but to become a vendor of faulty Nespresso machines.
13. Leaps in nano-biotech will result in the RIAA developing a way to infect P2P filesharers with “monkey pox.”
14. Richard Gottehrer will write a new Orchard theme song. Ask him to sing the original.
15. In 2013, people will stop predicting the future.
Avid readers of The Daily Rind may recall a recent post on the virtues of Psychedelic Rock in which the author hinted at a future exploration of the Stoner Rock genre. And those readers would be forgiven if they assumed that this exploration would be endlessly procrastinated. But that is not the case, and the day is now at hand.
Stoner Rock and its related cousins like Doom Metal and Desert Rock have its origins in the music your weird uncle used to listen to back in the 1970′s. Bands like Blue Cheer, Mountain and Black Sabbath created a sludgy, heavy sound that ruled the rec rooms and muscle car sound systems of the day. But that sound fell out of favor in the 80′s. One of the few bands keeping the torch lit during this period was Saint Vitus, the only metal band on the seminal punk label SST Records. I don’t think I was alone in thinking at the time that perhaps this particular band was stuck in some sort of space-time loop, and that otherwise the sound I loved was dead. That was not to be the case however.
In the early 90′s, a strange wind was blowing across Palm Desert in Southern California carrying the sounds of a new generation of rockers. Kyuss, arguably the first true stoner rock band, sprang from this scene as did other acts that would later go on to wider success such as Fu Manchu, Nebula and Queens of the Stone Age. Those bands and others like them created a genre that, while rooted in the retro sounds of a past era, has gone on to influence countless bands around the world and continues to be active and interesting today. And many of those folks have found a home at The Orchard.
One label that is killing it right now is Tee Pee Records, whose bands hail from all parts of the globe (and maybe even some from parts of Middle-Earth). These include Germany’s Kadavar, whose self-titled debut is available now, or Sweden’s Truckfighters, whose most recent album is Mania. Speaking of Sweden, there are two new releases from the Doom Metal scene there that can’t go unmentioned. Available on Nuclear Blast, they are Witchcraft’s Legend and the upcoming Graveyard album Lights Out. Even indie rocker J Mascis from Dinosaur Jr. has gotten in on the fun with his two side projects Heavy Blanket and Sweet Apple, both on Outer Battery Records.
Whatever happened to that band Saint Vitus you may ask? Are they still trapped in time? Well, fret not because chrononaut, guitarist, and singer Scott “Wino” Weinrich continues to put out releases under various guises to this day. These include Premonition 13 and a couple of solo projects on Volcom Entertainment, as well as a limited edition colored vinyl release from his band The Obsessed (available on October 23rd at your local independent record store).
Don’t stare or it will blow your mind…
While we pride ourselves on the diversity of musical content we distribute here at The Orchard (as we do indeed do it all), there are some genres that continue to rear their heads and shoulders above the pack and span the demographics of our customer base. The one I’d like to cover today is Psych-Rock.
Your grandparents probably listened to the original bands and their hits (The Strawberry Alarm Clock’s “Incense And Peppermints” and The Electric Prunes “I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night”) and our friend Lenny Kaye (later to be Patti Smith’s guitarist) compiled the first Nuggets compilation records of this genre in the early ‘70’s (the third track on Nuggets Vol. 1 is “Night Time” by The Strangeloves (featuring The Orchard’s own Richard Gottehrer).
Since the late 70’s, Psych-Rock has come back again and again, and The Orchard really joined the fun when Richard and Seymour Stein revived their Blue Horizon imprint in 2010 and chose The Black Angels Phosphene Dream as its first release. This perfectly written, performed and produced album of Psych-Rock-Pop crossed over in a big way (#50 debut on the Billboard Top 200) and helped pave the way for other labels like Sonic Unyon and Tee Pee Records to flex their Psych-muscles. SU’s Ringo Deathstarr, for example, have released 4 titles in 2 years (including their latest, Mauve on special……….wait for it……….mauve vinyl); sales are brisk and steady and their vinyl always sells through quickly.
In December, look for releases from our newest Psych-leaning label, The Reverberation Appreciation Society, including the DVD/download of Austin Psych Fest 2012, the 5th annual event of it’s kind. While the content is not confirmed at press time, the performers at this year’s Fest included The Black Angels, The Black Lips, The Brian Jonestown Massacre and Dead Meadow (who are really more Stoner Rock, but that’s another story for another day…).
Talk about a triple threat! Hopewell is teaming up with Mark Gardener of Ride to cover Brian Eno‘s “Needle In The Camel’s Eye.” And this is only the first song off of the Brooklyn rock band’s new EP, Another Music, coming out on September 11th via Tee Pee Records.
Another Music is a collection of 5 songs that started from an endless recording project for the band during a 2009 tour. Hopewell recorded a handful of covers intended to feature David Baker (Mercury Rev’s original singer, who had disappeared from music 15 years earlier), but Baker bailed at the last minute. Determined to work with one of their shoegaze heros, Hopewell reached out to Mark Gardener, and we could not be more excited for the result! To top it all off, the music video for “Needle In The Camel’s Eye” will be directed by Art Boonparn.
According to their Facebook bio, Hopewell spans “time, exploring the outer/inner reaches so you don’t have to.” Their EP will definitely be doing just that by exploring their music sound, combining their noisy ’90s roots and their psychedelic dreamy pop sounds.
“Another Music is designed to draw you in with a couple of catchy songs then lead you out past the buoys into deeper water,” Jason Russo of Hopewell states. And after a decade of continuous releases, we can’t wait to hear where Hopewell’s new material will lead us.
