Thursday, May 13, 2010

Swill Children split series


I stumbled across this new label Swill Children Records, who, ambitiously is starting out with a split series... the more I see splits, the more I think they make the most sense for the format. If you go to the trouble of pressing a vinyl 7", the best you could hope for it to at least get rid of them all and press another one...that's the best case scenario to make the whole enterprise self sustaining. The best chance of doing that is one kick ass artist, and hope there's enough interest, or get two, bet on the spread...not that there's any chance with the artists represented here that there's going to be any trouble, but in the whole scheme of things, let's say.
There's always a huge art element that goes into any single, or music for that matter really, the look, the whole aesthetic is hugely important to provide clues to where the artist or label is coming from but when a label itself has a point of view and then combines it with great music under that umbrella....well it's a new era of labels with this definitive aesthetic...you can easily name a slew of them: Hozac, Columbus Discount, In the Red, Tic Tac Totally, hell even Sub Pop, or Merge who started it all. But when a single combines one of a kind at objects with the unique music artifact, it's elevating the entire work, and let's face it, just plain giving into the fetish of getting this limited object.
Swill Children, led by founder and showing artist in his own right Jesse Hlebo recently started this Sorrow/Jubilence split series:

Three splits curated by Jesse Hlebo addressing the themes of sorrow and jubilance.
Each record is in an edition of 333, are all cyan colored vinyl with custom printed covers (each will be different in some manner)

With music by:
Lucky Dragons/Weekend
Okie Dokie/Nu Sensae
Ty Segall/Mikal Cronin

The first single with Lucky Dragons and Weekend is an insanely reasonable $7, direct from the Swill. Impose Magazine has a sample of the Lucky Dragons track here. I'm only vaguely familiar with them from a couple other singles, and it fits in nicely with Ducktails kicks I get on every once in a while. This would even fit alongside Gary War, for that meditative mix of sound collage, questionable time period view. I like this direction that Lucky Dragons is going...it's subtle and smart, so many times you get hit over the head with piles of noise, that adds up to a confused nightmare. He's deftly wielding little melodies and loops in a real journey, you don't exactly remember how it started or where you're going, but it's great. Weekend, however I haven't been able to actually track down their sound very easily, but I'm guessing it's similar based on this description:

THIS RECORD:
Lucky Dragons' track 'We Lost' is a hauntingly meditative piece that is at once nostalgic and fearful.
Weekend's 'Squawk' juxtaposes field recordings of birds with sharp, hypnotic beat, culminating in a manner one could almost consider Caribbean.

SC001
Edition of 333 cyan colored vinyl
All covers unique risograph prints

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Looking forward to the third split with Ty Segall which should be available soon...

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