New 3-Way Singles In The Works!

I've just finished the artwork for an unprecedented all-Indiana 3-Way Single, featuring The Lost Ambitions, '78 Camaro, and Drum Kit.  Expect indie rock in heroic doses!

We have a few singles in production right now, each vying for which will be released first: will it be the one described above (and by the way that "river" shape started life as a photo of a lightning bolt!), or will it be the contemporary americana and folk of Sam Corbin, The Marvins, and Joshua Davis?  Then again, could it be the ear-scarring dirges of American Gothic, BerT, and So Long Naota?

It remains to be seen. Drink plenty of water and get some fresh air so you'll be in tip-top shape when the next release drops.  And thank you for joining us for this musical hike.

Regardless of who gets out of the gate first, we've got some great songs lined up and are putting the finishing touches and final polish on a great collection of summer music that spans the gulf between endearing duo folk and paint-melting noise rock. Its a unique honor to curate such an open-minded (and open-ended) series, and I look forward to unveiling each installment as it comes to fruition.  This is an artist-driven project and nothing is more satisfying than hearing the results of creativity unfettered by the usual music biz bullshit.

Of course, I take special pleasure in doing the artwork (minus some occasional great guest artists like John Praw).  In my cluttered office garret in leafy Lansing, Michigan, I collage, I color, and I daydream of you out there beyond the electrons, stumbling across a song or an artist and finding in it a new best friend.  Music is a lifelong romance.

-- Peter

Artwork For Upcoming Releases!

Here is the artwork for our next three releases in the 3-Way Singles Club.  Over the last few months we've transitioned the series out of being on a strict monthly schedule and into a project-by-project schedule.  Each of these releases is well underway, and they'll all be dropping late winter/early spring!

BerT
American Gothic
Unworship

Joshua Davis
The Marvins
Sam Corbin

Honah Lee
Language
Decades

We Are Back. Did You Know We Left?

It is with relief and elation that ITAV returns to the internet, after a prolonged and unplanned hiatus that began last October.  Many a hiatus occurs over something like lack of funds or "artistic differences" or even just simple ennui, but in our case it was a literal miracle:

My good friend Ande was diagnosed with a genetic polycystic kidney disease when we were about 14.  He was on a class trip and took a tumble down a steep hillside and got a little banged up, and in the process of checking him out and patching him up, they discovered the cysts.  This led to his mom also being diagnosed -- she had been living with the condition, unaware of it because it hadn't presented itself yet.  Polycystic kidney disease (PKD) leads to eventual kidney failure, usually around the age of 40 or 50, but it could be that Ande's injury back in 1987 accelerated his condition a bit, and this past summer he went into kidney failure.  Due to his blood type, his wait for a transplant would have been 7-8 years, a virtual death sentence.  Several people volunteered to be tested as a possible match, but my wife was the first and she was a positive match!

We began making preparations for the transplant in February of 2013, but, surprise, it was scheduled for October 19 of 2012!  We arrived at the transplant center at U of M Hospital around 5:30 AM that morning, and by 7:45 Randi was being prepped for surgery.  By about 10:45 her kidney had been removed, and about 3 hours later it was in Ande and had begun processing the built up toxins in his body.

The next two months were a long, slow period of recovery, but both patients were doing well.  I played nurse, helping her stand up and get back into her coccoon on our couch, administering medications, running errands, and cooking.  My employers generously let me take two weeks off, which let me be with her 24-7.  Many friends came by to visit, bring food, cards, artwork, music and other things.  It was like being in an envelope of love and hope.

Randi has been back to work for about a month now, and Ande for a little longer.  ITAV took a couple extra weeks to reorganize, but we have re-entered the fray with Volume 18 of the 3-Way Singles Club, which can be streamed or downloaded here:  http://music.itavrecords.com/album/3-way-singles-club-vol-18

The single features an exclusive version of Wisconsin indie band Pushmi-Pullyu's song "I'm In Love Again," captured in a crystalline live rendition.  Also appearing is a fantastic neo-soul tune, "Never Noticed" by Surgeons In Heat, a band that shares members with the more indie-folk inclined Pioneer, who you might remember backed up Small Houses on their great reading of Paleo's "There, At The Top Of The Stairs" all the way back on 3WSC Vol. 10.  "Never Noticed" first appeared on their self-titled album back in April, which you can hear in its entirety here.  Closing out this edition is the first musical offering of 3 Trains And Me, a collaboration helmed by longtime Lansing-area musician and musical supporter Augustine Jay.  Here he works with members of Narc Out The Reds and The Hat Madder to hatch a slide guitar-infused piece of dark swampy blues called "Born Under."  A pretty fantastic triad of songs, if I do say so.

It also features a brand new piece of exclusive artwork made for us by John Praw of Pushmi-Pullyu.

This follows the equally exciting raw nugget  of rock power we released in October, 3WSC Vol. 17, which featured great songs from the rising Racket Ghost, pulsating angularities by the Mind Guards, and a left-field piece of gospel lo-fi from Chaz Brackx and The Big Bucks.  Go get it here: http://music.itavrecords.com/album/3-way-singles-club-vol-17

Along with change of the life-altering variety comes, well, more change.  The 3-Way Singles Club began in May of 2011 as a monthly series, "3 songs, 3 bands, 3 bucks."  Proceeds from the sales of the series and the Mega-Subscription (see the sidebar on this page, to your right) have helped to generate a fund called the Independent Musicians Fund, which currently holds $229.72 -- not a princely sum, but impressive in its own right as it was generated solely through the sale of independent music.  The IMF continues to be a sacrosanct fund for independent musicians, see the tab above to learn more about what it does, and why.

Where the change occurs in the 3-Way Singles Club is not in its priorities -- great songs in groups of three, benefiting the very community that they came from -- but rather in its scheduling.  Rather than be a metronomic monthly installment, the series will transform into a project-by-project event, allowing artists greater freedom to make bold statements without the artificially imposed pressure of the monthly deadline.  We look forward to bringing you the best exclusive songs we can find, in manageable bite-size capsule form, to be taken as needed when you have a fever for great new sounds from hard-working artists who labor without the benefit of media attention or large promotional budgets.  Thank you for accompanying us as we continue this journey!  And stay tuned for announcements.

October Artwork Preview!

Although the elk is probably my favorite ungulate, it was an honor to work with this moose to create a spectral, time-shifting apparition or manitou for next month's 3-Way Single, which will feature heaviness from Madlantis Records' flagship band BerT, noisy hardcore/hardy noisecore from Lansing eardrum destroyers American Gothic, and a mystery band (dubbed "Golden Rulers" below, however it is possible that their name could change several times in the next few weeks).  The Plague Years were originally, tentatively slotted onto this single but couldn't participate this time around -- we look forward to working with them down the road a ways, as they are an amazing band.

 

October's single will be a ferociously grounding slab of heaviness, something we've been wanting to bring to the 3-Way Singles series for a long time now.  We're developing the next 12 months worth of singles, and welcome your suggestions and recommendations of artists to invite!  Thanks for having open ears... 

(and you can visit this moose skeleton in person at the Chicago Field Museum, hyperspace portal not included).

New Single from Rioux features Björk, Painting by Peter Richards

Brooklyn NY-based musician and producer Rioux is set to release Re: You in April, a 5-song E.P. he has described as "a mix tape of sorts."  On February 17, prefixmag.com unveiled the first song from Re: You, "Unison (feat. Björk)."  Featuring subtle pitch shifts of Björk's vocals and a geometrically bewitching beat, the song also featured cover art by ITAV founder Peter Richards (me!), a painting titled Walls Impede My Progress.

The track is available as a free download from the artist's SoundCloud, so enjoy!

NYUlocal.com, writing about a February 26 live performance at Glasslands Gallery, observed:

Erin Rioux (NYU ’12) talks about sound as if it were a physical substance that is at once biological and mathematical. Notes are sound waves to be “sculpted,” sounds are “raw” or “organic” or “digital” or “tactile.” His music, perhaps related to his attachment of these words to his sound, tends to take on an elastic, ethereal but beat-driven quality.

Rioux recorded the garage-influenced beat (for "Unison") with a live drum kit, which is one of the ways he builds his sound “from scratch,” favoring live instruments over stock samples. 

“I don’t make electronic music to use sounds that are only digital,” he explains with a hint of quiet connoisseurship.

Plug Gods referred to Rioux's music as "manifesting a sense of grace and cultivated beauty in its minimalism," something we couldn't agree with more, as evidenced by his 2011 audio/visual album Everything You Need Is Right Here, which is startlingly diverse songs and electronic workouts accompanied by film collaborations with video artist Cabrido.  The album manages to meld post-punk with indie folktronica in a very ear-friendly way that nonetheless takes you on a gently psychedelic adventure through sunlight, percussion, and electronic transcendence augmented with lots of live instruments and percussion, including tastefully "out" sarod workouts.  The album is also available on vinyl, in a limited pressing of 300 copies.

You can load and watch the entire album as a video playlist by clickity-clicking this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYdtoKVTjPI&p=9CB495959032649A

Erin Rioux has been a supporter of my art for a long time now.  His former band, Rochester MI-based The Novel Citizen, commissioned posters from me that still remain favorites in my portfolio.  He said he couldn't talk about some of the people he was collaborating with on Re: You when we were discussing the licensing of Walls Impede My Progress, and I thought "cool, he must be working with someone he admires."  Little did I know!  This is an exciting time for Rioux, a great track re-imagined from Björk's luminous Vespertine album, an honor by proxy for me (and excellent exposure for my painting), plus a free download for you!

My Message is Unimportant: the Transfigura Collages

In a little bit of a departure from your usual ITAV blog post, this week's takes a detour into the strictly visual realm.  Lacking a proper official online outlet for my art right now, I wanted to share the first five pieces of an ongoing digital collage/photo-illustration series I've been working on for the last couple weeks.  You can click the images for a larger view, if you are inclined.

When I was younger I used to make collages in my art classes, and the most frequent material to cut up and rubber cement back together was catalogs and old National Geographics.  I've tried to approach this series with the same general parameters, only with Google image search as my toolbox -- starting with some sort of fashion image and then building up elements from nature around it.  Although the results look quasi-spiritual, atavistic, or even hallucinatory, I think what I'm going for is a visual representation of creative release.  Especially the outpouring of creative ideas that can be inspired by encounters with the natural world: order, chaos, decay, the persistence of life of all kinds, the inevitability of death.  Without all those processes in constant flux, art would be impossible.

I also wanted to consciously make something that is approachable for a wide variety of people; thus the colorful aspect, clean lines (mimicking an x-acto blade digitally as much as I can), and juxtaposition of easily identified elements.  The payload is buried in the trendy headscarves and parkas that erupt in various colorful ways; the catalyst is often something flawed yet orderly (i.e. titanium-coated quartz crystals) that may have some religious/mystical baggage but that are ultimately derived from the simple elements of nature and time.  My message is unimportant.  These are deliberately open to interpretation.

At the end of the day, these are a good way for me to hone my Photoshop skills.  I've always tried to use the software in a painterly way, and steer clear of it's more obvious filters and effects.  I like to push its limitations, and in the process I often discover it's lesser known capabilities -- much like my approach to playing bass.  I have many more of these Transfigura collages planned, but I wanted to give an early glimpse of them, maybe gather some feedback.

Another parameter I've set is not so much a time limit, as an effort limit.  When these are done, they're done; usually after 2-3 hours of work.  Any roughness becomes part of the finished product, and I move on.  It can be difficult for someone who will laboriously apply 8-10 alternating layers of polymer gloss and matte medium to a painting just to get the right "beeswaxy" lustre to walk away from something that could easily be worked and re-worked and obsessed over, but the point of these collages is not to be precious about the details.  Working quickly, and with prefab imagery, I have to make intuitive decisions and respect that they are final.  It's good for me.

One way or another, my findings from this series will work their way into the cover art and fliers I make, though I usually trend more towards the Blue Note aesthetic.  I've always seen art and music as a continuum rather than as separate creative compartments.  I also think that some of the more accidental, improvisatory moments of making these can translate into confident musical decision-making.  Ever since I incurred some sort of repetitive stress/tendonitis injury on my left arm this past spring I've been working on looseness and fluidity in my music-making -- and breaking old patterns.

I think I'll get out the actual knives and glue at some point, once I've fully codified where this series is ultimately headed.  And for those of you who remember drop-in collage nights at Scene Metrospace (circa 2006), how about reviving that -- even if the venue is just someone's living room?

From the ITAV Design Studio: New 7" from Narc Out The Reds drops July 21st!

Coming out hot-on-the-heels of their new single for ITAV, Narc Out The Reds will be releasing a new double single on inky-black 7-inch vinyl Thursday, July 21st at Mac's Bar before immediately departing on an east coast tour with The Hat Madder.

I had the honor of working on the cover art for all-of-the-above.  In fact, in many ways I've been preparing to do the Pawnmower artwork for over a decade!

The concept for Pawnmower dates back to about 2000, before Chris Baratono had even formed Narc Out The Reds.  Chris had recently finished recording the lost Lansing indie rock classic From Turmoil's Soil with his former band The Caustic Pop, and we were working together at a Tower Records in East Lansing.  Chris mentioned that he had begun writing a song, "Pawnmower," and we started talking about vinyl cover art.  I think even a decade ago, it was always the intent that this would be on vinyl. 

I produced a hasty ballpoint sketch not that dissimilar to the finished piece.  Leak In The Disease, the flip-side of Pawnmower portrays a bleeding, machine-gunned jukebox as an extension of this idea, so as a double A-side 7" single, Leak In The Disease/Pawnmower forms an interesting dual visual narrative, full of suggestions of meaning but elusive as to who exactly the pawns are.  Are we the pawns?  Is this a polemic against fascism?  What does the drop of blood clinging to the jukebox's coin return slot insinuate?  Who pilots the plane strafing the pawns and (presumably) the jukebox?  Us?  The band?  The "industry?"  Is the jukebox standing heroically, or has it just faced a firing squad?  Despite the enigmatic qualities, I still wanted these images to buzz -- to actually produce an audible buzzing noise.  That proved technically impractical, so I got as close as I could.

Once again, I relied on World War II/Cold War-era propaganda as my source material.  The technology for jukeboxes and the technology for fighter planes arose during roughly the same era -- a 40-year pocket of time that pitted ever more fearsome mechanized engines of war against the freewheeling ideas of jazz and the early thrashing fun of rock'n'roll.

Narc Out The Reds, The Hat Madder, The Fencemen, Frank And Earnest, and Aspiga will be playing at Mac's Bar this Thursday, July 21st (Facebook event here).  Obviously, that's a not-to-be-missed lineup.  Immediately before the show, starting at 8 PM, Narc Out The Reds and The Hat Madder will be on 88.9 FM's "The Basement" spinning the new 7-inch as well as the Hat Madder's über-catchy new single Mayflies... and maybe, just maybe these songs too.

Immediately after the show, the two bands will be piling into their vans and departing on a night drive for Brooklyn, NY, the first stop of their campaign supporting this hot new circle of wax.