3-Way Singles Club, Volume 13 Drops Today!

Three brand new, exclusive tracks by Sylvan Lanes (a.k.a. Matthew Milia of Frontier Ruckus), Gifts Or Creatures, and White Pines... available as of right now!

With the release of Volume 13, we enter our second year of releasing an exclusive, 3-artist, 3-song triple digital single of brand new independent music every month! Thanks for being along for the ride. You can download/stream the latest single here: http://music.itavrecords.com/album/3-way-singles-club-volume-13

3-Way Singles Club Volume #13

It is with great excitement that we announce the next installment in the 3-Way Singles series, and the inaugural release of year #2 of issuing monthly 3-artist digital singles.  This Tuesday (May 22nd) the curtains will be drawn aside, and brand new tracks from Sylvan Lanes (which is Matt Milia of Frontier Ruckus' solo moniker), Gifts Or Creatures, and White Pines!

Early listens to these three tracks, hyperbole aside, promise impulsive stabbing of the repeat button during summer front porch reveries, tree-lined drives on nameless county roads, and reckless plunges into wooded pools from rope-swings of dubious structural integrity.  It's music to float in mid-air to -- however ephemeral such an experience may be; after letting go of the rope, time dilates infinitely into memory.

We had hoped to have this single out on the 15th, and in the interest of avoiding pretensions of being anything other than a small, hard-working label composed of one guy with a full-time day job, we shall blame the 7-day delay on some guy named Wayne.*


* There is no guy named Wayne.  Wayne is the personification of all the daily delays, technological inconveniences, accidental misinterpretations, lost e-mails, and unplanned naps that conspire to sideline even the most committed projects.  We are at war with Wayne. 

3-Way Singles Club Volume 12! One Whole Year of Singles!!

With the release of Volume 12 of the 3-Way Singles Club series, we complete the first cycle of releasing 3 brand new, exclusive songs by 3 different independent artists every month, for a year!  This volume includes a fresh song from GTG Recordings' Drinking Mercury, as well as newly recorded material by Veloura Caywood, and Idaho-based Michigan expat Geistlos.

                     http://music.itavrecords.com/album/3-way-singles-club-volume-12                     

The 3-Way Singles Club is an effort to pioneer several musical models at once, while the industry proper flounders around trying to find a way to stay relevant as a gatekeeper between artists and audiences.  Increasingly, traditional labels and distribution models are falling by the wayside.  This can be a little sad to watch, as historic studios and beloved record shops close their doors.  There's a certain David-and-Goliath quality to it, though, too.  The stereotypes of the cigar-chomping corporate exec gunning for another mega hit; or of the "svengali" grooming impressionable, ambitious youngsters into a veritable brand name cash machine, are enduring images for a reason.  Those guys really exist.  But they've expense-accounted themselves right out of a profession, as artists and online resources have partnered to form effective direct-to-audience business models. 

Is there a happy medium?  Sure, and I think some of the smaller and medium labels are doing an excellent job of farming quality artists, giving them creative free rein, touring them diligently, and introducing new talent.  What the big guys should have been doing all along.  I frequently look to a label like Merge for inspiration, speaking personally.  I love their bands, I buy their records and CDs, and I read their book "Our Noise" and wanted to immediately climb in my car and go on tour.

The 3WSC (3-Way Singles Club) glances backward to the glory days of vinyl singles, when upstart labels would offer mail-order single-of-the-month clubs.  Every month, you could unwrap a brand new slab of black wax.  There was mystery, a sense of discovery, and the cachet of being in the know about the latest sounds.  The 3WSC is a contemporary variant, using the internet as its post office and digital files as its medium.  Artists record brand new songs, sometimes written specifically for the series, and bonus tracks or free downloads pepper things up for listeners keeping track.  The motto "3 songs, 3 bands, 3 bucks" encapsulates the basics of the club, though there is the option to subscribe to the 3WSC as a whole (see the sidebar to the right of this column), paying a flat fee of 30 bucks that unlocks the veritable Pandora's Box: to date 33 songs, 4 secret bonus tracks, and the 3 new songs listed in the first paragraph on the way any hour now!  As the 3WSC's catalog grows, the per-song investment diminishes.  Already, it's below the internet-wide standard of 99 cents per song, if you're of the accountant mindset.

Since last May we've released unheard music from Double Saginaw Familiarity, Joshua Barton, Stargrazer, RxGibbs, Rachel Yezbick, Lost Leaves, Narc Out The Reds, The Playback, The Hat Madder, The Plurals, Terminal Girls, Cavalcade, Frank And Earnest, Jet Lag Superstar, New Venice, Sleeping Timmy with Aly Rose, Flatfoot, Drunken Barn Dance, The Hunky Newcomers, Josh David & The Dream Jeans, Cat Midway, The People's Temple, Jackpine Snag, Nocturnal Aviators In Action, Seth Bernard, Steve Leaf, CrookedSound, Sunil Sawani, Teag & PK, Small Houses featuring Pioneer, Tin Window, Brooks Mosher, and Benoît Pioulard! 

Additionally, our second year is shaping up to be even more exciting than the first!  We'll kick things off in May with a three-fer from Sylvan Lanes (Matt Milia of Frontier Ruckus performing solo, just prior to the release of their brand new album Eternity Dimming!), Lansing's experimental folk duo Gifts Or Creatures, and Akron, OH-based White Pines (who just issued the marvelous Plume Of Ash E.P. on Yer Bird).  That's just the first month!  We have plans for great tracks from Calliope, The Break-Ups, The Mind Guards, Racket Ghost, Middleman, Regretters, Caleb Dillon (from the Bob Pollard-approved Starling Electric), Onondaga, and much more to follow over the course of year two!

So there's the ongoing effort to release three new songs per month.  There's the subscription deal, which gets more generous the more songs we release.  And finally, there's the tongue-in-cheekily dubbed IMF (Independent Musicians Fund), which is where all those 3-dollar download charges and 30-dollar subscriptions go.  The IMF is a sacrosanct fund set aside for musicians in need, to help defray the nickle-and-dime costs that can interrupt the flow of creativity.  Growing in small increments, the fund has worked its way into the triple digits, and our goal for 2012 is to triple the size of the fund.  What altruistic cause our independent panel of judges will choose to grant or loan the contents of the fund to remains unknown even to me (I've excused myself from the panel to avoid any perception of cronyism or conflict of interest); but we'll be getting to know our panelists and discussing more about how your support of the 3WSC feeds back into the musical community over the next 12 months.

It's with extreme gratitude and barely-restrained excitement that I embark on this coming year of music, and it has been so wonderful to have you along for the ride!

-- Peter

"Trieste" E.P. Free to 3-Way Singles Club Mega-Subscribers, Thanks to James Cameron!

In honor of filmmaker James Cameron's solo dive to the bottom of the Challenger Deep (the deepest spot on Earth -- about a mile deeper than Mt. Everest is tall!) this past week, ITAV is making Stargrazer's 2010 instrumental concept EP Trieste available for free to 3-Way Singles Club Mega-Subscribers!  Look for it with your subscription materials later today.

The Trieste EP, on release, received nice reviews from a couple blogs that we admire greatly, Oh Drat in the UK and Mostly Midwest over here in the USA!

Trieste describes the January 23, 1960 dive by Navy Lt. Don Walsh and Swiss scientist Jacques Piccard in 4 musical movements over 15 minutes.  Until now, this was the only manned dive to this depth (35,797 feet down) ever attempted -- not even robots or unmanned subs have returned to the deepest point since (though a couple ROVs have gotten close)!  The descent to the seafloor took place over 5 hours, most in complete darkness (sunlight only reaches down about 500 feet). The two men stayed for 20 minutes on the seafloor before beginning a 3-hour ascent back to the surface.  Cameron stayed at the bottom for nearly 3 hours, alone, in a claustrophobic-looking submersible shaped like a green bullet.

I was genuinely afraid for Cameron.  The Bathyscaphe Trieste was a one-of-a-kind submersible, basically a perfect sphere of steel slung under a giant float equipped with weights held in place by electromagnets.  A window cracked at about 30,000 feet down, sounding to Walsh and Piccard like a gunshot.  That had to have been a tense moment!  Cameron's descent in his submersible, Deepsea Challenger, sounds like it was a lot quicker; the sub is described as a "vertical torpedo."  The trip was not without mishap: a hydraulic leak rendered the robotic arms inoperable and obscured Cameron's viewport with grease.  Considering the crushing pressures that far down (about 1,500 times our atmospheric pressure), though, that's a small problem for the prototype Deepsea Challenger to encounter.  But from the accounts of a recovery helicopter spotting the resurfacing craft "bobbing in the open ocean," it sounds like Cameron, unlike Piccard and Walsh, made his dive without 7 miles of cable tying him to his support boat.  Gutsy, James, very gutsy.  Cameron has already stated he'd like to return to conduct more sample-gathering and scientific observation on what he described as the "almost lunar" hadal plain of the perpetually dark Challenger Deep.

For those of you not (yet?) part of the 3-Way Singles Club Mega-Subscription family, you can stream Trieste for free in its entirety here:  http://stargrazer.bandcamp.com/album/trieste-2

3-Way Singles Club #11 Hits the Airwaves! Benoît Pioulard, Brooks Mosher, and Tin Window bring the Atmosphere!

[click the image to be whisked away to another place.]

The eleventh installment of our series picks up a thread that has been dormant since 3-Way Singles Club Vol. 2 way back in June of 2011 – that of transportive ambient sound; consciousness-erasing, mood-altering sonic terrain. In this case it unfolds over the course of nearly a half hour of music, effectively transforming Vol. 11 into a mini-album.

While atmosphere has always had some part in the proceedings at ITAV, here it takes the forefront. These three pieces of music unspool slowly, like old 8mm films of water moving hypnotically and glinting in a mesmerizing, fluid field of movement. The lines are blurred, the polaroids over-exposed. The language isn’t in a common tongue, but it sings of universal frequencies and deep undertows, sine waves and bit damage, somewhere in the backrooms and sub-basements of the psyche.


Tin Window is a fairly new project by Ann Arbor-based Erin Elizabeth, a solo work running parallel to her collaboration with Will Lawson and Jónó Mí Ló, Full Frontal (a.k.a. Fullscreen). Tin Window’s approach to ambience is process-based, a textural affair that uses audio happenstance as much as careful sculpting. In “Frankincense” the grit and grain is the careful twisting of sound sources, and the bell-like clarity of Elizabeth’s voice deep within a shifting mist of overlapping tones and the resulting richly colored synesthesia.

The name Benoît Pioulard is known to listeners of handmade sound, most frequently associated with his albums for Chicago-based label Kranky. Precis, Temper, and Lasted have a dual focus. At least half of the material on each album is Pioulard’s lambent acoustic songwriting amid beds of warm ambience, taped sounds, and layered field recordings. Intermingled with the songs are numerous short-form pieces that explore drone, static, and musique concrète. For “At Least We Were Both Wrong,” he expands the latter idea into a quarter hour piece that sounds like bowed contrabasses deep within the veins of the earth; dark waters moving slowly and even majestically far beneath old, old roots.

Austin, TX-based producer Brooks Mosher is probably best known for movement-inducing techno records on labels like Dolly, Comfortable Records, and Other Heights that reference his Michigan upbringing with touches of house and acid peeking through often intricate mixes. An Eno-esque interest in the potential of ambience has always been present as well, either converging with fluent beats or rising out of the rhythm to lull, lift, or float a listener. “Umbrellas In The Sun” conjures the slow march of the sun across a field of the titular objects, the simple science of shadows casting radiant music on warm sand.

This is speaker music. It’s headphone music. It’s sound works for the pure glory of sound. It’s easy to get lost in this wilderness, and once you surrender you’ll see the incredible amount of detail that underpins this world.

Next month:  Veloura Caywood, Geistlos, and Drinking Mercury!

Viking Moses & Mother McKenzie to perform at SCENE Metrospace!

March 21st!  With special guests Joshua Barton (of Fields Of Industry) and Malls.  ALL AGES.

Details and RSVP here!

 

doors at 7:00 PM, music at 8:00 PM, listen to 88.9 FM The Impact for chances to win tickets, only $6 at the door!

Viking Moses to release "The Conquest Night" March 13!

We're excited to present our first ever album review/preview, from a fellow independent label The Epiphysis Foundation!  Full disclosure: we've been eagerly awaiting this album since we met Brendon in 2010 at a show with Stargrazer and Doby Watson held at Lansing's own Basement 414.  We'll try to remain objective, but all disclaimers apply.

On March 13th, the Epiphysis Foundation will release Viking Moses' 3rd full-length album The Conquest Night, which like its predecessor the moving The Parts That Showed follows a loose story arc.  The Conquest Night weaves together a tale in episodes, of two kids out past their curfew and their adventures (and misadventures) over the course of the night until morning.  They encounter wild dogs, forest fires, confrontations with other children, fierce feelings, wonder, and fear.   Bridging an emotional range that flattens out to some extent as we become adults, The Conquest Night explores the sort of innocent love that youth is uniquely capable of.

Viking Moses is the touring and songwriting project of Brendon Massei, active since 2003.  After releasing debut album Crosses and having a song included on Devendra Banhart's acclaimed Golden Apples Of The Sun compilation (2004), Massei toured relentlessly, playing numerous DIY venues and developing a reputation for forming ad hoc bands the day of performances, or even occasionally drawing people out of audiences.  A Viking Moses show has an intensity and range that would be difficult to imagine bottled on record, and indeed his gorgeous sophomore album The Parts That Showed (2008) was subdued by comparison, although it encompasses a lot of unflinching emotional territory and takes on the story of an underage prostitute with a novelist's precise hand.  Neither morality play nor cautionary tale, The Parts That Showed is a raw, minimal and at times noisy folk album with lots of edges surrounding a crystalline, skeletal heart; a human tale embracing the beauty and ugliness of life rather than playing to our expectations or grasping for meanings.  And it does so by transmuting this grit and joy into a surprisingly uplifting, melodic, and memorable clutch of songs.  Massei writes that he hopes Dolly Parton will perform it one day, and one can hear the country icon's influence and imagine her doing just that.

The Conquest Night was recorded over the same two days in 2005 as The Parts That Showed, with Massei backed up by Deer Tick's John McCauley III, as well as Cody Brant on bass, Spencer Kingman on piano, and Jacob Sato on drums.  Seven years later, this more driving counterpart album finally sees release!  Despite the intervening years, the recording sounds immediate and fresh.  Along with nine original songs, The Conquest Night also features "Crowned," penned by Scout Niblett and Daniel Johnson's "I Live For Love."  Taking what might seem a straightforward concept and performing alchemical, extended and timeless songwriting mutations on it, Brendon Massei transports us back into the bodies of his protagonists, revealing minute details and emotional watersheds with an immersive, observant and unpolished vocal delivery that is nonetheless riveting.

The ecstasy of misbehaving receives early celebration with the album's opening track "On The Way Home."  It is immediately followed by an encounter and flight from a pack of dogs.  In a particularly surprising and atavistic moment, Massei yelps with the tribal resolve of the dog pack.  The respite from their narrow escape is brief; a fire is built to warm by and sparks rise up to the stars.  The album's first single "Follow Foreign Love" can be heard here along with some unique, even ambient, reworkings of four other songs.  "House Up Along The Way" most closely recalls the minimalism and spaciousness of Massei's previous album, while "Down In The Water Below" makes the most of a simple refrain, using it to reflect the moon, fireflies, starlight, broken branches, and the simple reverie of swimmers.  "Cardboard Swords" and "Hayfields" carry on right on the heels of the prior songs, the evening divided into chapters worthy of Twain as the reality of morning's approach sets in.  The companions continue to wrestle and chase, unwilling to acknowledge that fatigue and sunrise are unraveling the conquest night.

Viking Moses has crafted a tale of pounding hearts and innocence; of children in vast fields with every direction open to them and the thrill of making your own decisions.  A propulsive follow-up to The Parts That Showed, The Conquest Night draws us back into that world for a low-lit adventure scrambling through abandoned houses, going for night swims, and finally letting go of the night that has carried us along like a wave.  Massei's parting songs,  "Leave Each Moment" and Johnson's "I Live For Love" may set us down gently, but the poignance of memory and the exhilaration of the song-cycle linger.

You can purchase The Conquest Night here: http://www.epiphysisfoundation.com

If you're in the mood, listen to Viking Moses perform Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You," the closing track from The Parts That Showed.  It will change the way you think of that song.