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Echo Lake - Wild Peace

Thu, 24 May 2012 20:42:00 -0400

Very happy to say Echo Lake’s debut LP - Wild Peace - is due out end-June through No Pain In Pop in Europe and the iconic Slumberland Records in North America. Teaser clip here:

nopaininpop:

'-7°C, 5:41PM' mix

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 01:00:00 -0500

Did a mix about ‘things ending, even weekends’ for the No Pain In Pop blog.

Since hosted at Dummy Magazine - with some kind “quite wonderful, and very essential listening” sentiment - and equally gushingly at ‘imagination incubator’ site FEELGuide, who accurately compare “the now infamous” NPIP to “a dog who would start wagging its tail and barking at the door an entire half hour before your dad got home”.

End of a long weekend in Toronto (currently working editorial and bookings at NXNE); Mickey Newbury, A Grave With No Name, Yoko Ono, Russell Haswell, Julian Casablancas, Lawrence English, Windy & Carl, Kyle Bobby Dunn, Red Alder and Women (RIP Chris Reimer) helping to fill in the gaps.

Heads Turn

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:59:00 -0500

Interview and profile over at Gogoyoko’s Label of the Week, piece on labels with a design ethos in January’s edition of Creative Review, MP3.com’s coveted label feature and a playlist with commentary at French site 716.

+ 5/4/12 Update: Interview and label profile with Clash Magazine.

2011

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 14:02:00 -0500

Patten at #28 in FACT Magazine’s annual top 50, which Forest Swords scored #1 in 2010; Bleep’s picks of 2011; DFA Records’; Juno design awards; Fake DIY’s favourites; #24 at Boomkat; #29 at XLR8R; Self Titled magazine; RCRD LBL; #4 at Lyt Mag; The Line Of Best Fit #7 (“exhaustingly brilliant”)...

..and my picks of the year - Makeout Videotape, Drake et all - over at Urban Outfitters.

R1

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 06:02:00 -0500

Interviewed by Huw Stephens - either side of Forest Swords and Echo Lake tracks - on BBC Radio 1 last night.

Who Thought

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 04:04:00 -0500

Video for new the Proper Ornaments EP, due out on Monday. Launch show is this Friday at the Shacklewell Arms in London’s Dalston, with support from label mates Echo Lake and A Grave With No Name.

nopaininpop:

Centered around the close partnership of frontmen Max Clapps and James Hoare, The Proper Ornaments make a thrillingly taut and melodic pop indebted both to the sun balm’d West Coast (the Byrds, Brian Wilson) and the driving, terse rhythms of the British Invasion & C86 (the Beatles, Postcard Records). Their debut EP is out on 12” vinyl and DL through No Pain In Pop next week and is available to order here.

Buried at Sea

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 11:06:00 -0500

Looks like we spent lots & lots of money on this video. Fantastic job by Natalia.

nopaininpop:

Natalia Stuyk directed video for Echo Lake’s ‘Buried At Sea’, from last spring’s Young Silence EP, shot off the coast of Granada, Southern Spain. Want to live inside it.

A Kaleidoscope's Centre

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 11:49:00 -0500

Revived the No Pain In Pop blog yesterday after it was hacked 6+ months ago and all hosted data lost. Coverage on this over at Altered Zones, first post below :

nopaininpopblog:

Spring’s ‘Erriapo‘ release through Uncharted Audio was an intriguing 17 minute introduction to the “house impressionism” of Finnish producer Ukkonen. More sunbled effets de soir broadstrokes here, as both tracks seemingly morph through time signatures - see his flexi-tempo experiment - frictionless; ’The Barbarian’ hitting an Axel Wilner epiphanous four minute mark and ’Primed’ building quicker over a frantic, slipping beat.

Ukkonen - The Barbarian

Ukkonen - Primed

Crystal Ball

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 08:05:00 -0500

Label artists cross pollination..

nopaininpop:

Doldrums gets tangled in with Montreal sparring partner and tour mate Grimes’ ‘Crystal Ball’ track from this spring. His own ‘Empire Sound’ EP is both out now through No Pain In Pop and available to stream in full over at Altered Zones. ’Crystal Ball’ appears on ‘Halfaxa’ LP through Arbutus Records, Montreal.

'Endless Winter'

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 09:08:00 -0400

… in a “Sysphean task of the leisure class” or “mountains move around Doldrums”.

nopaininpop:

Doldrums flying too close to the sun with his ‘Endless Winter’ video from the avant-pop Empire Sound EP, out on DL and 12”.

“A voice comes across mid panic attack..”

'Nov 1st & the Clocks Rewound'

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 06:32:00 -0400

Pretentious little mix for autumn’s passing, with Philip Jeck, Women, Buddy Holly, KLF, John Cale, the Microphones, Celer, Grouper. Latterly featured on Altered Zones.

'Alisa'

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 14:41:00 -0400

Halloween video for Echo Lake’s cover of a beautiful Ariel original, appearing on an extended reissue of their Young Silence EP licensed for release in Japan.

nopaininpop:

Halloween video for Echo Lake’s cover of Ariel Pink’s ‘Alisa’…

A/V

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 06:20:00 -0400

Going live, working long, stretching out the album campaign.

nopaininpop:

Lava strewn video for ‘Plurals’ by the ever-enigmatic patten, directed by Jane Eastlight. We’re proud to announce the London producer will perform a special audiovisual live show to celebrate the album’s release on January 19th 2012 (details and advance tickets).

100% Silk

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 06:11:00 -0400

Playing records tomorrow to prop up a great line up of familiar acts; Ital was a special guest at last week’s Nail the Cross festival, Protect-U were on this compiliation and Doldrums’ EP - which had Radio 1 play last night - is out next month.

Waiting

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 20:05:00 -0400

There are currently huge delays at European pressing plants due to a backlog of represses from stock lost in the PIAS warehouse fire. Glad to have this release (‘Remarkable, one of the year’s most exciting debuts.’ - FACT; ’Among the albums of the year’ - Boomkat;  ’Excellent’ - the Quietus;  ’9/10’ - Drowned In Sound; ’4/5’ - Resident Advisor) in the shops, and either side of Arthur Russell and Lee Scratch, finally.

Nail the Cross 2011

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 18:51:00 -0400

Fourth year of NTC music and arts starts tomorrow. Made a Spotify playlist of this year’s acts and a few acclaimed previous guests we owe our passable reputation to.

Nail the Cross mix

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 12:13:00 -0400

Promo mix for our annual Nail the Cross weekend in London. Featuring ALAK, patten, Halls, Sex Worker & some over zealous phasing effects.

Beat Magazine interview / "Hipster alert!"

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 05:29:00 -0400

Quick interview with Beat Magazine from a few months back. Happy to say that the ”my laptop and hard drive“ answer to the “what couldn’t the label function without and why?” question has since been proved wrong.

Wonderfully naive Time Out preview of Nail the Cross now online also; “Hipster alert! They should start filming ‘The Only Way is Dalston’ here.”

JP £s

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 20:10:00 -0400

JP £s:

Forest Swords and us somehow managed - the economics were so fucking tough, even for a charity release - to raise over £1000 for the Red Cross with a 12” EP and DL. We said thanks to those that bought it with a remix I commissioned but it’s just a pity we couldn’t donate sooner to help - record stores only pay out 3 months following sales.

nopaininpop:

We’re happy to say over £1100 has been raised for the Red Cross to date from the Forest Swords’ ‘Fjree Feather’ EP. We made our first donation today - proofs - but hope to add to this figure with the few final copies of the 12” and download release of the EP still available through…

Sonic DNA

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 19:46:00 -0400

Labels promoting releases online using additional content - videos, remixes, mixes etc - is mostly very standard and unfortunately reasonably uninspiring. Listening through some remixes often just created to bulk up the size of single or EP releases on iTunes by producers stylistically poorly matched to the tracks can be fucking dull (but here’s a good example). As ever, the marketing aspect relies upon the accelerated transfer (reblogging, Facebook shares, reTweets, Tumblr loves) of data to showcase the product or artist and is becoming very formulaic as a technique.

patten, whose debut album I’m currently working on, gave his remixers a very intelligent diktat. The producers were asked to work from just a tiny sample - “sonic DNA” - of the (then unreleased) parent track, without stems or any other samples to manipulate and submit the results. This methodology, in effect limiting the data flow, really caught interest and, thanks to our press team, received a huge volume of positive interest from across the web. [Listen here].

NB. Also mildly interesting is that major labels usually upload 1GB+ to an FTP server (in some cases accidentally including every inaudible ’stem’, even mistakes or outtakes, of the finished track) for a new producer to work from. Kinda the opposite of this approach.

nopaininpop:

Patten released his debut album -GLAQJO XAACSSO - last week to significant praise from FACT (“tremendous”), Boomkat (“among the albums of the year”), Bleep.com (track of the week), the Quietus (“excellent”), The Wire and Pitchfork.

Today sees the release of JLAGQO CSOAAXS, a remix…