“I don’t know what to do, I’m feeling kind of lost.”

This was my son after the announcement that his job would be lost to COVID shutdown, a job he had only recently started, a job he adored working at as a stagehand in a Boston music venue.

This was shortly after it had been announced that my daughters would, in fact, not be opening for Caspian at their show in Cambridge because it was cancelled, and would not be going into the studio any time soon to record their new album.

That was the impetus back in April to get this tiny little label going in a new direction. I sat for long nights thinking about the state of things in the world, and in the local music community, and I didn’t see much hope in the short-term of things getting back to “normal”. I so desperately wanted to help my kids get out of their depression of lost jobs and lost opportunities, of being stuck inside without friends and with online classes, and I just said “fuck it, let’s do something.”

So here we are after a few months, and I am writing my first wrap-up of what’s been going on inside these virtual four walls for just the last month (July), which doesn’t include all the time we spent building out the studio.

They appear to know what they’re doing (I think)

OK, so here we go, this will be off-the-cuff as the old people say, so I may forget a few things:

Number 1: We made a website

We had no clue what we were doing, but if you’re on here reading this, I guess we did something right. I jumped on Squarespace and grabbed my domain from somewhere else, transferred it over and mapped out some basic pages. I knew I wanted a central spot to showcase all we were planning - the studio we were building out, the label we were continually growing, the idea of a live session broadcast, and the thought of getting some real journalism into the mix.

We, of course, also needed to rethink the brand and logo, and that is where Samuel Bendix came in.

I mean, it’s masterful right?? I asked him to kinda sorta make something like, you know, cool, and from that he produces this. Just stunning.

Number 2: We signed and released Geskle

This kid Jesse came in with a vision and a mission. He was growing his TikTok audience from nothing, and he knew what he was doing. He already has taught us so much about new growth platforms, and in turn we unleashed Aaron on his music and together they sat for endless hours in his room to produce his first EP Geskle - Rose Colored Glasses. As I type this blog post I am also on Slack with him and he’s counting up the numbers (“Gonna hit 15k streams by tonight”, “Over 1k saves on ruby which gives me a 1:5 engagement to stream ratio“). It’s stunning - this EP was released literally FIVE days ago.

Number 3: We signed on a music journalist

Most of the words you’ll see on this blog site are written by someone far better than me. I am hacking my way through it, but Dakota Antelman is the real deal. He’s a musician, a student of music history, and source of deep knowledge about new music trends. I asked him to join the fam and he graciously did, and has been killing it with his writing. Keep coming to this blog site to see more and more of the work he does.

Dakota is slightly too tall for our basement studio, but never complains about bumping his head

Number 4: We’ve started the Circus Trees release process

This has been a long-time coming. So many delays and disruptions, but finally, here is what was written on their social media page this morning:

Last night the great machines clicked down to zero and released our single 'Wasted Air' on streaming platforms and bandcamp. This is the first of a few things happening in the next two weeks to promote and distribute our new album.
It has felt like an incredibly long and challenging road to finish this music. Delays in recording, the loss of performance opportunities, and the overshadowing of everything in our lives by the very real and much more important crises of pandemics and injustice meant that we've kept our hands delicately closed as we held onto this album quietly, silently, our hands cupped over to prevent it from flying away too soon.
And because there has been no real resolution to saving lives lost to the virus; and because there has been no real justice in bringing equality to all people in spite of the overwhelming public support for the Black Lives Matter movement; and because there continues to be predators and enablers in our music community; and because there remains a shocking disparity between the ultra-wealthy and the tragically poor; and because there continues to be an absolute crisis of leadership and a disgusting lack of choice in old, white, male bags of flesh;
Because of this, we are not so much *celebrating* the release of our album as much as we are releasing it in the desperate hope that it can be some small token of good in all of our lives.
So as we uncup our hands and quietly let our delicate little butterfly free, we hope it comes to land on your shoulder, or in your garden, or on your bedroom windowsill late at night, where we can talk through it all together in whispers of sadness and anger and pain, and we can make each other feel just a little bit better to make it through another day together.
We love you all.
Peace,
'Trees

You can check out all that’s going to be happening this month with the girls on their page.

Number 5: LIMID gets on a compilation

The Light Inside Me Is Dead is Eoghan’s project that he works on in between all of the million other things he does down in the basement studio. It has been quietly receiving some wonderful accolades from people in the post-rock community, and on the last day of this month we got to announce that he had been included in the compilation “Open Language V”, distributed by A Thousand Arms and curated by Young Epoch (titans in the scene).

Side A has LIMID, but the entire compilation is an utter banger

Number 6: We ran a livestream session

We did it, we safely brought in bands to the studio over the last few months and recorded them, mixed them, mastered them, cut up video, interviewed them, and put it all together onto a platform built with Squarespace, Twitch, Discord, OBS and some other random technologies. Oh yes, we did. And it was AWESOME!

We were desperate to emulate the feeling of a live show, so we took three of the bands that we recorded, livestreamed them out into the airwaves, then finished the feed and posted the copy of it…NOWHERE. Just like a live show. If you missed it, you missed it. Don’t miss the next one, because the compliments we got were incredibly supportive.

Number 7: Aaron does…everything

It’s impossible to catalogue all this young man does. In fact, he is the producer/engineer behind two of the releases above (Geskle and LIMID). In addition he is the face of the label and the social media and aesthetic director, and photographer, and overseer of everything. Oh, yeah, and an insanely gifted and talented musician under the label Pillbook PLBK.

For this month, though, the one standout is what he did with another artist, someone quite famous - he mixed the first solo single for Brian Swindle, lead singer of Have Mercy. Yeah, he did. Its right here.

And you can read all about the background story here!

Turn your head, or your laptop, and read those liner notes

Ok, I think that’s enough for one month.

Peace to you all, and remember: Five By Two Is Family.

Robert

Monthly Wrap-up for July 2020