Oops, I fell off the horse for 4 months! My fucking bad. Well, now we have a dick load to cover that has transpired in the past 16 weeks. I'll try to break it down as best as I can. If you don't feel like reading this, here's the important junk:
- Couple things released some major some not
- Several artists (familiar and not to the LPR base) are here now
- Bye-bye music streaming!
- Hello website bullshit for the rest of our lives!
- Newsletters are back for fucking real this time, I swear.
And for the rest of yous:
MAY
It looks like by the time the last newsletter came along
Tyler's new-ish album
Interaction Decay came out so I don't need to introduce that but I will iterate that I enjoy it and if you like things that go beep in the night you will dig it. Something we didn't get to though is
Burning Dutch Girl's New EP that released on May 22nd called
Consolation Prize - it's pigfucked noise rock for noise rock's sake. Everyone here quite likes it, and I myself have spun it every once in a while because I like how it combines torrential screamo techniques with crazy cool noise rock distortion. Check it out!
JUNE
June was really weird. I think since it was the middle of the summer everyone was just truckin' along, finishing up stuff or having mental breakdowns or working dishwashing jobs in me and Jack of
Burning Dutch Girl's case. Not a lot of music biz went down in general, besides us all getting into Skin Graft Records and generally just getting off the rails completely creatively. There was, however, the release of the single version of
Hell by yours truly -
Solska - along with a backing band dubbed "The Sex Subversives". The catalogue number for it here is
LPR-XXX because it's just a single. It's 17 minutes of absolutely pummeling free jazz. I think it's pretty dope stuff.
JULY
BIG MONTH! Kinda. Big month for me, but not really for many other people. Spent the first three quarters of the month just writing dozens of emails (around one hundred) to publications and magazines trying to get them to give a shit about me and my art and this label. It was kind of really depressing but I didn't even know what the fuck I was getting into yet. Finally, on July 28th
Look What Fear's Done to My Body by
Solska and the Sex Subversives was released... not nearly as much happened as I'd hope would happen. I'm still very proud of it and think it's the best thing I've ever created, but I think I expected it to change my life or something and that's just not how it went down. How things did go down were still very good though, I was just too disappointed this thing didn't get me on Pitchfork or suck my dick or something to really care that much and I got into a very deep depression that lasted like a whole fuckin month. Still though, I've probably spilled enough ink on this record for me to really feel justified in writing more about it here, so just go check it out for pete's sake. The only thing I can really gaurantee is you won't be bored, at least.
August
August was actually pretty eventful for LPR standards. This is the month where I think a lot of the label inbreeding started...
Kit of KitWIP started working more on their own music enlisting the help of resident artist Skokapus for promotional material on the album and is also doing some things that I literally just don't know about with Jack of
BDG. Those cats sure are secretive. We'll see what the fuck that's about! Anyways, on the 9th of August,
Tyler released the soundtrack for a game he's been working on called
Death Paddle. He's talked pretty extensively about this idea for intense action-based pong as a simple game project to get himself finally started in serious game development for a while now and I think it's really cool, and I think this soundtrack also stands on its own. The art was created by a very old friend, Fabric, and you can check out their very cool art at
https://fabricici.net. Next is actually a release by a brand new LPR artist...
PRINCESS COOKIE! I actually still don't know if your name is a reference to that one Adventure Time episode. I should just ask soon. Sorry, Juniper. It's a good name either way. Anyway, her sincerely great album "
for everyone who cried at my birth but not my funeral" was a released on the 31st, and WOW what a great fucken way to end an otherwise completely miserable month for me full of failing grades and car crashes. Don't get me wrong, this thing is emo as a motherfucker but don't let that at all fool you about the actual tone this album takes. It's sincerely an incredibly sweet and optimistic project. Musically, it goes everywhere from your typical 5th wave weirdo ballads to emo-pop to full on Animal Collective style folk experiments. I think it's incredibly endearing and anyone reading this should check it out instantly. For me, it had a very special impact - I think this album really made everything click for me about the purpose of all of this shit I'm trying to do and create.
The purpose of LPR and whatnot... it all came into perspective when I listened to the finished version of this through the first time. Here's the fucking thing - we're not necessarily creating because we want to be these incredible era-defining artists or anything, it's more like we're creating just as a means of survival. We're just doing what we can to have an impact on other people and our community and it's absolutely vital we continue to do this to foster friendship and positivity in these incredibly incredibly bleak times... there's no point in grueling over the fact Pitchfork didn't review your album. Who gives a fuck because guess who does like it? All your friends like it. And if it's just me and my friends making art together for the rest of our lives, and no one else gives a single fuck what we're doing, then that still sounds like a pretty fucking sweet deal to me.
September
Okay, current month. Date at the time of writing this is the 29th... I have an overdue book at the library, god damn it. Besides that, things have been pretty great. Everyone's still making things with each other and steadily things are coming along with myself and me and
Jack's project. The LPR community grows closer together and we're all having a great time down here. As for me, I've been writing a lot of pop adjacent songs lately, just been in a real verse/chorus sort of mood. The next
Solska album will indeed be with the Sex Subversives. Other than that, keep close eyes on this here website, because a lot of shit is gonna be popping up here over the next few weeks (and you've probably already noticed if you've been paying attention). Alright, see ya next month!
