September 27, 2009
Brassland Profiled on Asthmatic Kitty
We at Brassland value community and collaboration, on building a collective sense of artistic purpose. That urge has increasingly led members of the Brassland stable toward working with those at Asthmatic Kitty, a label that shares this ideal. Building on this spirit, AK is currently running a weekly feature titled Labels by Alphabet. Michael Kaufmann, Asthmatic Kitty's A&R man, describes the premise as such:
Asthmatic Kitty is going to take the next few months to celebrate labels we feel have integrity and good taste. Every week we will celebrate a different record label and provide you with a brief description in the sidebar as well as a streaming radio playlist in our AKRadio player. We want to acknowledge and honor folks who are doing things their own way and releasing music that is important for the world to hear. We also want to take a moment and do the exact opposite of what we should be doing, promoting others instead of ourselves... Supporting and promoting independent music in general is good not only for these other businesses but our own.
Brassland received this week's treatment, written by Mr. Kaufmann, who we feel was on target with this opening:
Brassland has, among its central ethos, a notion of art which reflects deeply on the passing of time. Maybe it has something to do with musicians reflecting on mortality. It sounds grim in text, but lovely and transcendent on record.
"Lovely," "transcendent" - hooray for us! To read more about Brassland and AK's cross-pollination (which includes a book club), click over to Mr. Kaufmann's brief essay.
Also feel free to listen to Brassland's AKRadio playlist. Featuring previously unreleased songs by Clogs and Baby Dayliner and a song from Doveman's forthcoming album The Conformist, it's got some new goodies you'll want to hear.
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