It’s a busy time here at LITA. Both the Seattle and LA offices are in full overdrive gearing up for our two anniversary shows (LA is SOLD OUT and Seattle is quick to follow, so grab those tix before they are gone!) not to mention the epic road trip. Oh yeah…the road trip, that’s only 4 DAMN DAYS AWAY!!! So we’d better stop beating around the bush and go ahead and announce the winner already.
That said, let’s first start off by saying thanks so much for all the entries. In total we got around three dozen emails and we were blown away by your letters, which came from as far away as Australia, Portugal, and the Middle East. We spent hours this weekend reading and rereading all of the entries and it was a difficult choice to pick the right person that was willing to submit themselves to such a torturous journey. Our hearts are warmed by all the love sent our way. And with this, we give you the winner of the seat in the van: Matt Snodgrass from Tulsa, Oklahoma.
When reading Matt’s letter, we were beyond touched by his passion for all things LITA, and knew he would be the right fit to join us in the van. We recognized Matt’s name right off the bat, as he’s been a loyal LITA vinyl subscriber from day one, and has continuously been atop the totem pole spreading the LITA gospel throughout the fine state of Oklahoma. Also, Matt has NEVER been to the West Coast! Matt will be taking two weeks off work (lucky he hadn’t already used his precious vacation days), and we’re overly joyed he’ll be joining us on the road trip!
So we’d better get back to work. We’ve got a lot of packing to do! Be sure to follow the road trip on the official Tumblr page, Twitter (#litaroadtrip2012) and Instagram (@lightintheatticrecords) where we’ll be posting all the minute-by-minute shenanigans. Keep an eye out for flash sales at random rest stops and photos/videos from the road.
TGIFBF! It’s Free Basin’ Friday! This week we couldn’t be more stoked to give away a LP copy of Diana Darby’s IV.
Diana Darby’s I V (intravenous) is a brand new album of songs that have passed through seven years of fire in a real life, retaining what Pitchfork called “minimal, whispered rendition(s)” of “powerfully fatalistic evaluations of hope.”
I V follows in the footsteps of three critically acclaimed releases and continues Darby’s unique ability to create beautiful and scary confessional tapestries, full of “fine lyrics and stellar arrangements” (Pop Matters). It is sure to reconnect Darby to her loving cult — and entrance an entirely new crowd of noir-folk fans with her deceptively lovely songcraft.
Though living in Nashville for the past several years, Darby returned to New York in 2011 to record new songs inspired by a staggering amount of deeply challenging circumstances. Her guitar and vocal tracks were cut live from ferociously focused single takes. Additional instruments and harmonies were added back home. The result is a nuanced, intense, gorgeous full-length album with top-notch studio players (Viktor Krauss, Dan Dugmore, and David Henry) adding to Diana’s vision.
The rare combination of chillingly evocative musicianship, coupled with Diana’s voice and words has produced a fourth album that is anunforgettable psychotropic journey.
Leave a comment below with your name and email (kept private) for your chance to win! Winner will be announced next Friday.
Please note: Giveaway ended 1/13/12. Thanks for all your comments!
Up until his passing in January 2011, Charlie Louvin was working with Igniter Books on an autobiography about his life. We’re excited to say that the book, Satan Is Real: The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers (Igniter/Harper-Collins), finally comes out this week. The book, written with Benjamin Whitmer and featuring a forward by Kris Kristofferson, is loaded with anecdotes and stories about the late great Charlie Louvin and his life as half of the Louvin Brothers.
Our friends at Igniter sent over a PDF with a full chapter from the book and as an added bonus, we’ll be giving away one copy! To get your hands on it, leave a comment below with your favorite Louvin Brothers song, album, or memory. Be sure to include your email address (this is kept private) so we can contact the winner. We’ll announce the winner on Friday, January 13th.
For more info on the book, visit Harper-Collins and be sure to check out our new Louvin Brothers reissues here.
We’re just two weeks away from the official CD release of Beautiful Rivers And Mountains: The Psychedelic Rock Sound Of South Korea’s Shin Joong Hyun 1958-74 (LP is available NOW!). As a special treat for you this week, the first ten pre-orders for the CD and the first ten orders of the LP will get a limited edition autographed faux-polaroid of Shin Joong Hyun! Only 10 copies for each format, so get your orders in now for your chance to win!
Order Shin Joong Hyun – Beautiful Rivers And Mountains: The Psychedelic Rock Sound Of South Korea’s Shin Joong Hyun 1958-74 (LITA 065) Double LP HERE!
Pre-order Shin Joong Hyun - Beautiful Rivers And Mountains: The Psychedelic Rock Sound Of South Korea’s Shin Joong Hyun 1958-74 (LITA 065) CD HERE!
This week we’re celebrating the release of Jim Ford’s Harlan County! Since it’s Friday and we’re feeling especially generous, we’re offering a free copy (CD or LP) to one lucky winner. To enter, “Like” our Facebook page and leave us a comment on our Wall. What kind of comment, you ask? Well, just send us a high five or tell us how much you really, really, really want your very own copy of Harlan County.
Winner will be picked at random and announced on Monday, 2PM PST! Show us some love!
Oh yeah, just in time for Summer, we give you the much-anticipated Our Lives Are Shaped By What We Love: Motown’s Mowest Story 1971-1973! Available NOW! This release, the first ever Mowest anthology, features 16 tracks–with lovingly re-mastered audio (from the original tapes!)–and extensive liner notes by Kevin “Sipreano” Howes with rare photos. The deluxe 2xLP set is housed in an old-school gatefold Stoughton “tip-on” jacket (with a 4-page insert), as it should be. And the CD edition gets the same treatment with a heavy card-stock Digipak and a 32-page booklet! Featuring Odyssey, Syreeta, The Sisters Love, Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons, The Commodores, and more, this is a slice of Motown like you’ve never heard before.
For more info, audio samples, and to order v/a Our Lives Are Shaped By What We Love: Motown’s Mowest Story 1971-1973(LITA 064 CD | 2xLP) click HERE!
****Pssst! – there’s more…****
To celebrate the release, we’re offering one free copy of either the 2xLP set or the CD to a lucky winner. To enter the contest, follow us on Twitter and tweet some love, along with your name, our way. This Thursday, June 16th at 12PM PST, we’ll announce the winner via Twitter. So keep them eyes peeled!
As featured on Now Again’s Those Shocking Shaking Days compilation, AKA (an acronym of Apotik Kali Asin) started in the early 70s in Indonesia’s second largest city, Surabaya, East Java, and came to be known as one of the nation’s greatest rock bands. Starting off their careers as an infamous local band with notorious crowd pleasing antics, AKA regularly went through repertoires of Steppenwolf, Grand Funk Railroad, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix,Cream and Three Dog Night before finding a significant audience outside their home city. It was soon after that the band signed with a Jakarta based label, Indra Records that they started producing a steady release of albums, including 11 studio LPs and a couple of compilations.
Thanks to the supreme digging efforts of Jason “MoSS” Connoy (who, as you’ll see below, also compiled Those Shocking Shaking Days) our thirst for more heavy psychedelic & progressive funk from Indonesia is whetted with this new release–AKA Hard Beat(CD | 2xLP Strawberry Rain | SR001)available now from Light In The Attic. MoSS was kind enough to take time from his busy schedule to talk with us a bit about his various reissue projects and the new AKA comp.
****DIG THIS****
We will be giving away ONE free copy (either CD or 2xLP) of AKA Hard Beat. Leave your name and email in the comment field below (email is kept private and not shared). We’ll announce the winner on our Facebook and Twitter pages on Friday at 12PM (PST). So be sure to follow us to see if you won!
Tell us about Strawberry Rain? What inspired you to start the label?
I have been helping various labels source reissue material for a few years now. A year or two ago I had the reels to an Iranian band (JOKERS) and while I was listening I started to wonder why I hadn’t tried my hand in the reissue market. I’ve put out releases in other genres of music, so it’s wasn’t a huge learning curve. I ended up putting out JOKERS with a friend of mine named Gholam on a label called Fading Sunshine. When the AKA contracts came about, my friend had other commitments so I decided to start another label named after a song from the group Ellison.
Your first release, the JOKERS album, got a lot of play around here. What was the story behind that project?
Well, a close friend of mine, Gholam, is a notorious psychedelic dealer, and has been for many years. He sourced all the Iranian stuff well before it hit eBay, including the Abbas Mehrpouya and Pari Zangeneh LPs and 1000′s of 45′s. He used to live in Tehran as a teen, and was a heavy rock head back then, which obviously wasn’t common there. He managed to preserve a lot of his collection, and kept contacts over the years. We ended up finding one of the engineers from one of the bigger studios in Iran, and got the reels out of there. Sadly all but one of the Jokers has passed, but the lone member was very happy with the result. We plan to have some other unreleased Iranian music in the future as well; it’s just a matter of timing.
Recently you curated and compiled the excellent Those Shocking Shaking Days comp on Now Again. When I first got that, I was immediately struck by how weirdly similar in vibe the Panbers track “Haai” was to Jane’s Addiction. A few weeks later I heard Henry Rollins play “Haai” on his KCRW show which he preceded with Jane’s Addiction’s “Stop” …he drew the same reference. A really great record.
Those Shocking Shaking Dayswas a great opportunity for me. Egon at NOWAGAINand I have traded records over the years, so when he approached me about working on an Indonesian comp with him, it just felt natural. He’s very good on the marketing end of things, as well as discovering music, and sourcing bands. It took us a long time to get it all done, but we’ve had good feedback on it. Indonesia has a pretty interesting scene. I have 1000′s of LPs, tapes and magazines. TSSD was an intro to the scene as a whole, from a Western perspective.
Your new release is the first ever anthology of the Indonesian psych/progressive funk band AKA (also featured on Those Shocking Shaking Days). Tell us about this project.
I have been collecting AKA records for many years now. I discovered them early on when I got into Indonesian music, and really tried to collect all their LPs as quick as I could. Some of their albums are bloody rare and took me years to find. I haven’t seen a single copy in over 10 years. I always saw AKA as a group that had a couple of good songs per LP, and wished they had created a single “rock” album. They actually had one released in Indonesia with most of the songs on this comp, but it was only available on tape in the late 70′s. When we worked on the TSSD contracts, the opportunity came for me to create this record, and here we are.
Tell us about the re-mastering process. It’s a process that we spend a lot of time on and it’s great to hear when others do as well. What was the source material that you had to work with? Vinyl? Master tapes?
There are no master tapes in Indonesia outside of a small number of bands. The majority of the labels would erase the previous session after it was cut to vinyl. They didn’t want to import new reels, so they re-used existing ones. I used M- vinyl copies for all the masters. I can’t stress how long it took to get clean copies of their discography. It was hell. I had VG copies already, but didn’t want to ruin the sound quality from noise restoration. The transfers were done on a very high end turntable/stylus. I didn’t want to lose anything in the transfer itself. When I compare them to the originals, they’re unbelievably close on all fronts. The originals themselves vary in quality depending on label, and who mastered them at the time.
A bit about the design/packaging. The LP release a super nice tip-on sleeve (Stoughton?) and lots of great photos. Were you able to get in touch with the band or their family members for archive photos?
Photos came from old photographers and Rolling Stone Indonesia. The band themselves only had footage of SAS, the group that was formed post AKA. I’m looking into that reissue now, I’m not sure what will happen. I try my best to give customers something that feels good in their hands. I like the heavy sleeves.
What’s next on the horizon for you and Strawberry Rain? Can you divulge any details?
I have some Zambian albums I’m currently sorting out, and I’m also in talks with a few other bands that I need to keep quiet for now. I’m also looking to release another unreleased Iranian album in the next year or so if things work out.
Lastly, a spin on the oft-asked “what’s the first album you ever bought?” question. What’s the first reissue you ever bought or remember having?
I honestly don’t remember. Good question, I just have no clue.
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For more info, audio samples and to order AKA Hard Beat (CD | 2xLP Strawberry Rain | SR001) click HERE!
Interview by Patrick McCarthy. Thanks to LITA’s Josh Wright for setting up the interview. Special thanks to MoSS for doing the interview.
Oh man, our mailboxes were SWAMPED today and yesterday due to the absolutely ridiculous flood of people excited about trying to win a MUNSTER BUTTON CONTEST! All three of our contestants not only ably put “MUNSTER BUTTON CONTEST” as their subject line, all of them even included pithy comments within the body of the emails. Now, we thought we were pushing you with a demanded subject line, but you guys really stepped it up.
Sadly, there can only be one, well two winners in this case as we found another set of buttons wedged between Techmonkey Noah’s ass and the couch he calls home, and those winners are:
BEN ARMSTRONG
and
BILL BERRY
Congratulations guys! Good work on those emails!
Now the rest of you crazies, stop the email train, and go listen to some of these sweet Munster titles:
So, we’ve stepped in to the age of digital photography here at Light In The Attic and wrangled ourselves a pretty f’n sweet new digital camera. And in honor of our pretty f’n sweet new digital camera, we’re having A CONTEST. We pretty much just wanted a reason to take a picture of something, and our good friends at Munster Records in Spain had just sent over these kind of awesome Munster Buttons, so we just put two and two together.
We’ve offered far cooler stuff in the past and no one’s responded, so we are going to make it easy, the first person who emails noah@lightintheattic.netwith the subject line MUNSTER BUTTONS, gets this fabulous four pack of buttons pictured below. That’s it, email noah@lightintheattic.netwith the subject line MUNSTER BUTTONS and if you’re first, you win. Not hard, start emailing … NOW!
In the Beginnging There Was the Publisher’s Clearing House, then There Was Powerball, and Then There Was Tiger Beat’s “Date With Scott Baio!” … And Now There is the Behemoth of All Sweepstakes! Get Your Crayons Out! It’s Time for the Contest of All Contests! It’s The SATURDAY KNIGHTS LUXURY PAMPHLET SKILLS CHALLENGE COLORING COMPETITION!
Last Monday morning, May 7th, between the hours of 9 and 10 AM, The Saturday Knights hijacked the John In The Morning show on KEXP. (We hope you made sure you listen to it because these guys got up early for YOU!) This will be the offical start of the Coloring Book Contest, which lasts till Friday, May 25th.
The winner receives a PERFORMANCE AT THE WINNER’S HOUSE (TSK supply the music, you supply the PA/monitor/mixing board)*. Second Place winners will get dinner at Dick’s Drive-In with the band!
Download your preferred page of choice at the bottom of this page and start coloring. Submit your drawings to any of these fine Seattle record stores:
or via good ol’ fashion mail to (get to know your USPS guy! Buy a stamp, save an e-mail):
TSK Coloring Book Extravaganza
c/o Light In The Attic
P.O. Box 31970
Seattle, WA 98103 USA
Artwork will be judged by The Saturday Knights and a cadre of homeless “coloring art critics” and the Fremont Troll, and by the statue of V.I. Lenin, and the statue of J. Hendrix too, to be fair.
* Caveat: Sorry, but your house must be located in the Seattle/Tacoma area
Diana Darby’s I V (intravenous) is a brand new album of songs that have passed through seven years of fire in a real life, retaining what Pitchfork called “minimal, whispered rendition(s)” of “powerfully fatalistic evaluations of hope.”
