As the Big Bad Major Label System falls down dead with an ax in its
back,it seems like the last man standing will be the long-struggling indies.
With more room to maneuver and more space to be creative with marketing and
deal-structuring, it's the artist-run labels that seem to have the brightest
futures, and none has as exciting and experimental roster as New York's
Young God Records, launched in 1990 by Swans/Angels Of Light frontman
Michael Gira.
Young God works with Larkin Grimm, Akron/Family, Devendra Banhart, Lisa Germano, Windsor for the Derby, Angels Of Light, and Mi and L'au to name a few, and demonstrating a deep understanding of how to create solid careers for its artists rather than riding the dead horse of a hit single, YGR has held its ground while the industry retreats.
- Blurt Magazine / Lavinia Jones Wright
Young God works with Larkin Grimm, Akron/Family, Devendra Banhart, Lisa Germano, Windsor for the Derby, Angels Of Light, and Mi and L'au to name a few, and demonstrating a deep understanding of how to create solid careers for its artists rather than riding the dead horse of a hit single, YGR has held its ground while the industry retreats.
- Blurt Magazine / Lavinia Jones Wright
Akron Family
Akron/Family came to NYC in 2002 to make music, hoping to find a thread of real magic still winding through The Big Apple’s music scene by retreating into a tiny Brooklyn apartment, where they made their own world instead, in complete and stubborn isolation. They grew alarmingly long beards,
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"Since Akron/Family's March '05 debut, the band has played hundreds and hundreds of shows across the known world, recorded a split album with Angels of Light (serving as backing band on the flipside of the disc), cut a few home-brewed albums to sell on the road, and generally worked themselves
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"For those of you who have seen my simpering, slavishly devotional Akron/Family blurbs and press releases in the past, wherein I make ridiculous claims about them (which I happen to believe!), it should come as no surprise when I reiterate they are one of the best bands on the planet. I don’t
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Akron Family and Angels of Light
"One week after returning from extensive touring with my favorite "rock band" in the world, Akron/Family checked into the studio to record this album. The songs, including five of my own performed with Akron/Family serving as (my) Angels of Light, were tracked live to tape and mixed, with
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Calla
"Calla are from Texas, and moved to NYC a few years ago. The music is slow and slinky, with deep bass and lots of space and atmosphere. The grooves have a swampy, narcotized-Cajun feel, with hollow-body-twang guitar that snakes and erupts through the mix with signature lines - Morricone-like
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David Coulter
Leaving aside any notions of virtuosity for his debut solo release, talented British multi-instrumentalist DAVID COULTER (ex-POGUES and TEST DEPT.) creates a series of somber, deeply resonant, sonic meditations. Thirteen primarily instrumental tracks played on array of instruments, including
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Devendra Banhart
To say Devendra Banhart is unique is an absurd understatement. When I first heard the voice of this completely unknown, precociously talented 21-year-old songwriter, I could not believe it. His occasionally warbling falsetto is alternately bizarre, comical, and often a little frightening. Coupled
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With a gratifying amount of interest surrounding Devendra Banhart’s debut album Oh Me Oh My The Way The Day Goes By The Sun Is Setting Dogs Are Dreaming Lovesongs Of The Christmas Spirit, Young God has harvested six new tracks from the floating and constantly replenished pool of songs at Banhart’s
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With songwriting and guitar-playing that have progressed since Oh Me Oh My The Way The Day Goes By The Sun Is Setting Dogs Are Dreaming Lovesongs Of The Christmas Spirit, and determined not to be ghettoized as a low-fi crank, Devendra Banhart and Michael Gira agreed it was best to move on to
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Culled from the same sessions as Rejoicing In The Hands, Niño Rojo is a companion album-- essentially the second part of a double album. Devendra Banhart is so amazingly magical, unique, and genuine that people just gravitate naturally to his music; best friends' grandmothers relate to it,
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Fire On Fire
Fire on Fire began without a name in a warm kitchen in Maine. Some of us used to be in Cerberus Shoal. We were three friends whose musical interests grew outward from the punk roots of our youth to a more personal intimate exchange and we began playing songs for each other. Songs on guitars banjos
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"I’m ecstatic that this is finally coming out! I’ve listened to this album hundreds of times by now and my enthusiasm remains unbridled. Their words and singing are great. They feed off each other and propel each other as musicians with a fierce and joyous energy. They live together in the same
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Flux Information Sciences
"Flux's music is schizophrenic in the extreme, with violent dynamic schisms, bizarre, angular rhythms (but incredibly funky at times), and bursts of noise and violence that abruptly shift into weird, brief passages of cerebral, vaguely menacing soundscapes. The vocals are cryptic, sometimes lurid
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James Blackshaw
"""I'm extremely pleased to announce that James Blackshaw will now be releasing his absolutely spellbinding music via Young God Records. He has received attention as a 12-string guitar prodigy / virtuoso. He used to be in punk bands in England, but then he started listening to people like John
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"The ultra savant of 12-string mantra cycles expands further into cinematic, orchestral glory--an orgy of organic, deeply felt and exquisitely played pathways to the sublime. All Is Falling features James Blackshaw's first foray into the realm of the electric 12-string guitar and stretches his
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Larsen
Ritualized dissonant groove-stomp "field recordings" from Torino, Italy's elusive and mystery-shrouded collective LARSEN. Recorded and produced by SWANS' MICHAEL GIRA in Italy, Rever is the culmination of hours of recording during which the band, hidden behind a screen, would play, scream,
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Lisa Germano
Young God Records is pleased to announce the release of In The Maybe World, the new album from Lisa Germano. A gifted lyricist and powerful singer, Germano is also a talented multi-instrumentalist, playing the violin, piano and guitar with equal aplomb. Her poignant, heartbreakingly beautiful songs
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Nobody makes records like Lisa Germano. This music seeps into your system with a warm glow like alcohol gently working its way into the bloodstream through the lining of an empty stomach. From the first moment you’re drifting weightless through Germano’s gossamer world, where everything’s infused
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"Following the release of Lisa Germano's last album for Young God Records, In the Maybe World, and a good deal of subsequent touring, she hid herself away for a long while, and I was beginning to despair--then suddenly this beautiful music started coming my way. I think this is one of her best
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M. Gira & D. Matz
The first collaboration between DAN MATZ (WINDSOR FOR THE DERBY, BIRDWATCHER) and MICHAEL GIRA (SWANS, ANGELS OF LIGHT). Twelve tracks of unfolding and evolving songcraft featuring alternating lead vocals, and an assortment of instrumentation including acoustic and electric guitars, bass, various
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Mi & L'au
Mi and L’au recently put the finishing touches on their beautiful new album in Brooklyn, NY. The music on their self-titled debut is austere yet simultaneously warm, expressing the passion they possess both as human beings and as songwriters. Think of a glacier with a red ember glowing in its
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Michael Gira
Palestine & Coulter & Mathoul
On Maximin, the music of the seminal minimalist composer Charlemagne Palestine is reconfigured and reiterated by David Coulter and Jean-Marie Mathoul, in full co-operation and collaboration with Mr. Palestine. Coulter and Mathoul have taken previously recorded works of Mr. Palestine and - with the
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Swans
1988-92 was a time of two primary radical shifts in Swans' general musical approach-learning new ways to work and ignoring the preconceptions dogging them as a result of their early extremism. The music on Various Failures ranges from delicate, acoustic ballads with accompanying strings to almost
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Another exciting piece of history from one of The Big Apple's meanest, creepiest, most uncompromising bands ever. As with the Various Failures triumph, Filth/Body to Body, Job to Job collects material from one of the band's golden eras, a time when bands like Swans and their contemporaries such
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MICHAEL GIRA has always been good at establishing finality. Each successive SWANS release would have made a spectacular tombstone or constituted an epitaph for which other groups would have killed. Soundtracks for the Blind is no exception to the rule, but this time around even by his own high
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A reissue of the twelfth remarkable album from gentleman MICHAEL GIRA's legendary SWANS. A seventeen-track majestic symphony of haunting melodies and shifting moods featuring some of Gira and partner JARBOE's most haunting and ethereal vocal work. Dissonant, dulcet and dangerous, The Great
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Here’s what Alternative Press had to say when the magazine cited this music as one of the 100 best records of the decade: Pat Robertson’s bid for the presidency, the oxymoronic Moral Majority, Baker’s fall from grace: These events were met in a head-on collision with Swans’ perfect blend of sound
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Two massive and lengthy 24-track recorded discs culling the best material from their '97 Final and '95 Great Annihilator tours, dominatingly remixed and mastered by the firm hand of Michael Gira. Includes two never before recorded tracks "Feel Happiness" and "Not Alone" which are exclusive to
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After years of pursuing Angels of Light and recording and producing a diverse roster of artists for his Young God label, Michael Gira has reconvened his legendary group Swans. As he says: "This is not a reunion. It's not some dumb-ass nostalgia act. It is not repeating the past. After five Angels
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The Angels of Light
The Angels of Light is Swans founder Michael Gira's first "songwriting" project after he discontinued the Swans. For those familiar with Gira's role in the Swans and his more recent sonic experimentation in the Body Lovers/Haters, this material will represent a radical step into new territory.
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"I wrote the songs over the last couple of years. As it turns out, they're all love songs, in one form or another. The songs started out with just my voice and acoustic guitar, and then developed naturally over time by playing them with my friends (listed below) - whose collaboration and
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"The third Angels of Light album started innocently enough, with the intention of collecting well-written songs performed by the musicians who played them live for the last few years, with the addition of a few acoustic songs, lightly colored. Instead, every available molecule of the recording
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Another breakthrough for former Swans frontman M. Gira and company - short, sharply orchestrated, almost-pop songs that access a multitude of musical styles and references. These 12 finely hewn tributes to friends and heroes, stars and scoundrels make this easily the most accessible Angels of
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We Are Him is the fifth album from Angels of Light, the main vehicle for Michael Gira’s music since he disbanded Swans in 1997. Gira is also known lately as the label master and in-house producer for Young God Records, responsible for the likes of Devendra Banhart, Akron/Family, and Lisa Germano,
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The Body Lovers
The long awaited re-release of soundtrack-without-a-film, “psycho-ambient” instrumental opus by Michael Gira (Angels of Light, Swans, Young God Records). Sonic chaos and wordless lullabies were compiled, edited, mangled, fedback, mutated and morphed from high quality recordings of a dizzying array
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Ulan Bator
Last summer, in the midst of a debilitating heatwave, French avant rock kings Ulan Bator and producer M.Gira locked themselves in a tiny recording studio in a village just north of Florence, Italy, 18 hours a day for three weeks. As Olivier Manchion, Amaury Cambuzat and Matteo Dainese started to
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Various
Generous sneak preview of Young God titles, along with selected samples of current releases. Michael Gira's Angels of Light ("Jennifer's Sorry" and "My True Body" from How I Loved You CD), Calla ("Fear of Fireflies" and "Traffic Sound" from the Scavengers CD - low, swampy, sparse grooves,
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Windsor For The Derby
Birthed in Austin in 1994, Windsor for the Derby includes core members Daniel Matz and Jason McNeely. The amorphous WTD crew includes (on occasion) Rodan’s John Weiss, Adam Wiltzie of Stars of the Lid, Wayne Magruder of Bowery Electric/Calla and a host of others. King Coffey’s Trance Records
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Wooden Wand
"""James Jackson Toth, a.k.a. Wooden Wand, is your fearless friend, the stumbling guy who gets himself into incredibly fucked up situations but comes out shining and lives to tell about it, entertaining you safely and immensely. You should be grateful. In my view, he's a great American songwriter
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