Thursday, May 31, 2007 I've made a few updates to the Unwed Sailor tour in June and to the Yndi Halda dates in Asia for late July/early August. I was at the sold out Unwed Sailor/Murder by Death show at Schuba's last night. It's always great to be able to see Unwed Sailor play and the set was really tight. I think the dates in June should be pretty impressive. The band is making plans for more touring throughout the rest of the summer and the fall, as well as plans to finish recording Little Wars. I'm excited to see them again in Philadelphia on 9 June with Rosetta and Soporus. Starflyer 59 Ghosts of the Future 7" test pressings are en route to subscribers. The Commissioner has done his good work, as always. Byul is working to finish up the recording to their upcoming release and will be starting to design the packaging soon. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 01:36 PM CST Tuesday, May 29, 2007 Yndi Halda have a couple of videos up now. There's one from their European tour here and an edit of the first half of "Dash and Blast" here. I got to see a few friends play shows here in Chicago, the Wiitala Brothers and my friend Sarah visiting from Copenhagen on Saturday and the Hortons and the Coff on Sunday. I'll be at Unwed Sailor at Schuba's on Wednesday when they play with Murder By Death. I'll also be eating more than my share of sausages at Hot Doug's. If all goes well, test pressings for the first four Starflyer 59 7" should be arriving today and then going out to all of the test pressing set subscribers. The Commissioner is taking over the role of mail order hero in my absence. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 03:13 PM CST Friday, May 25, 2007 So I guess the sf59 test pressings didn't arrive today. Hopefully on Tuesday, then... We're having a show on 9 June in Philadelphia with Unwed Sailor as part of their tour. Rosetta (Translation Loss) and Soporus will be playing, as well. I think one more band is going to play, but we'll know more about that shortly. It's at 2007 Frankford Ave above Circle Thrift. Should be a good night, so plan for awesomeness, Philadelphians. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 02:37 PM CST Thursday, May 24, 2007 Yndi Halda is going to be on a short tour in Asia surrounding their appearance at the Formoz Festival in Taiwan which also features such notables as Mercury Rev and Yo La Tengo. They'll be doing shows in Hong Kong and Beijing. The Starflyer 59 7" test pressings are supposed to arrive tomorrow. So, if that happens, I'll be rushing to get everything sent out prior to the holiday. It also seems like there is some progress made on the Byul recordings. I received a package today with two of their South Korean releases. We're hoping for a release date in the fall for a Byul record at this point... :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 02:54 PM CST Wednesday, May 23, 2007 The folks at Hymyind and I are working out some ideas for the Starflyer 59 7" cover artwork. The plan is to silkscreen and letterpress all of them, so they should look super sweet. The plan is also to have them ready in the next 2 weeks or less, in time for the proper release date for the first 2 7". Bosque Brown are planning to enter the studio in June to record their sophomore full-length near their Denton/Ft. Worth home. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 02:49 PM CST Friday, May 18, 2007 I've made a few additions to the btv store There are quite a few instrumental things and other releases that I've ordered in over the past couple of months and haven't added yet. The new Efterklang release is now up in the store. I've also added a bunch of releases from Sublime Frequencies because we love those releases here at btv. Questions in Dialect are on the road! Go see them! :::scott:: Posted by Scott @ 02:43 PM CST Thursday, May 17, 2007 The Magic Lantern is one of the Top 10 instrumental albums of the week at Now Like Photographs. They were the instrumental album of the week last week and I forgot to post the link. They were also featured on Now Like Photographs podcast. If you are Swedish and also in Umea, they are playing a show: På fredag spelar ett av mina band, the Magic Lantern, live i Vänortsparken Umeå. Kl 22.30 Vi kommer att spela på ett 5 punkt 1 surroundhögtalarsystem, så det kommer definitivt att bli spännande. Dessutom spelar Moonshake Elektroakustisk musik både före och efter. I don't know what that means. Something about how they are playing this Friday and are awesome. I have heard the live recording from a recent show. This particular show is going to feature the band playing in 5.1 surround sound with a ring of speakers encircling the band and audience. Sounds really pretty incredible. World's End Girlfriend was truly an incredible show. I'm super bummed that my Mini Disc seemed to have crashed after the recording. Anyone with a live recording? Let's trade. We are big big big fans of The Office at the btv compound. We're still in shock after the final episode. I won't say anything to spoil it for Ryan and Mara who wait until they can download it... :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 10:12 PM CST Wednesday, May 16, 2007 Tonight, I'm off to see World's End Girlfriend at the Unitarian Church here in Philadelphia. We've been fans of World's End Girlfriend for a long time, ever since we got both Ending Story and Farewell Kingdom at the btv compound. The Lie Lay Land is one of our favorite releases of 2005 and we're all very excited about the album that was just released in Japan, Hurtbreak Wonderland. So, maybe I'll see you there. They play with both Mono and Grails. I've updated a couple of dates for Unwed Sailor's June tour. Take a look. I'll be in Chicago to see them play with Murder By Death. Test pressings for mewithoutyou brother, sister have just arrived. We're excited for this vinyl release. If everything is good, we'll start to take pre-orders later this week. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 01:51 PM CST Tuesday, May 15, 2007 Happy Birthday Dad! Posted by Scott @ 12:06 AM CST Sunday, May 13, 2007 I've posted some updated tour dates for Unwed Sailor for June. Foxhole is playing tonight in Nashville at The End with Caspian and Maps. Go see them. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 12:27 PM CST Thursday, May 10, 2007 Questions in Dialect start their tour to the West Coast tonight in Louisiana. Go see them. Unwed Sailor are touring through the end of the week and will then be going out for some more shows in June. I'm hoping to get test pressings for the first Starflyer 59 Ghosts of the Future 7" later in the week or early next week. It's getting exciting. Test pressings for mewithoutYou brother, sister LPs are also expected very soon. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 03:20 PM CST Sunday, May 6, 2007 2008 will mark ten years as a band for Unwed Sailor. Their often punchy, energetic song based instrumental music flies in the face of the epic dynamics often associated with so-called "post-rock" instrumental bands. They quickly established themselves many years ago with the classic release of Firecracker on Seattle's Made in Mexico (later re-issued on cd and vinyl by btv). The Unwed Sailor fan base exploded with the advent of The Faithful Anchor, originally released on Michigan's Lovesick Recordings and re-issued on Burnt Toast Vinyl, which saw the band taking to the road and bringing the rock with their tightly rehearsed, energetic live show. Fans of the recordings noticed some slight departures with 2003's The Marionette and the Music Box, which meandered into a fantasy realm of subtly beautiful neo-classical songs and a more conceptual presentation, and the recent Circles and The White Ox, which delved into sprawling ambience and southwestern/Native american influences. The live show has been the common thread with the more experimental recorded pieces being re-worked and translated to the energetic performance. For their ten year anniversary, the band has been working to present its catalog as the re-developed live versions. The first cd of the History release was recorded during the sessions which saw additional songs recorded for Little Wars in mid to late April in Norman, OK. These songs feature two guitars, keyboards, bass, and drums in a more typical Unwed Sailor live configuration. They're on tour right now through the midwest, playing many of the songs recorded for History which includes songs from all of the Unwed Sailor releases, including the forthcoming Little Wars. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 11:22 PM CST Friday, May 4, 2007 We've started something new at Burnt Toast Vinyl thanks to Greg's (from Foxhole) magical programming abilities. When you purchase select btv vinyl releases from the online store, you will be e-mailed a unique code which allows a download of the album as 256kbps mp3s. This is the first step to inserting these unique codes in our vinyl releases available in stores and from our bands on tours. Johnathon (Unwed Sailor) and I have discussed this for a few weeks and this really lines up with the way that most of us at btv would like to buy albums. It's nice to be able to have the full-sized vinyl artwork in a deluxe format and also be able to get the digital files for portability. Right now, this is available for Unwed Sailor : Circles/The White Ox, Yndi Halda : Enjoy Eternal Bliss, and Saxon Shore : The Exquisite Death of Saxon Shore. Those who have purchased these titles over the past few days have already been e-mailed their codes, so hopefully we'll have all of the kinks worked out shortly. We're planning to make other titles available as soon as we can get the encoding done. Unwed Sailor : Little Wars will likely be the first btv vinyl release that will have unique codes included with all LPs purchased through retail outlets, from bands, or through btv mail order. Big props to Greg for the coding and high fives to Johnathon for the prodding. Unwed Sailor hit the ground running on their May dates. Go see them bring the rock. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 12:13 AM CST Wednesday, May 2, 2007 One of the not-so-obvious amazing things about having Foxhole on Burnt Toast Vinyl is that there are some amazing designers/programmers in the band. Have you seen the Foxhole artwork? Or the Anathallo album that Greg designed? Greg has been working on some programming behind the scenes over the past few days and we're hoping to unveil some new features to the online store shortly. We've also been talking about a website facelift since we haven't changed the design in several years. Unwed Sailor are starting there May tour tomorrow in Des Moines, Iowa (which always makes me think of that Dead Milkmen song...but that's off topic), so go see them play. They've been practicing and are ready to rock. There are also some new dates for June that will be on the website soon. Questions in Dialect is heading to the west coast for some shows. We'll have updated dates soon and they're also on their myspace page. If you live in the LA area, KCRW has been giving The Ghost Wishes to Speak some airplay on the show "New Ground!" :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 04:36 PM CST [ Archives ]