Tuesday, November 28, 2006 Saxon Shore is playing its last show of the year tonight at Johnny Brenda's 1201 Frankford Ave in Philadelphia at 9pm with Parts and Labor. Details at the R5 productions website. See you there for the rock. The commissioner and I spent Saturday and Sunday stuffing LP jackets to get the Unwed Sailor and Efterklang LPs ready for their January retail release dates. Get ready...I've sent all of the Efterklang pre-orders out, so they will be arriving shortly. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 05:23 PM CST Tuesday, November 21, 2006 Efterklang one-sided LPs arrived and orders will begin to ship out on Saturday. Finally! We're super excited to get this one out to all of the pre-orders. These will be available in Denmark very shortly, as well, through Efterklang and their mail order. Unwed Sailor Circles LPs have also arrived, but since these are shipping together with The White Ox LPs it will be a few more weeks. We have the problem on the test pressings figured out. Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 10:25 PM CST Friday, November 17, 2006 Update regarding Unwed Sailor's tour from the band: I'm very sorry to say this, but due to personal circumstances beyond anyone's control Unwed Sailor has been forced to cancel their entire tour. The reasons are far complicated and I don't even know half of it, but certain members of the band were at the last minute unable to be a part of this tour. Due to loss of these members, there is absolutely no way Johnathon or the rest of the guys can continue this tour. There is nothing Johnathon and the rest of the guys wanted more than to be out there playing these shows. We were expecting these to be some of the best shows to date as the band just finished successful tours with Murder By Death, Appleseed Cast and MeWithoutYou. The response to this tour so far has been amazing and the amount of press and promotion that went into the tour by the band, their label, you guys has been very strong. The band promises to move on and get back on their feet as soon as possible and re-schedule these dates in the next couple of months. Thank you for understanding. UnwedSailor Noise Problem Booking :::scott:::: Posted by Scott @ 11:43 AM CST Saturday, November 11, 2006 Congratulations to Willi$ and Lauren who will be married later today! I've posted the song "2" from Byul on the btv myspace page. Go take a listen when you get a chance. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 02:16 PM CST Friday, November 10, 2006 After several problems, I finally received good test pressings for Efterklang's one-sided LP. Should be 2-3 weeks until pre-orders ship. Finally! We've been anxious about this release for quite a while. This is from the Unwed Sailor press release that Fanatic Promotion is circulating to support their tour and thought it was worth posting. Hopefully it entertains you as much as it did Matt Ralph... Scott Hatch of Burnt Toast Vinyl Reveals What He Loves About Unwed Sailor. Johnathon Ford leads an ever-changing cast of band members through album releases and tours, and each person he chooses represents a different point in his life. Nothing is ever stagnant with Unwed Sailor, and it takes a label like Burnt Toast Vinyl to allow an artist like Ford to be fluid and adaptable with their music. “Unwed Sailor is the realization of his life's artistic vision and it meanders down this winding path, revisiting previous musical themes and ideas, often improving them and making them something altogether new and different. I'm happy to be along for part of the ride,” says Scott Hatch, who owns Burnt Toast Vinyl Records in Philadelphia, PA. Burnt Toast Vinyl is currently home to well received band like Saxon Shore and Bosque Brown. While many artists choose to stick with the sounds they know, Unwed Sailor rarely puts out the same release twice. “I think Johnathon is successful as a musician because he is challenging his listeners,” says Hatch of Unwed Sailor’s cult following. Unwed Sailor’s sound is always moving forward, starting off with the math rock infused Firecracker EP and the The Faithful Anchor full-length originally on other labels in 1999 and 2001, respectively. The instrumental music and storybook combination The Marionette and the Music Box tell a story of a marionette puppet searching for a magical music box was a departure from his earlier releases. Unwed Sailor’s newest releases Circles and The White Ox continue that departure with minimalist ambient rock. The mystical qualities of Circles and The White Ox will put you in a calm state and hopefully “give you a place where you can escape from the travails of daily life,” says Johnathon Ford. Hatch first talked to Ford at a basement show in Philadelphia in the late 1990s. The two saw each other around at various music functions, but Hatch says their friendship was cemented at a music festival in Arkansas when “Johnathon and I ended up getting into a fight with some people in the crowd (who, for some reason, were dumping trash on a poor girl in the crowd and we stepped in to defend her honor) before an Andrew WK show.” After they bonded over Andrew WK, Hatch released Marionette and the Music Box for Unwed Sailor. After two years of non-stop touring and the release of Marionette and the Music Box, Johnathon Ford went into a Bloomington, IN basement to record with Dan Burton (of Early Day Miners). Here they were joined by guitarist Phillip Blackwell (Questions in Dialect) and musician Matt Griffi and before they knew it, Burton's basement was giving birth to The White Ox. Ready for the winter, The White Ox is a recording that defies classification in the rock genre. The album continues on from where Ford's previous album, The Marionette and the Music Box left off with “Shadows” echoing those staccato melodies, but channeling them through a dark dream of ambient effects. Here, Ford and Burton are challenging their audience, the fans that loved the upbeat melodies of The Faithful Anchor and were charmed by the sweet fairytale aspects of Marionette. The White Ox is brooding, washed in the night air darkness to which “Shadows” alludes. Surprisingly, for the traditionally instrumental Unwed Sailor, both “Gila” and “Numbers” feature Burton's vocals, with Ford's murmuring falsetto providing the haunting background for “Gila's” almost gothic melody. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 05:29 PM CST Thursday, November 9, 2006 The packaging for yndi halda enjoy eternal bliss cds arrived today. Everything looks good. Pre-orders will start shipping later this week. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 04:18 PM CST Wednesday, November 8, 2006 Since today seems to be a day of surprises, changes, and announcements, I'll join in and announce the newest band on the btv roster. They're called byul and hail from Seoul, South Korea. They sing in Korean with some amazing vocals and combine both acoustic and electronic instruments. We're finalizing the details for the first US full-length which will be released sometime in 2007. If you can read Korean, you can check out their website. High fives and shout outs to the Commissioner (aka Matthew) who tenaciously tracked the band down after hearing a couple of their songs on the Korean film Take Care of My Cat. He visited many file sharing sites, web pages, and catalogs, sharing his fervour with all of us at the label, inspiring us to join in on the fray. We've been listening to the big package of records the band sent last week and it's pretty incredible stuff. We'll work on getting some mp3s somewhere for you all to hear. I added a few new things to the online store, including the Yndi Halda Enjoy Eternal Bliss 2xLP for pre-order. I've taken off some out of print vinyl, so you won't be confused when you try to order it and it never arrives. Philadelphians, Saxon Shore was added to the Unwed Sailor show at Johnny Brenda's on 28 November. It's gonna be extra special now. If all goes well, I should be at the Unwed Sailor show in Chicago, too, as well as a few close to Philadelphia on the East Coast. And happy belated 30th birthday to Denison. I was stalking his website waiting for his birthday songs to appear. Go get the thirty-three songs available for download. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 05:02 PM CST Tuesday, November 7, 2006 Go vote today! More dates have been added for the Unwed Sailor tour. See them when they rock near you! I've updated a lot of the website with more details about several new and upcoming releases. Take a look. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 09:47 AM CST Friday, November 3, 2006 Thanks to everyone who came out to the Saxon Shore CMJ showcase at the Knitting Factory last night. I came back and found that the LPs for Bosque Brown Cerro Verde had arrived. Woo-hoo! Finally, finally. The wait is over. Pre-orders will get mailed out over the weekend. Bosque Brown will have these at their show on 11 November with Jolie Holland. These will get into stores shortly, too. Yndi Halda Enjoy Eternal Bliss cds arrived from the factory and some special cardboard covers and inserts will be arriving shortly. The covers are a special packaging that fold together and hold the cd and insert without any glue. The covers and inserts were printed on 100% recycled paper with vegetable-based inks. We're excited about these, most definitely. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 11:13 AM CST Wednesday, November 1, 2006 Yndi Halda's Enjoy Eternal Bliss cds are shipping later in the week, so these should go out to pre-orders sometime next week. Very good news. Tomorrow: Saxon Shore in NYC at the Knitting Factory for CMJ. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 09:25 AM CST [ Archives ]