As I was thinking about what label to check into next a friend, like a synchronistic astronaut, called me raving, gasping like a gas huffing prairie dog about this label he had recently been into. He had been to New York. Brooklyn, as a matter of fact, to visit his sister and happened to catch one of the label mates live.
“The label is called The Social Registry, hurry go see about them before it’s too late. “Too late for what“, I asked, but he had already hung up. I imagined him putting back on his space helmet, picking up the gas rag and walking into the backyard. The label turned out to be as good as he said. The Social Registry is out of Brooklyn New York. There are just so many things to like about this label it’s hard to know where to start.
The roster is chock-full of new thinking, experimental wandering, space is the place, primitive blues, primitive sincerity, hazy layered tricks, full-throttle fuzz-out, and surreal language and much much more.
Bands like Gang Gang Dance creates music that lulls you and jolts you at the same time. Their hazy aural layering, distorted voices, intense clankering of strange objects, discordant collage like sounds, effects galore all swirling into and around each other. Artanker Convoy is another standout group with an jazzy sonic youth in space feel. Other groups worth checking out are Blood on the Wall and the Psychic Ills. Blood on the Wall is an intense pop-punk experiment recalling the best years of The Pixies. The Psychic Ills unleash a new, fresh approach to creating psychedelic vistas. Their songs continually take you on long layered, space-road adventures where the driver is always up for a sudden spontaneous detour. Ghost Exits are a fuck it up/synthed-out drum and bass group…The best thing I can say about this label is that nobody sounds like anyone else out there right now. Everyone is inspired by and takes in sounds from those before, but the trick I think is to take all those influences and make something your own, make it new as the old poet said. This label is flying that flag high and strange. Other bands on this label: Blood Lines, Electrocutes, Jah Division, Painting Soldiers, Samara Lubelski, and TK Webb.
The label has a good lot of mp3’s to down load as well as promotional pictures and links to independent record stores where their music is sold. The Social Registry