SHELF LIFE: FoF Music, RVNG Make Us Actually Wanna Spend Money On Records Again (Okay, the Limited T-Shirts and Vinyl Helped)
Posted on September 11, 2009
Filed Under Features, Shelf Life | 3 Comments
The first RVNG of the NRDS release
You know what? Stop whining. The music industry isn’t going anywhere. And neither is print. We’re simply in a state of transition; a renaissance, if you will, as companies are forced to get creative and offer us something beyond auto-pilot ideas and piss-poor aesthetics. This can mean anything, really, from colored vinyl in a chipboard sleeve to quarterly magazines (books, really) that break from the boxed-in schedules of dailies, monthlies and weeklies, offering something truly special in the process—content you’d never toss in a bird cage or recycling bin.
No, this is stuff you hold onto, the very essence of Shelf Life, a new recurring self-titled feature that emphasizes the idea of entertainment as an alluring art object.
One company that’s cultivated a cult following of record collectors and DJs over the past few years is New York’s RVNG Intl. imprint. Launched in 2004 with a 50-copy run of mix CDs by DJ Diabolic (now known as Ian Saint Laurent) and Pink Skull’s Julian Grefe, the label is best known for its RVNG of the NRDS series. If you’ve never heard it before, you might assume it’s nothing but another cowbell-addled, Moroder-indebted line of disco edits. Not exactly. Try a carefully-curated, meticulously-designed barrage of vinyl that’s flown off most record shop shelves within days. (According to founder Matt Rvng, Jacques Renault’s 12″ sold out in an afternoon. The only NRD-y entry we’ve been able to score was Betty Botox’s Optimo-related operations on Blondie, Indoor Life, Rinder and Lewis, and the Erotic Drum Band. All of which are essential listening.)
“Our attention to detail, packaging and sonic representation—total production value—is what helped the series sell well,” explains Rvng. “There’s also no white labels or sleeves, which was a shift [when we started NRDS in 2006], especially in the edit world…Fuck, I sound like we changed the face of something. [Laughs] We didn’t.”
The Purple Brain, special home ec edition, one of 10 copies
Maybe not, but RVNG—a partnership with one of Philly’s most respected producers/DJs, Dave P—has left us lusting after every single one of its releases, not just NRDS. That goes for everything from the basement show side of JD Twitch to the extraterrestrial transmissions of the Purple Brain, which (as you can see from the photo above) is available in one of the strangest formats we’ve ever seen. Yep: RVNG just made crocheting more punk rock than Bust ever could.
The final two NRD records are coming out in the next two months, with the Swedish duo Jackpot dropping first in October and a top secret 10th volume arriving in November. While the label could easily sell a CD compilation of such in-demand singles (Karl Lagerfield reportedly snagged one of Colette’s three crocheted Purple Brain copies recently), Rvng insists “it’s hard to justify profiting from an edit, you know? So we might as well expose people to some great tracks in a beautiful outlet.”
That outlet recently got a little fancier, too, as RVNG unveiled the second volume of its new FRKWYS series. (The first has been delayed for reasons that’ll be revealed soon. We can say one thing for now: the hangup involves a major indie rock band.) Meant as a meeting of icons and their not-so-obvious contemporaries, FRKWYS‘ debut release features Excepter as remixed by members of Throbbing Gristle, Foetus and Meat Beat Manifesto.
Excepter gone industrial, you say? Indeed; and it’s a perfect pairing, especially Carter Tutti’s steely, spooky take on “Shots Ring.” Couple that with a classic tip-on sleeve and black leatherette casing, and you’ve got yourself a conversation piece that’s worth the $18 price tag, or the $50-$100 you’ll get on eBay a year from now.
The sleeve of FRWKYS Vol. 2: Excepter
“We’ve set the bar pretty high,” Rvng writes in a FRKWYS press release. “It’s been inspirational/exhilarating working with both our peers and artists whom we hold close to heart as heroes. The willingness and enthusiasm on both sides to experiment in this context has created an unbounded feeling to the series. As you’ll hear, the results speak for themselves. This is future future music.”
Up next: Psychic Ills propped up against some names you’ll definitely know. And if you think RVNG is painting itself into a (re)mix/edit-only corner, that’ll change sooner than you think. Aside from a These Are Powers EP that’s planned for early next year, the label is pressing the next Pink Skull LP this fall. Considering how slept-on the last one was, this can only be good news for everyone involved.
Speaking of slept-on releases, L.A.’s new FoF Music (Friends of Friends) label has turned the enduring popularity of band T-shirts into a new format. Not literally; a musician is simply asked to curate each release, inviting one artist to design a shirt and another to provide the B-side to a split EP. The first installment had us at hello, a.k.a. the involvement of our favorite underground beat conductor, Daedelus. And while promotional clothing often ends up in our donation pile, Daedelus had to go and tap Kozyndan for his T-shirt element. The result is a ridiculously soft, rather whimsical—in a good way—look that we wore on a bi-weekly basis this past summer. And hey, the music’s worth a listen, too, especially a companion EP (included on a download card with the original split) that features such respected remixers as Michna and Eliot Lipp, as well as one of our favorite new producers, Nosaj Thing.
Up next: Volume 2, a heady collection of post-everything pop (German techno, Tropicalia, funk—you name it) by a pair of rising Swiss artists, Larytta and Bauchamp.
“Larytta basically had my favorite record of last year, on their Swiss label Creaked, and no one heard it,” says FoF founder Leeor Brown. “I mean a few people did—XLR8R, Tiny Mix Tapes, ‘Sup—but it really was a criminally slept-on release, so I decided to ask them if they’d be down. And lucky for me, they decided to do it. It really came out incredible, and I got to learn about Bauchamp, whose ‘Calypso’ track makes me one of the happier people in the world.”
Steel drums, a steady beat and beachside samples—yep, we’ll be needing this one as Brooklyn’s brownstone-aligned trees turn to skeletons and the vibrant colors of summer are replaced by sepia tones and various shades of gray. Both of which will make perfect sense with a FoF shirt and a weathered cardigan or broken-in blazer.
Got something that’d make sense for Shelf Life? Then send it to self-titled, 685 Metropolitan Ave., #1, Brooklyn, NY, 11211.
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