Well, the shit has officially hit the fan at the USPS. The new postmaster general holds tons of UPS and Fedex stock, and it is in his best personal interest for the USPS to fail completely. You would think that would disqualify him for running the post office, but then you would think about all the other shit getting pulled by the government and you would just shrug and realize it is business as usual. You would also think "Maybe we should bail out the USPS since almost every American citizen relies on it in some capacity, so why are we NOT bailing that out, and instead bailing out Cruise Line companies and Billionaire Real Estate Developers who are tearing down every piece of interesting or historical architecture so they can build shitty contractor grade condos?" And again, you would shrug.
USPS is taking FOREVER these days. Don't expect it soon.
So, this may very well be your last chance to support tiny mail order labels like PIAPTK without spending $22 to ship an LP via UPS or Fedex.
This may very well be the end.
But, if it is, I hope you will raise a glass of whatever you are drinking and think of the love we put into these releases next time you listen to the PIAPTK records you already own. Because all that love will always be there.
However, artists are still cranking out great new stuff, and I am still here to cathartically help them get that stuff out into the world in a physical form for you to enjoy until we get the final surprise of overnight quadrupled postage when we log into ship them through paypal.
Got a ton of amazing stuff coming down the pipe, but it may be a little while until the next email as I am currently out on the Covidball Run from Tucson to Florida to Nashville to Tucson, and then possibly up to Portland and back. I'm the Johnny Appleseed of record lathes, and I would love to come plant one at your place if you live en route.
Coming Soon (maybe....):
-Michael Nau + Floating Action = Dream Sitch! A long distance quarantine collaboration from two of PIAPTK's favorites... and the record is just as great as you would expect it to be.
-The Spark of PIAPTK - this will be a 4x10" boxset (discs available individually, too) that will be made to preorder and represent my most musically formative years going to shows in Denton and Dallas, TX in 1996-2001. Centro-Matic - Early Demos, Baboon - The Numb EP, The Tomorrow People - Marijuana Beach, and El Gato - Unreleased Demos. These were my favorite bands during that time period and the bands that transitioned me from small town punk rocker to pretentious indie boi. All of the bands are long gone, but they all hold hugely special places in my heart. All of the bands can be found on Spotify and I would be honored if you would check them out now to see if you want to pick up a copy during the preorder, after that they will never be available again. It's a vanity project for sure, but is a big deal for me personally.
Veronica Bianqui - ST LP - Such a great mod-garage pop record!
Briana Marela - 7"
And MAYBE a new series with releases from Jake Ingalls (Spaceface), Jason SImon (Dead Meadow), and Sugar Candy Mountain! Still in negotiations!a
INTL CUSTOMERS BEWARE: International post is taking insanely long and is very unreliable, so buy at your own risk!
This time!
Dean and Britta 7x7" Boxset - Quarantine Tapes!
Marble Blur (Michael Nau) - ST 10 song 10"
Benny Yurco (w/ Nau and Floating Action) - You Are My Dreams LP
Sean Spellman - Easterly Instrumental 10"
Blank Tapes - Look Into The Light LPs Distro
NOTE: Benny Yurco and Dean and Britta are PREORDERS. I HIGHLY Recommend you order those seperately from any other items so we can ship the items that are in stock IMMEDIATELY. The preorders will HOPEFULLY be in within a week or so, but who knows anymore?
Dean and Britta 7x7" Boxset - Quarantine Tapes!
INTL CUSTOMERS BEWARE: International post is taking insanely long and is very unreliable, so buy at your own risk!
Dean and Britta from Luna/Galaxie 500 bring you a SIX double sided 7" lathe cut box set with a star shaped one sided bonus disc for those who purchase the whole set. Dean and Britta wanted to hire me to cut these boxsets for their newly founded label, Double Feature Records, but I talked them into letting PIAPTK co-release it (in exchange for a discount! haha). They are selling them individually OR as a boxset, but I only have 50 copies of the box (250 total made), so I'm just going to sell them as a set. All of the sets include a bonus song on a star shaped 7" that is only available with the boxsets and is signed by Dean and Britta.
Offish Descripsh:
Here are Dean & Britta’s “Quarantine Tapes”; six singles, twelve songs in all, recorded at home during the lockdown spring of 2020. Some are taken from livestream performances, others are recorded from scratch in the home studio. Highlights are a remix of “Neon Lights” by Matt Fishbeck (aka Holy Shit), new covers of the Bee Gees’ “Massachusetts”, Donovan’s “Sadness,” and “He Dines Out on Death” originally by no-Wave singer Cristina who passed away in March this year.
These 7” singles run at 33rpm and are two-sided d lathe-cut on clear square shaped plastic. Each comes with a different colored sleeve by the great Californian painter Brian Calvin. If you buy all six, they will arrive in a white cardboard box with a couple of silkscreen stickers and a bonus star-shaped disc with a version of “Parking Lot” (from a recent livestream).
Full tracklisting:
1. Massachusetts / Air
2. Sadness / Ride Into the Sun
3. Neon Lights / Neon Lights (Holy Shit remix)
4. I’m So Bored With the USA / Drive
5. Most of the Time / Indian Summer
6. He Dines Out On Death / 23 Minutes in Brussels
Bonus disc for sull sets: Parking Lot
Marble Blur (Michael Nau) - ST 10 song 10
INTL CUSTOMERS BEWARE: International post is taking insanely long and is very unreliable, so buy at your own risk!
Marble Blur (Michael Nau) - Marble Blur Instrumental 10 song 10" available in two formats. Black Vinyl with Pentagonal Glitter center label and Hand Painted Psychedelic Pic Disc.
Michael Nau is ridiculously prolific when the world is open and he is touring almost fulltime, but now that everything is shut down and touring is cancelled, he has been downright on fire. If you haven't heard the demos album he released on Suicide Squeeze, which pulled together the demos of his first two solo albums, or So On So On, his self-released home recorded quarantine album, you are really missing out. On top of that, he recorded a long distance collaborative quarantine album with Seth Kaufman (Floating Action), which we are STOKED to be releasing in the fall. And, in addition to all that, there are probably another 100 songs that he isn't showing anybody. Now that Wooden Wand has retired, Michael seems poised to take JJT's place in the PIAPTK Pantheon as the overflowing conduit to the lyrical otherworld. Anyway, enough of my yappin'.
Marble Blur - Marble Blur EP is a ten song 10" of instrumentals that Nau recorded at home during quarantine. It is available in two formats. Standard Black 10" in black sleeve with diecut glitter sticker or mega deluxe unique painted double sided 10" with trippy irridescent, glitter and/or black light paints with embedded glitter stickers inside the disc in a pic disc sleeve.
It is probably the most PIAPTK release I've released in a long time in regards to the circumstances of its' birth. Upcycling garbage, fuckups, heartbreak, redemption, more fuckups, family, quadruple the work, perseverance, etc.
So basically here is how it went:
1) 3 years ago I ordered $1500 worth of 10" CNC routed plastic circles from a new supplier and every single one of them came in warped and unusable. Unable to throw away pretty much anything, they sat in a pile on a shelf in the studio.
2) three weeks ago I had a lucid dream that gluing them back to back with opposite warps would flatten them out. And it WORKED!
3) So, I enlisted my daughter Ryer to help me paint the discs. We sat around, made all kinds of designs using the paints, had a good ol' time making about 120 copies, and watched 4 of the 8 Beethoven the St Bernard movies.
4) The next two days were my personal cutting days at the studio (sat and sun), which coincided with Ryer being at her moms', so I went down to the studio and spent about 12 hours each day cutting the audio.
5) Later in the week, I discovered that because I hadn't let the paint dry, and because we had used SOOO much paint that it had oozed out of the center hole and the edges and tiny paint flecks had gotten on the platter mat, and then onto the A-side of a LOT of the records, causing one or two (or more skips). So I play tested about 50 of them all the way through (and only found 2 usuable ones) before finally giving up and throwing them all in the trash to start from scratch.
6) And, in true me fashion, there was no fucking way I was going to let ANY project get the better of me, so I decided I was going to make them again.
7) However, because I no longer had useless plastic to work with, and each disc required two CNC routed 10" discs, meaning that each one requires not only about an hour of work to make the disc and the embedded sticker and to cut the audio, but also $13 in material cost. And since I give the artists 30% of the run as payment, just to break even and pay myself 1988 Burger King starting wages for my time (a pact that I made myself when I decided to not close down PIAPTK in 2016 (I did NOT charge myself for the 25 hours of labor wasted on my fuck up, tho)) I had to price these at $29.99. So, I talked to Michael and we decided that instead of doing 100 painted discs, we would do 50 painted and 50 standard discs at $18.99 so people could still own it for a more reasonable price.
8) Then I had to spend another grueling 24 hours cutting them again.
Benny Yurco (w/ Nau and Floating Action) - You Are My Dreams LP
THIS IS A PREORDER. THEY SHOULD SHIP IN THE NEXT COUPLE OF WEEKS.
Benny Yurco is a guy I've heard about for a LONG time. My partner in Soild Gold, Dimitri, always wanted to do a SG with him, he's good buds with Dr Dog, I heard many stories about him while I was on tour with Michael Nau in Europe, and even met him once in Joshua Tree while he was recording with Nau, McMickens, Kaufman, and Sabatino for the album that became Less Ready To Go.
Benny recorded the basic tracks for You Are My Dreams in one day and then sent it out to Nau, Kauffman, and Graeme Gibson (Nau, Fruit Bats, etc) to do some overdubs and fill it out, and had Scott McMicken and LeeAnn Cornelius from Acorn Bcorn do the art for it.
Now it is available in a ltd edition of 200 pressed LPs on "Blue Dream" and "Flor Amarilla" (100 copies each) vinyl, randomly inserted!
All orders in the first week receive a free pack of Benny Yurco rolling papers!
FROM BENNY:
"You Are My Dreams" is an experimental, improvisational, alternative world album of instinctual free thought, spirit guided, melodic & rhythmic intuition, written & recorded by composer/multi-instrumentalist/producer, Benny Yurco. The rhythm tracks were cut & dub'd on on his 1/2" tape recorder in his home studio in Vermont, Little Jamaica, one day in May of 2019. Most of the recordings were then sent to dear friends/fellow musicians/recordist, Seth Kauffman (Floating Action/Angel Olsen/Jim James), Michael Nau, & Graeme Gibson (Michael Nau) for additional instrument overdub recordings.
YAMDs was mixed by Graeme Gibson & mastered by Christopher Colbert.
Cover Art / Art Direction by Leann Cornelius & Scott Mcmicken
This Limited Edition 12" color LP will be pressed on "Blue Dream" blue vinyl & "Flor Amarilla" yellow vinyl and will be a random color toss up to each buyer & brought to your turntable by PIAPTK Recordings. There will only be 200 LP's pressed, 100 blue, 100 yellow. Each LP also includes an art insert with lyrics/credits and a drawing by comrade/artist/musician Evan apRoberts.
Each pre order will include a custom pack of "You Are My Dreams, Roll & Dream" 1 & 1/4 organic hemp rolling papers for the blazers & dreamers among us!
"You Are My Dreams" will also be available on limited edition cassette through PressOn Records in late August!
Listen to it at Benny's Bandcamp: https://bennyyurco.bandcamp.com/releases
Sean Spellman - Easterly Instrumental 10"
PIAPTK is a pretty incestuous family tree. Most artists have deep ties to one another and usually find new artists through the old ones. Almost everybody has played with, toured with, recorded with, are a side/solo project of, dated, or are heavy buds with, etc at least a few of the other artists on the label. In fact, I started making a family tree of all the bands that I've worked with on more than one release, and there was only ONE artist that didn't have pretty solid ties to at least three other artists on the label.
Well, Sean Spellman's main band, Quiet Life has recorded with both Adam Selzer (Norfolk & Western) and Nathan Sabatino (Golden Boots, Dr Dogs in house engineer for 5 records), and is actually Scott McMickens cousin, and is buds with a bunch of that West Coast PIAPTK Crew.
So, this is Sean's solo Instrumental EP, Easterly. IT contains four instrumental tracks that were cut from his full length album, Westerly.
It's limited to 50 copies on black lathe cut10"s with all of the covers uniquely hand-decorated by Sean and his daughter.
Blank Tapes - Look Into The Light LPs Distro
Swapped with our buddies at Nomad Eel Records for some LP copies of the GREAT new Blank Tapes LP, Look Into The Light. One LP packed full with seven extended length jammerz on metallic silver vinyl. This record is great and we only about 15 copies for sale.
If you don't already have the excellent Blank Tapes - Candy LP, pick up a 2 pk with one of each!
This is the heaviest thing The Blank Tapes have done yet! It’s a smash cut of Stones/Flamin Groovies street rock, longhair 70s-adjacent riffs and stark El Topo endless-desert-of-the-mind imagery. If you like this then you will love the countless guitar solos that blazes from both sides of this LP. Buckle up and enjoy the ride!
'Look Into The Light’ written and performed by Matt Adams. #1-3 basic tracks recorded by Tommy Dietrick at Skylab Studio In Joshua Tree, CA 2018, overdubs by Matt Adams. #4-6 recorded & mixed by Mike Post at Moosecat Recording In Los Angeles, CA 2019. #7 recorded by Matt Adams at Arroyo Seco Studio in Yucca Valley, CA, drums recorded by Nathan Sabatino. #1-3 & 7 mixed by Nathan Sabatino at Hi Dez Recording. Mastered by Paul Oldham. Art by Matt Adams.
Shaughnessy Starr - Drums #1-6
Jason Cirimele - Bass #1-3
Veronica Bianqui - Vocals #1-7