Easy Sound Recording Company, a new Los Angeles-based label, has launched as the home for Vetiver, Howlin Rain, Isobel Campbell, Papercuts, the Donkeys, Rodrigo Amarante (of Little Joy and Los Hermanos), and EDJ, the new project of former Fruit Bats leader and Shins sideman Eric D. Johnson. This select group of artists should be well familiar to avid music fans, and collects under one umbrella an already vibrant and collaborative cadre of like-minded west-coasters.
Life Among the Savages the new album from Bay-area dream pop outfit Papercuts, and Amarante’s Cavalo will be the first Easy Sound full-length releases, both due on May 6th. Ride the Black Wave, from sun-soaked San Diegans the Donkeys, will follow on June 3rd. New albums from Campbell, Howlin Rain, EDJ, and Vetiver are also slated for later in 2014.
Easy Sound’s inaugural releases, though, will come in the form of three split 7″ singles to be released on Record Store Day, April 19th. The split series, which collects new or previously unreleased recordings from Vetiver, Howlin Rain, Papercuts, the Donkeys, Rodrigo Amarante and EDJ, mirrors the community aesthetic at the heart of Easy Sound.
| Easy Sound 7″ series for Record Store Day |
Papercuts, Vetiver, the Donkeys, and EDJ will appear together at the Noise Pop Festival in San Francisco on Wednesday, 2/26 at the Chapel.
“Starting Easy Sound seemed to happen almost on its own,” says label GM Stephen Brower. “I’ve loved these bands for years, and in the last year or so, they all starting hitting my orbit over and over, whether it was seeing Vetiver and Howlin Rain together last New Year’s, Papercuts at Eric’s Huichica Festival, or the Donkeys/Fruit Bats northwest tour last fall. And Isobel is just magic, of course. The possibility of creating a label home for (and with) what was already an amazing congregation of artists is something that just made complete sense. That I was introduced to Rodrigo Amarante and his stunning record Cavalo while trying to figure out how to do that was pure serendipity.”
