So okay, I was just asked to release my EP ‘Pi11 Bits’ on Casey Chisholm’s ‘Ascension Recordings and Publications‘, and I’m maybe a tad bit excited. But hey, in credit to my own back-scratching, I was a fan of Casey Chisholm’s own music, Religious Girls, Brother, and other stuff released on Ascension well before this happened. So take a look at the roster and listen to the label’s stuff on myspace, because it really is great. If we must play the genre game, it’s kind of electro-acoustic, anti-folk, shoe-gaze blah blah blah. But what I really value about the musical community that Ascension is forming and promoting is the lack of ‘genre.’ It seems much less focused on being too aligned with a particular movement or moment, which is a quality that has appealed to me since I have been writing on this blog.

You could say anti-folk is so 3 years ago, or you could say electro-acoustic is so three years ago or whatever if you want to be annoying. But the fact is that it’s the information era, and saying ‘that’s so three years ago’ is the main thing that’s really ‘three years ago.’ The second anything new happens it gets billions of followers and spin-offs… and this happens much quicker in this day and age than ever before. I mean seriously, remember when ‘New Rave’ was new? Didn’t it blow up even quicker than Electro-clash? Can you still stand it? Ask yourself… (okay, I must admit I’m listening to the track I linked and it still kind of makes me wanna dance).

The only things I’ve noticed for a while that are shockingly unique and could be ‘different’ and thus trend setting, are non-coincidentally ‘shitty.’ The only reason we all don’t already know about them is that nobody really cares. That said, there are places in the world where certain types of music thrive. New York City will always hip-hop. Chicago will always have house. Seattle will always have indie rock, and right now, in my short observance of the Bay Area and No Cal, it has a lot of music with this really great experimental, folk influenced sound that doesn’t seem to worry about separating itself from computers or drum machines. Is it it’s own genre? I’m not sure, and I am certainly not going to be the asshole that coins the term, but I do know that I really like a lot of it, and I really like Ascension Records.

Track list!!!

01 waxxing gibbous – up mine, sunshine
02 if only – casey chisholm
03 talk of the ole times – travis brooks
04 the past – jonathan sarenana
05 the little ones – j irvin dally
06 you will rise – 100 swans
07 in the land of the corpses… – the mountains
08 animal spirit party – kevin facey
09 the sacred and the vulgar – brad feilder
10 boats – chirp
11 airplane nose bleed – kite flying robot
12 i still remember – blood, bones and tissue
13 smitherene – tashina tucker
14 moonshine – goodman
15 delora – religious girls