Today I was extremely fortunate enough to sit down with the fine people at Chinquapin Records. As I sat down to go over the questions I actually shouted ‘yes’ upon hearing the answers. Everything they say below is exactly what I love about these small labels. Quality is kept high, and their answers are a perfect look into those too often ignored parts of our vast musical landscape. Having listened to both DTH and Chris Rehm, I’d strongly urge you to check out their wonderful releases. See the below for their extremely well-thought out and articulate responses. Personally, I’m really happy they are able to provide such a great product at no cost. Whatever you can do, help these wonderful people out!
Where did you get the name Chinquapin from? Does this relate to the sound you use for the recordings?
1.
Chinquapin Records is named after the little town my family had a little bayhouse at. I would go out there with friends and family, often playing music. It was always a treat to spend the weekend there and the tradition continues to this day. When I found myself surrounded by and growing with such a talented and innovative group of musicians, I was reminded of those feelings of family and escapism that I felt when going to the bay. I started throwing the idea of uniting our efforts under a title to my friends, and started working towards organizing and developing it ever since. If this were to relate to our collective "sound", it would be in reference to our diversity, in which whose individual parts we've all found something to appreciate, like members of a family.
Will you guys continue to offer the tracks for free off of your site? Just so you know, I’ve tried to send your stuff to a few of my friends, and I hope you continue this approach.
2. Yeah, we all like the free download approach. As of right now, we feel the most important thing is simply sharing our music with whoever is interested, and the easier it is to get our free digital music, the better. I'm sure there will be exceptions to this rule in the future for some particularly expensive project or something, but we're all very aware of how easy it is to get any album you would want for free. Many albums will have a donate option for extra content, giving listeners the option to financially support what we do. We're in the process of trying a new approach for releasing an album. My band
Caddywhompus just released a
free single from an upcoming EP, and what we're doing is trying to get 7500 downloads of the single, if that happens before May 7th (the scheduled release date), we will release the EP early. We ask those who download the song to tell us how they heard about the single and the individuals or bloggers who are cited as the most evangelical will be rewarded for their efforts in some way. There will be other tiers to this plan and we're thinking of applying this to upcoming releases.
Cave Wave: how exactly would you define this term and how does it accurately describe your recordings?
3. Haha "Cave Wave" I think I read somewhere (maybe a Grouper review?) and I thought it fit my sound well too. I'd say it's some way of classifying the new breed of ambient artists out there now, but calling such a movement a "wave" is pretty ridiculous, as I don't think there is any sort of copied or overplayed styles in the "genre" out there. I feel that, with few exceptions, this area of music has some of the most unique and musically independent artists, creating beautiful new environments for the listener. The uniting theme here is "cave" where most of our music sounds like its being played in some reverberant cave.
What sort of scene exists in Louisiana for this kind of music? All I have heard out of Louisiana is Quintron, so my apologies for my ignorance.
4. I wouldn't say there are many big musical "scenes" right now in Louisiana, but you do have your few individual groups managing to break out into visibility by the world (one of my favorite ambient groups,
Belong, lives right here in New Orleans, but there isn't any sort of scene present here that they fit in). The
Elephant 6 crew out of Ruston still has some residue left over there and partyjazzneworleans is still alive and well. We also have our college trendsters doing dubstep and whatnot like everywhere else. Chinquapin believes we have the potential to start a movement over here, but we'll have to see.
How’d you go about structuring this album? Usually I hear an artist keep the same sound and mood for the entire duration, but in (Worries, etc.) it appears to have a more emotional approach. Any reason why you choose this path?
5. Well, I've always loved the idea of an album being one fluid work, so I often plan to make it all connect in some way. This album was written chronologically, so the emotional and musical direction was unplanned other than to follow the circumstances of my life that inspired me to write it. There were a few transitional sections added afterwards, but the album as a whole followed my life in bits and pieces from the summer of 2008 until late 2010. I generally write and record my solo music at the same time and whenever I felt inspired, I'd listen to what I've done so far with the album and then pick up where I left off, being very conscious of the previous piece and making sure to tie them together accurately.
I particularly enjoyed the song “Blinders”. Listening to it, I felt a distinctly ‘beach’ vibe to it. How did you go about creating this song?
6. This was actually one of my favorite songs, in terms of composition on this album. The chord background is a heavily-effected continuation of the guitar loop that made up the first song. This part was recorded in the summer of 2008 in a practice space in Houston, TX. Then I layered on top of that some reversed, slowed down, and non-effected recordings of a
Timothy Leary speech which ended with the phrase, "I found the experience to be both awesome and awful", something that struck a chord with me the first time I heard it. Then, the guitar is left bare for a few seconds before the crescendo comes, whose "beat" is a super-distorted recording of my hitting my desk in my room while the guitar track remains, keeping the chord progression and melody moving. This song is kind of a representation of the place in between my own personal thoughts/existence and that of my relationship with my friends in Houston. Sometimes it's pleasant and fantasy-like and sometimes it's violent.
Does Chinquapin Records have any hopes to do large or minor scale tours? Any hints of where or when these might be?
7. So far, we don't have any tours booked for the label as a whole, but Caddywhompus,
Sun Hotel, and I are all planning on Spring Break and/or Summer touring. Sun Hotel is touring late this April along the south east (basically New Orleans to Florida and back) and I'll be doing a separate solo tour westward to Texas and then circling towards the north and back to New Orleans around the same time. This summer both Sun Hotel and Caddywhompus are touring along the East Coast, but these too will be separate tours with differing routes. We'll meet up for a few shows, but for the most part, they're independent of each other. I'd love to organize a "Chinquapin Records Tour" with a few artists on the label touring together. On tha to', as we call it.
At what point did you decide to take this approach towards music? Was there ever a singular moment that convinced you to start in this path?
8. If you're taking about the direction of my solo music, I started getting interested in ambient music, especially in its emotional power in film back in the beginning of high school. I made my first ambient album in 2007 and have been incorporating that style into my music ever since. The music from the movies "A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints" and "Crash" were the first two movies that really showed me the importance and strength of this fragile, minimal music also hearing the more ambient sections of Godspeed You Black Emperor and other post rock bands brought to light this genre for me.
Given the opportunity, what other artist would you most like to work with and why.
9. Personally, I've wanted to work with the sound artist
Juilanna Barwick, for a while now after hearing her first album, "Sanguine" a few years ago. I read somewhere that she's been wanting a DJ or something to rework her music. So that made me want to do some sweet glitch-hop remix of some of her jams, win her over, and then go record her in some awesome reverberant space in Brooklyn when I go up there on tour, and then we'd release it on Chinquapin. I've yet to do this, but that would be my dream. Plus, she just released her new album on
Asthmatic Kitty, so I've got some tough competition now.
Are you involved in other forms of artistic expression? If so what would these be?
10. I personally am not involved in any other forms of art, but my good friend
Alex Hertz (plays guitar in Sun Hotel) is a wonderful visual/digital artist and he designed the website for the most part as well as many other sites and album covers. He's the jam.
Where did you all meet? The artists on your label seem to be a tight-knit bunch.
11. We all met (with the exception of me and Sean) at Loyola University here in New Orleans. I've knows Sean (drums in my band Caddywhompus) since grade school back in Houston. We've all been involved with each others' musical lives very intimately for the past three years now. We've done a lot of touring together too.
Native America and Sun Hotel share members, I'm in Caddywhompus and Devin (
Dth) is in Sun Hotel as well. So right now, it's pretty incestuous, but this isn't illegal.
Any plans for the future of Chinquapin records? Do you accept demos?
12. In the future, we just want to get more organized and visible as a unique music entity as well as to continue to consistently release music and other content. We have a few releases we're getting ready to release in the next few months and we want each one to be more successful than the previous. Hopefully, our internet and local exposure will translate to more efficient touring and better relationships with those listening. We're open to accepting demos, and if everyone on the label is down with the music given to us, we'll do everything we can to help promote it on and offline and to incorporate them into the family.
Is there anything else you’d like to add about your music or your label that I failed to touch upon?
13. Not that I can think of. We just want people to
pay attention to and
keep in touch with what we're doing, release-wise as well as with other offshoots of traditional album releases, such as the
Bedroom Sessions we're starting to do (live recordings of various bands in their most comfortable setting, ideally their bedroom). Thanks for the opportunity to share what we're doing!
