We’re having one of our irregular spectaculars in the Southern Web Shop. The mail order elves are restless and if we don’t get them busy packing up parcels then we’re going to have real trouble on our hands.
Starting Friday 10th June we are having a mega-sale featuring the entire Constellation catalogue. A big hum-dinging 20% off our regular low-low prices means you can pick up CDs for around the £8 mark, and vinyl for £9 (prices vary according to release). To start shopping just pop over to our our shop from Friday and choose Constellation from the Labels list, or just use this link if you’re lazy like me.
Constellation Records is an influential Montreal, Quebec independent record label known for its contributions to experimental genres of music. It is most famous for releasing the albums of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band, and Do Make Say Think. Constellation are anti-corporate, anti-capitalist, and anti-globalist; its mission, according to its founders, was to “enact a mode of cultural production that critiques the worst tendencies of the music industry, artistic commodification, and perhaps in some tiny way, the world at large.” It also hoped to recover and rebuild an independent music ethic that it saw as commodified and corporatized. The packaging of Constellation’s music also reflects this ethos; they eschew the ubiquitous jewel cases and ship their albums in unique hand-designed cardboard packages, which are made, as far as is possible, by local artists and artisans.
Just a few of the wonderful releases that you can acquire during our sale…
A Silver Mt Zion – 13 Blues For Thirteen Moons
On 13 Blues For Thirteen Moons, riffs are the backbone more than ever. Anchored by new drummer Eric Craven (ex-Hangedup), ASMZ works its slow build and burn with newfound patience, sinuousness and ferocity. Whether methodically framing walls of sound over the four-on-the-floor punk dirge of “1,000,000 Died To Make This Sound” or exploding in sheets of free noise and melody on “Black Waters Blowed”, the band has never rocked harder and has never sounded more determined, desperate and driven.
Sale price: CD £8 LP £11.20
Land Of Kush – Against The Day
Inspired by and named after the Thomas Pynchon’s novel Against the Day, this is a complex, intense, but accessible hour of hybrid, genre-defying music. The marriage of middle-eastern, north African and western modes and influences yields a recording that evades categorization.
Sale price: CD £8 LP £12
Jem Cohen – An Evening Twilight In Empires Of Tin
A unique film/live DVD hybrid featuring film vignettes from acclaimed filmmaker Jem Cohen with a live soundtrack from Vic Chesnutt, Guy Picciotto (Fugazi), and members of A Silver Mt. Zion.
Sale price £9.60
Matana Roberts – Coin Coin Chapter One: Gens De Couleur Libres
A spectacular collaboration between Matana Roberts, one of the leading lights of contemporary African-American experimental music, and a group of Montreal musicians, recorded live at Hotel2Tango and edited into four 15 minute suites. On CD and double 10 inch vinyl set.
Sale price CD £8.40 LP £15.20
These are just a few of the wonderful releases that Constellation have contributed over the years. Please have a browse and use this opportunity to explore some of the less exposed corners of their rich catalogue.
Thank you.
This session will also be entitled to another memorable bit of trivia – it will be the last vinyl release to be packaged in the original black & white “disco bag” sleeves. We are awaiting delivery of a radically redesigned new vinyl sleeve, which will be unveiled in our next two session releases – Sylvester Anfang and The Entrance Band.
