Big Rig Records

To celebrate the release of their debut album Swedish popsters Let’s Say We Did have just released a new video for It’s OK. Check it out!

The debut album for Swedish popsters Let’s Say We Did is available for pre-order before it’s release on November 23rd.

Existing on the periphery of the Stockholm music scene since they raised from the ashes of previous projects and started playing together in 2008, their debut LP, completed together with Pelle Gunnerfeldt (The Hives, Bear Quartet, Säkert, Fireside etc). The album was partly recorded in LSWDs rehearsal studio and partly at Studio Gröndahl with Pelle Gunnerfeldt as producer and mixer.

Previously L.S.W.D. released a trilogy of EPs on their own record label Nesna Records. The trilogy has drawn praise from all corners of the globe for the guitar hooks and melodic pop songs. A number of music blogs have written that L.S.W.D. is a band to keep your eyes on and it has drawn comparisons to Pavement, Wilco and Teenage Fanclub.

It’s hard to describe the magic of the circus, when you step inside that tent you are transported to another world – the world of wild animals, wacky clowns and topsy-turvy tightrope walkers. Susy Blue’s new single ‘Circus’ delves into the wonders of the big top spectacle.

A finalist for the Melbourne Music Prize and Darebin Music Feast Songwriter’s Award, Susy Blue’s unique style and voice have been recognized by critics and music lovers alike. Following the release of her debut album earlier this year which received extensive local and national airplay including Triple J and ABC, Susy Blue embarks on a national tour to launch her film clip and single with shows booked through November.

Funded by her fans, the creation of the ‘Circus’ film clip was realized by collaborators Paper-Deer and Motive with a troupe of circus folk and friends playing parts of strongmen, acrobats, bears and bearded ladies. Drawing similarities to artists such as Gillian Welch, Laura Marling and Joanna Newsom, Susy Blue’s music is a mélange of nouveau-folk, jazz and pop. Her timeless voice conjures imagery of happy childhood memories transcending into moments of mischief and melancholy.

The contributions and support towards the film clip were overwhelmingly generous as many have been eager to see Susy Blue’s refreshing songwriting adapted into colourful moving images. Performing at festivals Woodford, Apollo Bay and High Noon, Susy Blue’s live show is noted to be cheeky, unexpected and entertaining. Curious? Join Susy and her band of gypsies as they kick off their national tour in celebration of creative collaboration!

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As of today all of our releases can now be heard streaming in full directly from the website. Just select the artist and album from the “Artists” drop down menu and you’ll find a player at the bottom of the release page.

Melbourne’s Susy Blue is seeking a little help with her new music video. She’s almost there so if you’re feeling generous help out by throwing in the last few dollars needed to make it a success!

In 15 days Renee has raised a total of $3,155 ($655 above her goal of $2,500) with a total of 92 people backing her campaign that’s an average donation of $34.293478260869565 per person at a rate of $210.333333333333333 per day.

Thanks to all the backers and Way to go Renee!

Renee Arozqueta has bought and old van and is planning a mammoth tour of 48 of the United States (I’m assuming Alaska and Hawaii are out). She has a slight problem though: Renee’s run out of CD’s, Zines and other art to sell while she’s on tour. So she’s started a Kickstarter Project and is aiming to raise $2500 to stock up on stuff before she hit’s the road.

For those of you not familiar with Kickstarter, it’s an all or nothing way to try and fund independent artistic endeavors. You create a project, set a funding aim and a cut off date. If you reach your goal in time the pledges get paid and if you don’t you get nothing.

So far Renee is just under the halfway mark with 19 days left to go. Renee explains here scheme and the rewards she is offering for your pledges better in the video below. If you’ve got a few spare dollars head on over to the project page and help her worthy cause.

Congratulations goes out to E-Wah Lady who took out the APRA Open Award at the 2010 The Darebin Music Feast Songwriters’ Awards.

Now in its eighth year, the annual Award has become a highly regarded competition that showcases the fine calibre of songwriters that live and work within Darebin. The APRA Open Awards prize includes: $1200 cash donated by APRA (Australian Performing Rights Association), studio time thanks to Jam Hut Studios, mastering at Indie Masters, $500 Implant Media Voucher for CD duplication services and $100 Guitar World Voucher.

Congratulations E-Wah!

For those of you who have visited the Big Rig website over that last 3 or 4 weeks you would have noticed that it has undergone a bit of a transformation.  A lot of work has gone into it to get it just the way we like it and we thought we’d tell you what’s new.

Before I get started spruiking our wares I have to say the hugest thanks to my wife Michelle who has done all the fantastic work on the website design and back end coding to get it looking and working great. Hopefully now the days of me coming to her and saying “can you just change it so it does….” or “can you just fix this bit..” are all over and she can have some peace.  Please take a minute to check out her blog.

Now to the new things.  Over the last few months we’ve had a huge amount of activity with 13 new artists and 14 new digital releases with more still on the way.  The new site has been designed so we can showcase the new releases and provide quick and easy access to the back catalogue. The new site features full length streaming mp3′s, videos as well as gig and press updates taken from the label and it’s artists Reverbnation profiles. As a result there is much more media on the site than ever before.  There are RSS feeds from individual artist websites and buy links for all releases that are still available online.

As part of the update process I’ve sat down and looked back at the history of the label and all the releases that have occurred over the 11 years since we started out. This includes; retail ready CD releases, limited run self assembled promotional CD’s and our new digital catalogue.  As a result the artist list and corresponding discography is a complete history of everything that we have produced.  Wherever possible the content about the artists who are no longer with the label links back to their most recent activities and current projects.  Also there are external buy links to any of the back catalogue still available that we no longer have the rights for.

The “Labels” tab on the navigation bar lists the labels whose recordings we distribute along with a short biography and links back to their websites.

The last new feature is a Blog section where Nick and myself will hopefully more than occasionally let you know what we’re listening to, what bands we are seeing and what wonderful things we’ve stumbled across while surfing the net.  Anything that we put here will also be posted on twitter, so be sure to follow us.

While all this has been happening there is still plenty of action. We are negotiating new releases, there is talk of  a Big Rig Records iPad/iPhone App and early rumblings about an Australian tour by one of our overseas artists so stay tuned!

March, April and May have been busy months behind the scenes at Big Rig Records culminating in the signing of 3 new digital distribution deals resulting in 10 new digital releases and we’re pleased to announce the release of albums from Grinding Tapes Recordings, the various projects of Chad Bishop and Peak Plasma Concentration Records’ artist E-Wah Lady.

Check out the Artists page for buy links and full streaming MP3s.

Grinding Tapes Recording Company

Named after his high school recording experiments Jason Rozens’ US based label Grinding Tapes Recording Company has been releasing fine independent artists from it’s base in Andover Massachusetts since 2005.  Big Rig will digitally releasing a selection of the Grinding Tapes catalogue consisting of: Dreamtigers, Brother/Sister, Saint Joe Hazelwood and The Slowest Runner in All the World.

Brother/Sister Merry Christmas, Brother/Sister	Dreamtigers Broken Seasons	Saint Joe Hazelwood Saint Joe Hazelwood	Saint Joe Hazelwood Summer 2007 Tour EP	The Slowest Runner in All the World The Flophouse Session

Chad Bishop

Chad Bishop is from Pensacola Florida. He writes songs about astronauts, time travellers, communist bus drivers in Chicago, outsider artists, drunks, a ghost town, and dreams. Big Rig Records is releasing 3 albums of material from differing projects of Chad’s creation.

Following the path of deconstructionist post modernism picked up while studying literature at the university in Pensacola; Chad released the album “la bete” with the band The Cripple Lilies. After a few national tours in the year 2008, the band dissolved and Chad continued writing for a new project: Paper Scissors Rocketpack! continuing with many of the themes from earlier projects, Paper Scissors Rocketpack also featured a surrealist sense of absurdity on their album “escapist vs exit”.

In the spring of 2010, Chad began to pursue a new and more experimental solo-ish project Spider+Octopus, accompanied by Renee Arozqueta on accordion and piano, they released “La Arana Esta Susurrando”.

The Cripple Lilies La Bete	Paper Scissors Rocketpack Escapist Vs Exit	Spider+Octopus La Arana Esta Susurrando

E-Wah Lady

E-wah Lady has come a long way since her often “hit and Mrs” shows in the early millennium. At that stage a solo act, she was often accompanied by her then “husband” the late Tim Coke on wooden spoon and tin drum, or whatever else was around to hit. These shows were unpredictable things, sometimes crackling with intimacy and directness, other times cracking and tumbling to the floor in front of your eyes. This was back in the days when her only recording to spruik was a 4 track demo on cassette, featuring a grisly picture of her wielding an axe.

After signing to independent label Peak Plasma Concentration Records. She got busy recording and in 2006 released two highly acclaimed records.

Big Rig Records is please to be digitally distributing E-wah’s third release, 8 song album Lights and Sirens.

E-Wah Lady Lights and Sirens

Los Musicos Perdidos is the latest digital release from Big Rig Records.

The Boats independently released this album on compact disc in 2008, and until now it has only been available from live shows and a few select record stores in their home city of Melbourne, Australia.

Now Big Rig Records introduces this amazing instrumental band to a wider audience. What the band say about their debut album…

This is an album that has haunted us and lurked in our ears and hearts for 3 years.

Since the band formed back in 2003, we were recording ideas and jams, and in our early incarnation of experimenting and forming our sounds, we recorded a little promo EP to two-track tape, and local radio and punters took notice of our sound. So we began recording ideas and jams up at Nick’s studio…in the days when he lived up in that beautiful old house in the middle of the forest in Olinda, it was an amazing place to record to say the least.

The first recordings consisted of many interesting ideas, and long spiralling jams, and we recorded ‘Los Musicos Perdidos’, ‘2 am’ and ‘Asylum’ in Jan 2004.

What we needed was more live shows to shape us more, so we virtually played gigs for a year and in September that year we returned to Nick’s green retreat to continue recording…and we captured the rest of the album, over that weekend, including songs like ‘Warmth from a window’, ‘The sea is in the boat’, ‘Strawberry’ and ‘Little black rays of hope’. So the album was virtually recorded over two weekends in 2004.

It was then in 2005 that some peril began, we all had some serious relationship breaks, and it was generally a very intense time. When the storm had cleared we contacted Paul, who was heavily steeped in work (when he’s not bashing those skins he’s driving trucks), and we slowly reformed and began finishing work on the album.

The album represents the band in it’s early days, when we were still discovering our sounds, and figuring out who we were, moulding our music. When I had nothing but a dodgy old analogue delay pedal, and too many ideas. When Nick had long hair and recorded an album called ‘Olinda Daze’. When Paul was…how do you say? More comfortable. ‘Los Musicos Perdidos’ is our debut, and it’s a personal, emotional and spiritual kind of journey for us. I hope people like it, it’s honest and it’s the boats captured in a time capsule.

1999 Australia. Then Prime Minister John Howard refused to say sorry for the harms caused in the past to the Aboriginal people of Australia; the national cricket team defeated Pakistan to win the world cup; whilst elsewhere in the world some hick from Texas decided he wanted to run for President of the United States.

Meanwhile in Adelaide (approx pop 1.1million) Modicom were putting the finishing touches on what was to be their debut album, and what until now they never thought would see the light of day.

Modicom first appeared in the shifting atmosphere of Adelaide’s music scene in mid-1998, when singer Nathan Korotkov and guitarist Sam Reid from local pop outfit wendyhouse, began a concentrated songwriting effort with cellist and vocalist, Zoe Barry. The three produced a unique sound that was often described as a type of ‘experimental baroque’. Their musical chemistry was immediate and the three began playing regular live shows at local subterranean nightspot, supermild.

Modicom presented an interesting departure from much of the music that was being played in Adelaide at this time, with unique cello arrangements played over Reid’s unorthodox guitar signatures and Korotkov’s commanding baritone. Their songs swept between sounds that were murky and dark in places, but which were carried by a rhythmic undercurrent and a sense of hope.

Modicom expanded to become a five-piece during the recording of The Icestorm in early 1999, but they never released their album before disbanding suddenly at the end of that year when Korotkov and Reid moved interstate to pursue other interests.

Now, for the first time, the Modicom time capsule has been opened. Enjoy.

If you think your music fits the Big Rig Records sound and want to go digital contact us!

Here at Big Rig Records we’ve decided that we’re moving away from CD releases and going 100% digital.

We’ve partnered up with US based digital music supplier IODA and can get your music out to over 100 online and mobile providers such as iTunes, Amazon, Audio Lunchbox, emusic, Destra, LastFM, Napster, Puretracks, Strabucks, T-Online and Verizon just to name a few…

We are offering artists the choice of 2 contracts, one a royalty based contract where Big Rig gets a percentage of sales income (for those not sure how many digital sales they might achieve) and a fee based contract with a 14 month royalty free period (for artists who feel that their release will sell like hotcakes and want to get the maximum possible returns).

If you would like more information download a PDF with some more details.

If you have further questions or are keen to sign up contact us

• Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder hd

and we’ll talk further.

Here’s a reminder of where your music might go: