We’ve Gotta Stick Together - May 2019 Copper Feast Blog

This month’s blog was written to the sounds of The Unbliniking Eye, the new EP from Canadian stoner specialists BORT. Listen to it now here. Featuring five tracks full to the brim with some of the biggest and most unforgiving riffs of the year, don’t sleep on these boys...

We’ve Gotta Stick Together

Hi everybody, and welcome back to the Copper Feast Blog for May. It’s been a very busy April by all accounts so bear with me while I get you all up to speed on what’s been happening here!

The first bit of news is that the full press of T-Rextasy’s Prehysteria has now landed with me and pre-orders have started to ship out to all of you guys kind enough to support what I think is a fantastic record - fingers crossed we can get them over later in the year for a UK tour!

I've added Prehysteria to our one-off fire sale which will not be active for much longer, so head over and grab a copy and set yourself up for some great summer vibes!

We’ve also received the test pressings for Pseudo Mind Hive’s From Elsewhere which I’m dead excited to listen to. All being well they’ll be approved tomorrow and full production will being next week! I can’t wait to see what Breed have cooked up for us with this bad boy!

The final piece of news is perhaps the biggest piece and also the inspiration for this month’s blog. As I’m sure many of you guys will have seen by now, Copper Feast has now partnered up with those stoner/doom legends at Magnetic Eye Records to initially offer a variety of their releases up for UK/EU fulfillment to Copper Feast’s amazing fans. Later in the year, the aim is for MER to return the favour, once we have completed this year’s release schedule around September time.

The most exciting thing for me at this point is to see how this relationship is going to develop between the labels as we look to work together more and more in the future and I’m sure Mike and Jadd at Magnetic Eye share my enthusiasm!

Now, this leads me onto the subject of this month’s blog as I wanted to highlight just how important it is going forward into what is an ever-changing and challenging industry, particularly for us little guys, to work together to have our collective voices heard.

For example, over the past year or so, UK-based record stores started a collective label to all intents and purposes, releasing some limited edition variants of new releases from artists such as Kurt Vile and Snapped Ankles. Having watched from afar, it seems to me that Dinked, as it’s known, has been an enormous success. A good amount of their releases have sold out and are now selling for inflated prices on Discogs.

In some cases, they’ve put out bigger releases from more established artists, but in others, they’ve taken the opportunity to champion some up-and-coming artists from the UK and beyond! A great result for both artists and record stores then. But what about independent labels like Copper Feast?

We are currently working with a couple of other sick labels to put together our first release from a UK band. I think this could be a fantastic way forward for a lot of labels out there as it offers the opportunity to expand fan bases and get some of these great albums out to places that wouldn’t otherwise be possible with a single label on board. Check out School Disco's first single from their upcoming debut album here.

Naturally, it’s a financially less demanding undertaking, and would allow labels to grow their catalogues far quicker than they stuck to releases put out 100% by themselves.

As is well documented online, the music industry was supposed to have died years ago. Business is not exactly booming, and with the onset of streaming, income streams have shrunk further as payout is considerably less from streaming than via physical means. That means that it is so, so important, now more than ever that for independent labels and artists to thrive in 2019, we need to work together and collaborate wherever possible.

Thanks as always for all of your continued support, it makes all the long evenings worthwhile and reminds me why I love running Copper Feast.

Callum

#vinyl #newmusic #music #stonerrock #psychrock