First off, hello. I just looked and it’s been ENTIRELY too long since I’ve sent anything out. We’ve been bad at this. A lot of stuff has happened over here…some of it is kinda big (in my world, anyway) and some of it is just sorta the pull of the current of doing this kind of work, I guess. Either way, it makes sense right now to list out some of the stuff, because a couple of the things are time-sensitive…here are the things, under a special header, for emphasis.
THE THINGS:
As you probably already know, we usually really DO IT UP for Black Friday…it’s a ton of fun and totally exhausting and it pretty much eats up 90% of whatever extroverted confidence I have saved up all year, and it’s been a great way to get a bunch of stuff into the hands of people who are just finding out about us, as well as all’a y’all who are eagle-eyed and seasoned enough to spot the super deep cuts.
Well, we didn’t really do that this year…we weren’t really able to, between being 100% bogged down with printing projects that are demanding our FULL attention—namely, the TRIPLE THREAT of Aaron Horkey’s “Crypsis” art print from the end of the summer, Jes’s movie poster for “The Wicker Man,” and the jackets for the Self Defense Family “Law of Karma Live…” double LP we released a bit ago that had been delayed into oblivion for the longest time—between being bogged down with that printing, and also just the very practical obstacle of not having our Landland Inventory Zone worked out and organized enough to do all the deep diving I’d need to do in order to have a Proper Landland Black Friday Sale Thing. We’re planning on doing something resembling one of those sales sometime next year, once our heads are above water again. It’ll be super fun, the way it should be.
But yeah, we did want to do a discount thing for the weekend, and for “cyber monday” or whatever, and I really should’ve mentioned this sooner (but…all that aforementioned printing has been driving our lives the past couple weeks), but yeah, we have a SALE. It’s 20% off of everything in our “main” Landland store (the Big Cartel one, which is linked here, but not our record label Bandcamp one, which is linked here…I didn’t have the time to figure out all the logistics for the record stuff).
Use this secret codeword in the discount codes part of our Landland store to obtain TWENTY PERCENT OFF:
LISTENTOLUNGFISH
It’s a directive and life advice and a note-to-self and now it’s also a discount code in our store until the end of TODAY, Monday, November 27th. (by “end,” we mean it ends at 11:59pm…our lawyers made us say that. These are our lawyers.)Another thing! We made a poster for LES CLAYPOOL’s Fearless Flying Frog Brigade about a month ago…they were playing a show in Montclair, New Jersey, and we got asked, and I like Primus, so I said yes. The “tl;dr” of this is that these posters are up in our store RIGHT now, and that we have a metallic rainbow foil version as well as the regular paper ones, but if you also want to see what it looks like, here’s it:
Jes did the watercolor part and the purple onion (referencing their album…The Purple Onion), and I did the drawing and looked at waaaaaaay too many reference photos of adorable little frog duders. And also the guts of so many submarines. They look so weird on the inside. Who knew?
Anyway, these are available NOW. The regular ones are $50, and the foil ones are $100, and both of them are subject to the “LISTENTOLUNGFISH” discount mentioned above, but just until the end of Monday.I’m a bit embarrassed I haven’t mentioned this in here yet, because it’s really one of the most exciting things I’ve gotten to work on and have a HEAVY hand in, and certainly one of the coolest things we’ve been able to put out on our Landland Colportage Record Label:
WE’RE RELEASING A SELF DEFENSE FAMILY RECORD.
Still fun to say, even though we launched the preorder back in August. After (seriously & literally) over TWO YEARS of delays from the pressing plant, we’re finally ready to hopefully start shipping these soon.
For the uninitiated, SELF DEFENSE FAMILY is one of my all-time favorite bands, and definitely one of my top currently-active bands. Getting to work with them on this record has been such a cool thing, even despite the many holdups. They’re more a collective than a band in the traditional sense, with the lineup consisting of whichever of the dozen or so members happen to be present and willing when the SDF signal appears in the sky, which has led to a wildly diverse and prolific catalog of recordings and releases that flicker in and out of print and have become almost impossible for late-coming completists to track down.
This double LP, “Law of Karma Live: Fake Shit Wins But Not Tonight,” is a live record capturing Self Defense Family’s “large band” era, with an eight-person lineup performing three East Coast shows back in 2019.
It serves as an excellent primer for people looking to get into this band that might’ve been overwhelmed by their expansive catalog, featuring what I consider to be definitive versions of some of their songs from a ton of those records (as well as a cover of Neil Young’s “On The Beach,” and plenty of endearing stage banter from vocalist Patrick Kindlon (also of Drug Church).
Pulling out all the stops for this thing, I recruited the raddest dude Mike Sutfin (of the Vacvvm, and also of sharing my old studio with me) for cover art duties, knowing he’d slay it, and that’s exactly what he did. He also did the art for the center labels on the record, and they rule as well. Here’s the cover for this thing…it’s so perfect:From there, I handled all the layout duties and built it to be a full gatefold (also featuring photography by Jonathan Velazquez, who the band had traveling with them to document the shows), which we’re currently screenprinting and assembling BY HAND here at Landland.
These things are limited to 673 copies, and here’s the breakdown of different variants that we have available:
200 copies: Metallic Silver w/ Transparent Blue (A/B sides) & Transparent Blue w/ White (C/D sides)
200 copies: Crystal Clear w/ Black Swirl (A/B sides) & Transparent Blue w/ Black Swirl (C/D) sides
150 copies: Opaque White w/ Transparent Amber (A/B sides) & Transparent Amber w/ Transparent Orange (C/D sides)
100 copies: 180g Opaque Black for both A/B & C/D sides
23 copies: Mike Sutfin Test Print Variant • Non-color PVC White (A/B sides) & Opaque Brown (C/D sides)
They’re $35 or $40, depending on the variant, we’re sold out of the black ones, and running VERY low on the white & amber ones.
If you want to test drive it before you grab one, it’s also up in full on Spotify and everywhere else people stream things (but seriously, you’ll want one of these on the shelf, and on your turntable).
While I’m on the subject, here’s a really great Self Defense Family video for a single from their last studio album that I like a lot, featuring SDF guitarist Mary Brulatour, who’s also an amazing Muay Thai fighter:Also—just because I just found it (and this thing’ll let me embed whatever)—here’s a good live video of Self Defense Family from about a year before they taped the “Law of Karma Live” shows we’re putting out:
In other record label news, the ABILENE “Endee Burial” 3xLP box sets are shipping now and have been (softly and gracefully) hitting people’s mailboxes. They look like this:
I’m so psyched about how this thing came together…it was my first time working with a casebound slipcase, and all of the manufacturers that we worked with to bring that thing to life were incredible, because the thing looks and feels GREAT. Seriously, the thought of releasing a TRIPLE LP BOX SET had been so daunting and intimidating to me, even with the help of my buddy Joshua Hardisty at 795 Media…there was so much to wrap our heads around and so much planning. It was literally YEARS in the making, and now my dining room is full of them. Help me out with that, and do yourself a cool favor as well.
Did I say this last time? NOW WE HAVE A YOUTUBE CHANNEL.
It was sorta built out of necessity because of all the record label stuff we had going on this summer, so it’s pretty heavy with that right now, but our intention is to also use it as a place to put drawing videos and process videos, as well as just being a general hub for anything out there that’s related to what we’re doing.
Give us a follow on there. We have no idea what we’re doing.
Right now, we’ve got all the music videos for the releases we’ve put out, in addition to playlists collecting the best live performances from bands we put records out for, interviews that Jes and I have done, and just anything we’ve had a hand in…and we mean ANYTHING.
Want a quick way to get to that MOBY video that Jes made a weird puppet for waaaaay back? We made a playlist to get to that stuff.
What about the time I went over to my buddy Theo Katsaounis’s place to sing one of his songs in this video where I was kind of a weird puppet of sorts? It’s in the same playlist! Can you believe it!?
The plan is to have everything there eventually, so I guess if you’re digging through there and know of anything we’ve missed, drop us a line and let us know, or just send us a link…I honestly don’t really know what’s out there.
For example, I was sitting right there the whole time, and STILL had NO IDEA that anybody ever shot any video of the time EMMA RUTH RUNDLE played a show with THOU right there in our studio, in the exact spot where we used to screenprint all of our posters, but uh, yeah, somehow there’s video proof of that too:So weird to see our old studio and my childhood dresser and that old couch I used to sleep on, haha. Anyway, “like & subscribe” on our fledging lil’ Youtube…it might end up being a cool thing when the rest of social media collapses (even more).
Oh, and I mentioned it up there very briefly, but since we’re currently nine layers deep into this thing and only taking breaks from it to sleep sometimes, I want to show you this incredible poster that my Landland partner Jes made for “The Wicker Man,” which was released by Dark City Gallery over in the U.K.
There’s also a variant, which looks like this:
They’re both 24”x36” and a DAUNTING THIRTEEN (13) SCREENS, printing very translucent inks that stack up to create seriously hundreds of slightly varying tints and shades and values…it’s honestly so crazy seeing this thing come together, and with my brain currently trapped inside the inner workings of this thing, it’s no mystery to me at all why it takes Jes so long to bring these things forth into the world.
If you’re overseas, I believe they’re still available through DARK CITY GALLERY, though I should obviously mention that we’ll also eventually have an artist edition to sell on our own sometime down the road…no idea when that’s happening yet though, so if you’re chomping at the bit to get one, definitely grab one of their copies. We’re so stoked about how these things are turning out so far. Screenprinting is the most exciting thing ever (when it’s working out).I’m forgetting something. Ugh. There are a lot of other things moving along here right now…I just never always know which ones I can talk about. Lots of record label stuff in the works right now…I don’t know how that suddenly took over my life this year, but it’s been so totally exciting to see this stuff come together and to bring these records into the world.
Lots of art stuff in the works for next year as well…our poster output was verrrrrry sparse this year (for a lot of reasons), but we intend to get back on that good foot very soon. Having the studio all sorted out and organized, now that the construction is like 95% finished, is going to be huge. I can’t wait to make a big one of these newsletters showing it off. Or probably a video for the YouTube thing, or—quite likely—both.
Alright, I don’t think that’s everything I need to fill y’all in on, but that’s a good start. If you feel inclined to grab something from our store today, it always helps us out a ton and we 100% ALWAYS appreciate it…do the LISTENTOLUNGFISH codeword though and save yourself some money to get a pizza later. If you feel like telling social media about it, we also could always use the signal boost, especially with so much noise out there. If you don’t feel like doing any of that, that’s alright too…looks like you made it to the end of yet another super long Landland email, and that’s honestly as good as anything as far as I’m concerned. Thanks for being here for us, and for being into what we’re doing.
Seriously huge thanks, all the time,
Dan
Oh, and since there’s a little room left here at the bottom of this thing, I mean it literally: LISTEN TO LUNGFISH. Here’s what’s generally heralded as “the best of the live Lungfish videos out there,” but I also recommend just running through the whole discography every once in a while to clear out the cobwebs. It’s rare that a band stays this good over the course of so many albums. I’d get the whole internet shut down forever just to get them to ever play one more show.
Hitting the sale now! Gorgeous work Dan and Jes!