Introducing Achings & a lot of weird self-consciousness about my long-windedness.
This one runs a little long, but we're excited about this little record label, or at least I am...
Okay, it’s sort of a running joke that everything I post or put together is a bit long-winded, and yeah, that’s sorta true…I’m a big fan of MAKING SURE THE POINT HAS BEEN BELABORED and probably leaving a little too little room for ambiguity. I dunno…I have no real outlets for writing anything aside from (long-winded) emails and the occasional social media post, and I used to be a person that had a lot of excuses to write a lot. If you’ve ever read or listened to any interviews that Jes & I have ever done about this job we have, we’re just long-winded people sometimes.
Anyway, this isn’t about that, except just KNOW that the original plan for this issue/post/email1 was for it to be much, much longer, but I’ve decided to hold that longer thought for a minute and just get one out to anyone who just wants to know whether or not the newest thing we’ve put out is something they want. It’s still pretty long, if we’re being real here.
So yeah, here’s the deal: We’ve released a new record on our Landland Colportage record label, and we’re STOKED about it. It’s been a WHILE since we’ve put out a whole record—and on fancy vinyl at that—partially because vinyl manufacturing takes FOREVER in this messy supply chain era we’re in right now, but also because our thing is that we don’t put our tiny little logo on anything we aren’t 100% psyched about2, and moreover, we don’t put in all the crazy time and work to get a thing out there if it’s not the raddest. Why bother? So, that being said, here’s the rad thing:
I’d like to introduce you to ACHINGS—and more specifically, their debut album that we’ve just made available for pre-order on our Landland Colportage Record Label Bandcamp Page. Our good friend Randy Ortiz made the cover art for it, which looks like this:
I swore I’d keep this part brief, so I’m going to give you the blurb from the OBI strip on the record:
"Achings’ debut release "All These Shapes, All These Days" claims a meeting point between 1980's new-wave staples Cocteau Twins, Kate Bush, Blondie, and the intricate multi-guitar work of 1990s DIY rental hall indie rock bands like The Van Pelt, Karate, and arguably Slint. With locks and loops of flourished minor key arpeggios, analog synth washes, and filthy post-punk bass lines, Rebecca Joy's cutting prose and urgent vocals grapple with themes of letting go of what is existentially old and damaged, carving out a place in a troubled world, and the ever-shifting nature of our varied human connections. The end result—songs like 'Undoing Home', 'Friends in Far Places', and ‘The Rows"‘—will feel simultaneously familiar and in defiance of those very eras."
I think all of those are totally dead-on touchstones for this record—I’d probably also add that the first time I heard the whole thing, it conjured up memories of how much I loved the first two Tori Amos albums in high school (nice to have a well-built reminder of that sometimes, because they’re both great), as well as how much I still love the sonic architecture of bands like American Football and Rainer Maria. It also sounds like it was made with so much love and attention to detail, with a perfect convergence of friends doing what they’re best at; from Justin & Rebecca’s songwriting and musicianship, to Daniel Danger’s production and bass nerdery, to the fact that Randy packaged this thing up so well that I can’t imagine it looking like anything else…and then it ended up in my hands, so I’m doing my record label stuff to it (arguably not really what I’m best at, I guess, but I’ve heard it’s actually about the fight in the dog, or whatever).
But again, holy hell…we’re keeping this BRIEF, so I’m going to cut to the chase:
You can get this record from our Bandcamp. It’ll ship once they’re finished, later this summer. We have the vinyl IN HAND NOW, which is rare for these things nowadays, and I can assure you, it looks so good.
It’s available in three different vinyl color variants—a translucent red one with an opaque white blob trapped inside, a mostly white one with an blast of orange on one side and an explosion of black on the other side, and a good smoky clear version—and they all look so rad.
It’s also available as a DELUXE BUNDLE with an EXCLUSIVE art print by DANIEL DANGER, printed by me and Landland Print Wizard Rebecca Sunde right here in the new Landland studio. It’ll be the first time we’ll have printed Daniel’s work—we’ve been buds for about as long as Landland has existed—and I’m excited for it to happen. Those art prints are ONLY available until the pre-order window is over, at which time we’ll race into action to print a copy for every single person who’s ordered this version.
The whole thing is packaged in elaborate casewrapped “tip-on” jackets featuring Randy’s art on both sides, with a screenprinted lyric insert designed and printed by me. The jackets are great—think about those older records where the art is an actual giant print adhered and wrapped around thick board. Laborious and made slowly. I got inspired to use these for any & all Landland offset jackets by being an obsessive collector of Phil Elverum’s Mount Eerie & Microphones records…every detail considered, the finest possible materials utilized3.
Oh, and this is really cool too…there’s a video for the first single, “Need For Love,” and it was just premiered by the good people over at New Noise, so watch it (I’m actually about to make it really easy for you if you make it to the end of this paragraph). I gotta say, I was so psyched that we could launch this whole thing with a video this good; it’s a great introduction to this band, so spend a few minutes watching this and decompressing from. all. this. reading. before launching into the rest of the reading:
Ok…one last time, just because I can make a button version that looks similar to the way their name shows up on the cover of the record:
Oh, and let’s do some photos of the rad vinyl colors to wrap this up…
Now, I’m not ridiculous; I know a lot of people are here because we make posters for [band you probably like] and hopefully you’re not just tolerating all the other stuff (because, well, all this other stuff is, um, for better or worse, also big part of my life, haha…ha…I don’t want to feel, uh, weird about my life, right?4), but if you are—in fact—finding your tolerance tested right now, I really do implore you to check out this whole other record label thing we do, because I’m also really proud of this body of work and the deliberate curation of all of this good music you probably wouldn’t get to hear otherwise. If I’ve won you over, here’s that button again, mostly because buttons are fun:
Sorta related to that—as a general update—I’ll say that we’ve got very few posters on the docket for this summer. The least we’ve probably ever done. Between STILL getting the new studio up and running—which will warrant it’s own newsletter thing soon—and trying to focus on getting back on that good foot (catching up on work we owe people, and making sure all this record label stuff gets off to a good start), it’s made the most sense to say “no, sorry” to almost everything that’s come along for a little while. We do have a few coming up at the end of the summer that I’m really, really excited about, and a big thing happening next year that I kinda would’ve never expected, but yeah, for the moment, we’re laying low a little bit. Expect more art prints out of us soon, and probably some chatter about us helping buddies like Aaron Horkey, Ken Taylor, and Dave Kloc with printing some of their work…we’ve really been enjoying that lately over here. I also really want to get my silly GoBot car out into some situations somewhere in the canyons this summer…been trying hard to clear some space for that too.
So yeah, that’s our deal right now. I’m gonna cut myself off here, because I’m actually gearing up to talk about another record we’re releasing soon…I guess the pre-order is already up for that, so if you do end up heading to our bandcamp, you’ll see it there, but that’ll be a whole other one of…these. Tell me what to call these substack letter things, please.
Thanks for hanging,
Dan
PS: Oh, and if you’re not already subscribed to this thing, and feel like this is the EXACT thing you need in your life, join our thing. It’s probably going to eventually become one of the only ways we get our information out there. A button, for the convenience:
I’m not sure what to refer to this Substack thing as…I guess it’s an email, that’s the way it shows up for some people, but I’d like it to feel a bit more…elevated than that, which also means calling it a “post” is out of the question. I guess it’s a newsletter, and those might come in issues. I wish it was printed…my hope is to get it to a point where anything we’re writing here could be worth that. Maybe it’s a transmission? I also like “dispatch.” I literally just made an audible raspberries thing with my mouth thinking about it.
Okay…it’s probably happened like, maybe once or twice…and I learned a lot from it. I think it was important to feel that specific brand of regret that follows a parade of gut reluctance right from the jump. I used to betray that instinct and power through a lot of things that made my life a lot harder, hoping that it’d end up being some sort of net positive. I guess I don’t know why I’m mentioning that here except to say that that’s a spot I’m not interested in putting myself in anymore, haha, so yeah, I’m pretty proud of the little family of records we’ve been lucky enough to stamp that little Landland logo on—it’s a very intentional collection of good music.
Within our means, of course…after all, we’re tiny. Sometimes “finest possible” means these fancy & intricate wrapped jackets; sometimes it means we’ve screenprinted the whole thing by hand, scored the folds by hand, and then also built the thing into ALSO-FANCY-&-INTRICATE gatefolds with our weird little hands; and sometimes we also staple a whole giant booklet full of screenprinted photos and collages and whatever else, just to make sure that the thing weighs a ton when we ship it 🫠
Right, guys?
Guys?
It’s not weird, right? Making stuff all the time and not having any idea if it’s good or not, even if people say they like it? Having a couple pyramids of unopened boxes stamped “PHONOGRAPHIC VINYL RECORDS” over there by the couch where some plants should be? Looks like a normal house in here, yeah?
"Post" seems pretty apt. Of course, there's social media "post", but there's also blog "post", which this kinda is. "Article" is also something i see these called sometimes. "Transmission" isn't bad either.