Our friends Tjinder and Ben from Cornershop set up their own record label Ample Play not so long ago, to promote the fine work of artists as disparate as Sexton Ming, The Sufis and Izzy Lindqwister [pictured above]. They’ve kindly put together a sampler of nine tracks for your downloading and listening pleasure.
Explaining the ethos behind the label, this is what the pair have to say:
Since Cornershop started as a group, they have always taken a very Arts & Craft Movement approach to things – get things done yrself or get people you know and trust to do them, and to not let the machinery of the industry dicktate us.
Both Tjinder & Benedict are avid record collectors, who met when they both studied at Preston Polytechnic. Tjinder became the Union Social Executive whilst Ben went to London to work in a vinyl record pressing plant. As Cornershop took off and developed, so did the amount of turbans they had to wear, and Ample Play is the culmination of all that work and experience, backed by freedom & enjoyment of their ‘Music 10 Commandments’.
Ample Play Records Mixtape for the Quietus by ample play recordsThe Paperhead – ‘Dear Mr.Vacant’
Matsuki Ayumu – ‘Weekend Of End’
Tokyo’s finest Matsuki Ayumu released a top hole double album in February. His unique psychedelia with all array of sounds and instruments, all created by himself, makes most bands feel they have too many moving parts. He started out playing classical piano to packed auditoriums from the age of 10, but all this changed when he got his first Fostex 4 track cassette tape MTR. Within his noisy pop you might hear orchestra accompaniments, cockerels and alarm clocks, endearing melodies, a pop that Western ears will recognize but with a Japanese lilt that is both melodic and instantly catchy.
Jack Lesser Lewis’ Awkward Energy – ‘Whitey’
Lvov Swims The Willamette is Lewis’ 4th album. Jack has collaborated with Herman Dune on numerous albums including their newest Strange Moosic. Since 2001 he has toured the world with the likes of Stephen Malkmus, The Mountain Goats, The Cribs and the Thermals. Jack was also part of the supergroup The Bundles on K Records, which included his brother Jeff, Kimya Dawson, Anders Griffin and Karl Blau. We got to know Jack when he and his brother supported us around America. When we heard how good his new album was, we knew we had to help him get it out there, it will be released 28 May.
The Sufis – ‘Sri Sai Flora’
Nashville natives The Sufis – will release their debut album on Ample Play at the end of June. The main creative force behind the group is Calvin Laporte, he usually plays the majority of the instruments and engineers the recording of all the music in his own studio. Furnished and built like a mid-twentieth century workshop of electronic music, Calvin utilizes tape manipulation (i.e. variable speed tape machines to produce slap-back delay, phasing, chorus etc), oscillators, and homemade circuits/ring modulators to produce most of the other-worldly sounds on the record.
Sexton Ming – ‘Aye up, its Mr Logic’
On July 2 Sexton Ming returns with an album that keeps him way at the forefront of outsider music. Unflappable, unthinkable, humorous and at times almost unlistenable, until you look behind this wizard’s curtain and get taken in by the bio resistance therapy. We’re very pleased to be releasing an album by a true English maverick. Sexton began his recording career with the legendary Medway Poets, and then on Billy Childish’s Hangman Label producing solo projects and collaborations with Childish. His is a unique take on music.
Rachel Lipson – ‘Pastures’
As far as we’re concerned, she is New York City’s premier lady of folk. Rachel Lipson’s Pastures album is an intimate, striking, stripped back album sung entirely from the heart. Rachel has something of the modern day, female, Woody Guthrie about her. Pastures also features appearances from Jeffrey Lewis and Herman Dune.
Cornershop featuring Izzy Lindqwister – ‘Who’s Gonna Lite It Up’
See main picture
Tjinder came across Swedish born French residing Izzy when she did an in-store in his local second hand record shop on a Saturday afternoon. They have now collaborated on several tracks, and soon Ample Play will be releasing a four track EP. Here on ‘Who’s Gonna Lite It Up’ he took her vocals and like a caveman took them back to his black country roots – Led Zep and the Deepest Purple is what this song is about musically.
The Toes – ‘Chrome Radio Rocks’
We have released the entire recorded output of legendary London garage group, The Toes. ‘Chrome Radio Rocks’ is the group at their most adventurous, and is taken from the EP Lung Oyster Blues. The Toes have been championed by amongst others Don Fleming, Royal Trux, The Coral and Ron Wood. This group regularly took the paint off the walls at their live shows and whilst they haven’t played for a while, a ‘lost’ album has recently been unearthed and we are in regular contact with their lawyers to try and get it out in 2013.
The Barcelona Pavillion – ‘Tidy Up, Tidy Up’
An ambitious, militant Toronto quartet, who recorded a memorable John Peel Session on their solitary trip to the UK. The Barcelona Pavillion include both Toronto musical nucleus, and Blocks!!! Records head honcho Steve Kado and Maggie McDonald of The Hidden Cameras in their ranks amongst others. now much lauded by the Glasgow indie-rock fraternity in particular, ‘Tidy Up, Tidy Up’ is taken from debut EP It’s The Barcelona Pavillion!
Clinton – ‘Hip Hop Bricks’
Cornershop under lab conditions. Clinton was initiated as the experimental funk arm of Cornershop during the early days. The Clinton album Disco & The Halfway To Discontent is to be re-issued on Ample Play in 2013. ‘Hip Hop Bricks’ is a call to arms, shooting off many of our best pioneers out there.
Tjinder Singh’s Bakers Dozen coming soon on The Quietus. Watch out for reviews of albums by Clinton, The Sufis, Cornershop, Matsuki Ayumu and more coming soon
