“I ran into an old acquaintance (well, “old”) at SXSW this year, and she had some good news — she just got a new gig as the general manager for a new label which has some ties to Sub Pop but not really. It wasn’t really a stretch because Sarah had worked for Sub Pop before this, but I was still intrigued because I hadn’t heard of the label, Hardly Art. To make it clear, it’s NOT an imprint label and it’s technically a separate enterprise (I think), but, well, it is still connected to Sub Pop.
“Hardly Art was started by Jonathan Poneman, the founder of Sub Pop. The label will be operated in the same office at Sub Pop’s for now and will be distributed by Sub Pop and ADA. The label will be focusing on more underground artists for now and will only be releasing a few releases a year to start off. The first signing is Seattle duo Arthur & Yu, who will be releasing their full length album In Camera on June 19th.” [via HateSomethingBeautiful]
WARNING, ONLY HIT PLAY IF YOU LIKE: The Velvet Underground, Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra, Margo Guryan, Karen Dalton, Harry Nilsson, The Everly Brothers, Joe Meek, The Hollies, Serge Gainsbourg & Jane Birkin, Them, Bobbi Gentry, Leslie Gore, Velvet Underground, Skip Spence, Silver Apples, United States of America, Donovan, Leonard Cohen, The Soft Machine, Vashti Bunyan, Marianne Faithful, The Vaselines, The Flaming Lips, Neutral Milk Hotel, The Zombies, Nico, Tonight’s the Night, Don’t Look Back, All Things Must Pass — if not, we feel sorry for you.
PHAWKER SAYS: About half way through our first listen we had a growing suspicion that became a foregone conclusion halfway through the second listen — WE HAVE FOUND OUR NEW FAVORITE BAND OF ALL TIME, or at least right now.