The Eenie Meenie Digital Sampler includes tracks from Great Northern, Scissors For Lefty, Division Day, Irving, Goldenboy, Oranger, Ulysses (Robert Schneider of The Apples In Stereo), The High Water Marks, Hockey Night, Troubled Hubble, and more!
Eenie Meenie Records is an emerging music label promoting indie pop, rock and electronica. Eenie Meenie artists have been featured in high profile publications such as Rolling Stone, Newsweek, Maxim, NME, Spin, Billboard, Nylon, Jane, CMJ and Alternative Press, and interviewed by the BBC and NPR. Our artists have regularly charted on CMJ and have received adds and rotation on AAA and commercial radio stations, such as KROQ, KCRW, KEXP in Seattle and Indie 103.1 in Los Angeles. They have been featured on Spin.com, iTunes, Virb, Myspace, Vlaze, ManiaTV and FuelTV.
Eenie Meenie Records develops artists and markets their music by providing ongoing and extensive press and radio campaigns, tour support, festival exposure, street marketing, film and TV licensing, retail marketing and merchandising. To keep up with the increasing Web 2.0 services available, Eenie Meenie has developed a presence online including local, regional, national and international blogs, online social networking sites and internet radio. Miny Moe, the label’s blog, offers current news and links to Eenie Meenie artists online.
Many Eenie Meenie releases contain bonus CD/DVD materials that include music videos or an electronic press kit (EPK) from the artists. And all releases are packaged in distinctive and often colorful casing that continues to add to the value of each project and to Eenie Meenie's artistic legacy.
Eenie Meenie sets itself apart from other labels by its consistent musical aesthetic, which is both ahead of the curve and commercially appealing. Due to the relationships the label has developed, Eenie Meenie looks forward to releasing side projects from well-known artists, as well as continuing to develop emerging talent.
Anyway, enough about us. Visit our WEB STORE OF AWESOMENESS, support a fun label, and amazing artists.
PiL, meds, disco, half Mexican, half Japanese, The SOS Band, monster guitar riffs, drinking, more drinking, The dB’s, divorce, death, arrests, cannibalism, no compromises, The Bee Gees, shimmering melodies and stalking. FROM BUBBLEGUM TO SKY ain’t no sunny pop affair – it just sounds like it.
By winter, A Soft Kill, the third full-length album by FROM BUBBLEGUM TO SKY is certain to be considered one of the greatest one-man albums of the year. Only the maturity that comes with brushing against and immersing oneself in the influences mentioned above could bring out an album that is at once ultimately catchy, realistically morose, and expertly played. In a word: fucking relatable.
The one man is Mario Hernandez and he’s been wrestling with a few demons. Hernandez’s previous records Me and Amy and the Two French Boys (Eenie Meenie, 200X) and Nothing Sadder Than Lonely Queen (Eenie Meenie, 200X) certainly hinted at genius – what with the confessional lyrics sung in a helium tinged voice that lights the drapes on fire meeting the hook laden crunch fest that cools ‘em down. With A Soft Kill, Hernandez has crafted a masterpiece. He demurs, stating, “This record is much more inspired – less obvious indie pop, more organic and drunk. It’s an outlet and easily my favorite record.” Ours, too.
A Soft Kill brings to mind the concept of the vices people use to kill themselves slowly. Not a murder, but a soft kill. Feelings we’ve all felt are wrapped in pristine pop melodies, sandpaper-y guitars and a vocal style dictated by the radio programs of second generation pop songs and high voiced singers that Hernandez listened to before departing Japan for America at the age of 12.
As a self-contained pop machine (occasionally joined by bassist Frank Jordan and Keyboardist Bill Evans) Hernandez does the control freak edict of Billy Corgan and Dave Grohl proud on A Soft Kill. No one should be playing drums on a FROM BUBBLEGUM TO SKY record but Hernandez -- this kind of urgency demands the percussive touch of the author, after all! And is he ever keeping time – 11 songs, 30 minutes. It doesn’t get any better.
“I feel like it's a band, even though it's just me,” he says. “The things that people are doing to me, or I'm doing to them, or whatever experiences I'm having -- that's the band. I couldn't write without those experiences and in a way that's what a band member does.”
This band is a motley crew. Some sample lyrics from A Soft Kill: “No. I don’t wanna itch what burns your thighs.” from “The Flash” “40 years old - just like 20 years ago.” from “I Always Fall Apart” “Your miracle is giving head.” from “Guest Relations” “You know I love it when you say you don’t need me.” from “Say Goodbye” “We drown ourselves in death.” from “A Soft Kill” “It’s all I could do not to sink my teeth in you.” from “My Je m’appelle” “I resolve to steal your sunbeam.” from “Even The Sunbeams” “Lie in bed for months on end.” from “Flies On a Jet Plane” “Don’t count on god or on sunny rays.” from “Captain Tennille” “…New York where even the sun will let you down.” from “Downtown or Up?”
These are the words of the ONE man becoming THE man. When Mario Hernandez is letting it all hang out, you wanna hang out, too.
FROM BUBBLEGUM TO SKY’s A Soft Kill will be released by Eenie Meenie Records as a digital download and vinyl LP only. The vinyl configuration will come packaged with a FROM BUBBLEGUM TO SKY t-shirt designed by the Brown Sound Clothing Company. The album was recorded at CBS Studios in Oakland, CA on a Tascam one-inch reel-to-reel.
- Joshua Bloom, 2008
wallpaper.
Ricky Reed / Vocals
Arjun Singh / Drums
Wallpaper is the enigmatic onstage existence of Oakland music addict Eric Frederic. In another life, he fronts a prog-rock powerhouse (indie stalwarts Facing New York), but in this one, he's a pop-pushing kingpin as interested in art as artifice.
The Wallpaper project began in early 2005 as tweaked satire, Frederic funneling his earliest influences (P-Funk, New Jack, East Bay rap) into two EPs of diced, digital beats and lyrics caricaturing the pop vernacular. But as the Hyphy hip-hop movement crested in Frederic's backyard, something changed. "I saw that classic Bay Area sound resurfacing," he says, "that same psychedelic, drippy, care-free, funky approach that reigned from Sly Stone to Digital Underground." He needed to pay tribute, and in a hail of house parties and homemade discs, Wallpaper was reborn as Ricky Reed, Frederic's disco-smashing doppelganger.
This glitz 'n' grit champion of the groove has since become a gilded name in the underground, wooing crowds with a computerized croon, live reinventions of RandB classics, and tales of excess in the Information Age. Live, Wallpaper is joined by Arjun Singh on drums. They have blown spots alongside such notables as Subtle, Darondo, LA Riots, Electric Soft Parade, and Nino Moschella.
"It's like being intimate with total strangers." That is how Rachel Stolte of Great Northern describes the feeling of performing live and creating a connecting with her audience. The sentiment could be duly applied to the band's latest release, Remind Me Where the Light Is, on which Stolte and co-writer Solon Bixler pour so much of themselves into their highly personal lyrics and wistful melodies.
On their sophomore album, Bixler and Stolte are not afraid to delve into darkness. Taking that risk helped them find beauty in sadness, the uplifting elements in the devastating. "We took a lot more risks by entering uncomfortable territory that wasn't touched on the last record," Bixler says. "We dug deeper into the unpleasant, which helped us to find the beauty."
Experiencing the negative to find the positive is something Bixler and Stolte are familiar with. "Both of us had been heading in unfulfilling directions creatively," Bixler says of their situations prior to coming together. “When we started Great Northern, we finally felt like we were starting something that truly expressed what was in our hearts and minds."
Their first release, Trading Twilight for Daylight (2007), embodied surprisingly catchy hooks, lush keys and breathy vocals. The album made multiple Top 10 lists in magazines (Filter, Under the Radar) and on radio (Nic Harcourt, KCRW in LA; Aaron Axelson of Live 105 in San Francisco). The praise didn’t stop there as NME gave it a “Must Download Now” rating and iTunes dubbed the band “the next big thing.” FM Radio giants like KROQ and cutting edge stations like and Indie 103 added the band to their regular playlists.
Extensive touring behind the album led Great Northern to share the stage with acts like Spoon, Cold War Kids, Silversun Pickups, Fiery Furnaces, Ladytron, The Gutter Twins, and Soulsavers.
Their sophomore release, Remind Me Where the Light Is is the work of a more seasoned group, one that has been on the road for months, missed home, seen the world, and returned not entirely prepared to sit still.
"When we started writing songs for [this album]," Stolte says, "we had just come off a year and a half of touring and didn't really know what was next. So we bought some recording equipment, set up a studio in our house [in LA], and just started writing. Almost immediately it was like the emotional flood gates opened. We would listen to stuff and be like 'Wow! So that's how we've been feeling about that.
"It became very clear to both of us that we were going to do things a little differently this time, and in many ways we were outgrowing something. An old part of ourselves had died."
That passing is shown literally (the use of piano is drastically reduced on Remind Me Where the Light Is) as well as lyrically and melodically, where melancholy becomes determination, and atmospherics are replaced with driving rhythms.
"Story," for example, which started as a much slower piano demo, became a guitar-driven up-tempo rock song with no piano, thanks to the advice of production team Michael Patterson (Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Beck, P-Diddy, Ladytron) and Nic Jodoin. The song opens with a lively, driving beat, and Rachel's simultaneously unapologetic and forceful vocals slinging near-vicious lines such as "Tell me your secrets / tell me your story / how 'bout one you can't hide behind." Bixler joins for call-and-response with his hushed vocals pleading "what do you want? What do you see?," and Stolte responding "I should have left it all alone."
On "Houses," the aggressive, thrashing drumbeat gives the melody a visceral quality; the darker side of things is something Stolte says is symbolic to the story of the record. "It's a song about walking through life and choosing to see the truth no matter how painful," Stolte says, "rather than staying in the same place or hiding from it." With over fuzzed and speeding electric guitar, Rachel takes the lead with her warm and commanding vocals, slinging captivating lyrics like "up ahead I see it / I can't find it but I feel alive" and "All this time when I talk it's not real."
"With our music, we try to paint pictures to go along with the words that tell the story," Bixler says, and "Driveway" exemplifies that desire, as the lyrics create a vivid image of one desperate to be the object of another’s affection. It's a more melancholy offering, with muted, poignant keys and Bixler's pleading vocals. "Remember when you wake up / don't forget to turn out the light / 'cause I'm looking out my window for you every night," he sings as a lone piano builds to a fuller mournful melody with nostalgic, almost theatrical strings.
"We are content to be learning as we go," Bixler says, "trying to overcome the fear of changing ourselves, constantly redefining ourselves as artists, and never creating the same thing twice. We hope the people who hear our music will relate to this next chapter or our lives."
Given the ease with which Bixler and Stolte foster an immediate intimacy with their audience, listeners new and old are certain to not only relate but to join in on the journey from the darkness, back to the light.
Part Brit-pop and part indie rock, with a campy persona and dreamy lyrics to match, Scissors for Lefty are a great addition to the post-punk revival of the new millennium. Scissors For Lefty's story involves Malaysian pop songs and intense Beatles fixations, influential British indie labels and late night hot tub parties, '80s dance nights and KISS solo records. But mostly it's a story about friendship. "You find friends you like to hang out with, you need some glue, you need a reason to hang out and spend time together, and music is our easy excuse," says singer/guitarist Bryan Garza, 27.
Of course, most friends who decide to jam for fun never get past the garage. Scissors For Lefty have opened for the Arctic Monkeys in front of 10,000 screaming Berliners. "The stadium was so packed that people's fingers were at the pedals and their chins were on stage. If you sported a bone, everyone would see," laughs Bryan.
The quintet -- featuring Bryan, his brother Stevie Garza, 25, and uncle (don't ask) Robby Garza, 29, plus brothers Peter, 29, and James Krimmel, 27 -- recently scored glowing reviews in NME, Billboard, Spin.com, SF Weekly, and the LA Times, nabbing gigs with the Arctic Monkeys, Blonde Redhead, Metric, Paul Weller, the Fratelli's, the Fiery Furnaces, the Cribs, the Coup, Shiny Toy Guns, Panic! at the Disco, and Dirty Pretty Things, along with numerous European festivals and underground Jacuzzi bashes.
PRESS
"Eager rock magpies come bearing bright, catchy gifts... huge hooks and playful pleasures win the day... So cheerily unpretentious, it's almost irresistible." - SPIN
"...plenty of undeniable, butt-shaking riffs...your feet will be shuffling to the irresistable, anthemic guitar hooks." - PASTE
"Scissors for Lefty...ambitious, sarcastic sophistopop.... quirky, promising and quite possibly awesome." - NME
Division Day songs, for which Rohner writes the lyrics, often feature strange creatures or bizarre characters, and lush, dense settings. "There's a host of natural phenomena in these songs," explains Rohner. "Bugs, jackals, snakes, trees, sparrows, crows, rivers, oceans, mud, fire, tar, blood. And then there's a human presence within this environment- paths moving through forest, sky, water."
Yet while these paths may widely diverge, there's an overall cohesion to the experience that makes Beartrap Island a time and place to return to again and again. "Hopefully a sense of place emerges from these elements," says Rohner, "and hopefully it speaks as much to psychoemotional topography as to external landscape.
At the time of their inception in 2001, they could at least agree on the essential greatness of Radiohead and Flaming Lips; however, it was only after the group went their separate ways to travel, study, and work various day jobs that things got interesting. When they got back together, they noticed that they had each followed their own muse to a distinct and sometimes mutually exclusive spot on the musical map, and subsequently, their dissimilar strands of curiosity began to come together in an evocative and memorable way.
Says Ryan, "Rohner had a lot of songs before I joined the band, so when we got together we were kind of like, ..Well, let's turn some of these songs that Rohner made into full band songs.' But as we grew older and spent time apart, we all had time to marinate in our own personal interests, and then when we came back together, we were all into different music, and we've moved on from there.
"We've always had this joke," he adds: "Every time we get together to make some songs, it's like 'The New Division Day Recording: Not For Fans of Division Day,' 'cause it's always changing."
PRESS
"…they display an ability to layer diverse sounds that brings to mind Yo La Tengo's ambitious yet loose-limbed approach to music… sure as hell beats a knock-off of the indie band du jour."
-Amplifier Magazine
"The intersection of Division Day's disparate influences isn't always a mellifluous place. But on the L.A. quartet's self-released debut Beartrap Island, it makes for compelling art, even if Pavement-meets-Beach Boys or Deerhoof-meets-Jesus and Mary Chain sound more like car crashes than sonic stew."
-LA Times
"Another unsigned band creating a stir, (Division Day's) debut full-length is a solid collection of indie pop with strong melodies… fans who have been missing The Dismemberment Plan may want to investigate this one."
-WOXY
Hey whats up its your boys from EdstanleY we need your help were trying to get our song "Drop your weapons" played on UCLA RADIO we need you to call in this sunday (Between 8 and 8:30 Pacific time) and request it for us the number is 310-825-9999 and listen in at www.uclaradio.com we would appreciate it if you could thanks
Thank you so much for "bandfriending" us, Eenie Meenie Records! We truly appreciate it.
We hope that you find something of ours that will wriggle into your ears, burrow down next to your heart (in a good way), and compel you to ROB US BLIND (again, in a good way: "Free downloads, ahoy!”…that is, if Myspace ever gets around to reactivating that feature).
If you like us, please, tell a friend. If you hate us, hell, tell an enemy!
What's good. My name is Dru from BeatBoxerz.com. I just wanted to throw you this FREE BEAT!!! Click the link and download it. REAL TALK NO BS!!! http://lnk.ms/0jvXn
We're playing a full-live set on KXLU (88.9) Livation a lil after midnight tonight. Gonna debut a couple of new songs... tune in if you're still awake! Punk Rawk- Yarrrr!!!
We uploaded a new song titled "Forever Yours Forever Mine, please take a listen and ofcourse let us know what you think of it, we are very proud of it please keep in mind it is a (Demo Version)
Online Now!
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