VIA PRESS RELEASE | ATO Records, an independent record label out of New York City, has been reflecting deeply on the injustices and inequality in our world. We recognize that music is not just an agent for change, but a space of solace. As we approach our 20th anniversary as a label, we remain proud to represent a diverse range of artists whose music imparts messages of inclusivity, justice, and equality.

​In that spirit, we’ve assembled an LP that showcases our extraordinary roster of artists and epitomizes ATO’s richness of musical diversity and talent. Silence Is Not An Option is a compilation of powerful anthems from the ATO catalog that explore issues of identity, community, social justice, and resistance. Tracks include Brittany Howard’s “Goat Head,” released in 2019, the explosive song that Howard wrote about growing up in the South with a white mother and a black father; Benjamin Booker’s “Witness,” released in 2017, (“Right now we could use a little pick-me-up / Seems like the whole damn nation’s trying to take us down”), a collaboration with soul music and civil rights icon Mavis Staples; Drive-By Truckers’ “What It Means,” released in 2016, the withering track that Patterson Hood wrote in response to the police shootings of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown; and Chicano Batman’s “Invisible People,” released earlier this year (“Invisible people, we’re tired of living in the dark / Everyone is trying to tear us apart / All we wanna do is heal now”).

The compilation also features “See Me,” a brand-new song from Grammy-nominated R&B artist Emily King. King wrote and recorded the passionate track just days ago in response to the Black Lives Matters protests. “Feeling so moved by this powerful time,” says King. “Everyday watching the world demand justice. I wake up with sadness but also hope. Like people are starting to finally notice how deeply broken things are. Can you hear me now? Can you see me now? I started singing the words and they wouldn’t leave my head.”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Thursday, June 18, 2020 marked the 30th anniversary of Bossanova, the third studio album by Pixies, originally released on August 13, 1990. To celebrate Bossanova hitting its third decade, 4AD will release a limited red vinyl edition on August 7, complete with the original 16-page booklet that was previously available only with the initial UK LP pressing. Pre-orders can be placed now; go HERE for purchasing details.

​Produced by Gil Norton, with whom the band—Black Francis (guitar, vocals), Joey Santiago (guitar), Kim Deal (bass, vocals), David Lovering (drums)—collaborated on their Platinum-selling second album Doolittle, Bossanova was recorded in Los Angeles as opposed to Pixies’ Boston base (with the exception of the track “Blown Away” that was recorded at the Hansa Tonstudio in Berlin during a European tour in 1989). The album features the singles “Allison” (a tribute to jazz and blues pianist Mose Allison), “Dig For Fire,” and “Velouria” (#4 on Billboard’s Alternative chart), plus the first cover to be included on a Pixies’ album, “Cecilia Ann” (originally by The Surftones).

Bossanova showed a less primal side to the band, with surf and space rock rising to the fore. Lyrically, Black Francis is even more cryptic with a recurring sci-fi theme running throughout, which in turn influenced Vaughan Oliver’s classic planet design for the cover.

As one journalist put it, “Bossanova is a powerful time machine. Listening to the album, one gets flashbacks of what the ’90s sounded, looked and felt like. Even though the decade was far from perfect, it was filled with a feeling of curiosity and optimism—especially regarding the future and its technology. Listening to Bossanova, one is reminded that the world is a more vital place when people are allowed to dream big, fantasize, and be a little bit crazy.”

“A dusty Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in my grandfather’s basement is my clear first memory of a vinyl. The cover had somehow retained its brilliant colour, unlike the many books and photographs surrounding it which had all faded into the same sepia tone. It felt giant and majestic and certainly the most valuable thing I could imagine being down there at the time (although looking back I now realise it was most likely his vintage recorder collection). It sounded wobbly and tinnier than the version I had on iTunes but I’m pretty sure the hi-fi hadn’t been switched on in years and I was still very impressed that any sound at all came out of this weird disk.”

“There’s been a few nice ‘band-ey’ moments I can recall sitting with the boys and some records. I doubt they’ll remember but I definitely had a lyrical revelation moment with Pat and Noah in early high school reading the words to ‘Suzanne’ while it spun slowly on the all-in-one stereo unit in Pat’s room. Then a few years ago, all of us piled in around Jules’ Berlin apartment and laughed at the silly but undeniably tight vibratos on ‘Minute by Minute’ while we talked about making our first album, each of us picturing the vinyl it would eventually be pressed on. Even when it’s in the background, music on vinyl holds a presence in the room that’s real and tangible. A polite little guy sitting in the corner, slinking around, filling the air with warm fluffy tones.

Maybe it was just me, but I feel like growing up in our country shire didn’t expose us to much vinyl outside our parents’ collections. There was one guy just called the ‘vinyl junkie’ who used to come to town maybe once a year and rent out a hall to sell off his giant collection. Maybe he was the only true vinyl junkie in Australia at the time, and he was a big deal because he imported them all on trips to the US. I remember watching a pretty dorky guy there while he dug through a crate. He had this method that looked like he was doing a doggy paddle through the stack, and he’d clear a hundred records in a minute! He only needed a half second glance at each cover to determine their value to him. The records were pretty expensive there, and I didn’t really get the hype yet.

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Long derided as the failed predecessor of 1972’s Transformer, at first glance Lou Reed’s eponymous debut is a utter disappointment, slapdash, marred by perfunctory playing, poorly produced and short on new material. According to sideman Rick Wakeman of Yes fame, Reed insisted the lights in the recording studio be kept off “so nobody could see.” An apt metaphor that–by all accounts, Reed was a man blindly feeling his way through the darkness that followed upon the collapse of the Velvet Underground. So why is it I prefer Lou Reed to Transformer? I’ll get around to that.

Lou Reed followed a 15-month hiatus that gave Reed ample time to write new songs. But his muse was clearly comatose on a couch somewhere, because eight of the ten songs he brought to the table dated back to his days with the Velvet Underground. Reed’s inexplicable failure to come up with new songs isn’t Lou Reed’s only failing. Everybody’s favorite control freak let RCA Records pick his band, and he got what he deserved.

The guys from Yes and the guy from Elton John’s band and the other guys I’ve never heard of are hardly the B-listers Victor Bockris made them out to be in his 1994 book Transformer: The Lou Reed Story, but in this outing their performances are uniformly uninspired. (And they were hardly suited to back Reed in the first place. Try to imagine Wakeman in the Velvet Underground, I dare you.) Add to that Reed’s decision to hand off axe duties to Elton John band guitarist Caleb Quaye and Yes’ Steve Howe and it’s hard to avoid the suspicion that Lou was, whether he knew it or, dead set on sabotaging his solo career before it had even begun.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Sony Music Entertainment is pleased to announce the release of Roger Waters: US + THEM on Blu-ray, DVD, CD, and vinyl. Roger Waters: US + THEM, chronicles the acclaimed 2017-2018 tour of the iconic Pink Floyd artist. Roger Waters: US + THEM, concert film is available now to buy on Digital or watch on demand and will be released on Blu-ray, DVD, CD & vinyl on Friday, October 2, 2020. Preorder the Blu-ray, DVD, CD and vinyl here.

​Founding member, lyricist, composer and creative force behind Pink Floyd, US + THEM presents Waters powerful music in stunning form and highlights its message of human rights, liberty and love. Based around his acclaimed, sold-out US + THEM worldwide tour of 2017-18, comprising a total of 156 shows to 2.3 million people across the globe, it features classic songs from The Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall, Animals, Wish You Were Here as well as his most recent album, Is This The Life We Really Want?

Directed by Sean Evans and Roger Waters, the film provides a visceral sense of what it was like to be there. With Evans using the most innovative digital and audio technology available, this state-of-the-art show encapsulates a series of breathtaking visual, audio, and sensory experiences. It captures Waters’ legendary live performances taking the audience on an emotionally charged, thought provoking journey.

Waters powerfully demonstrates that he is at heart, a musical activist and one of the most passionate political commentators of his time. He has dedicated his life to fighting against those who seek to control our lives and destroy our planet. “Welcome To The Machine” and “Another Brick In The Wall Part II,” are a stark reminder of the bleak warnings that he gave decades ago about alienation, displacement, greed, suffering, destruction and loss. And yet the humanity of the songwriter cannot be more plainly seen than in “Wish You Were Here,” because, although he presents a grim picture of the state of the world, ultimately his message is one of hope through unity and love.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Chet Baker (1929–1988) was an American jazz trumpeter, actor and vocalist who needs little introduction. Baker earned much attention and critical praise through the 1950s but his well-publicized drug habit also drove his notoriety (he was in and out of jail frequently before enjoying a career resurgence in the late ‘70s and ’80s). Chet’s career included collaborations with greats such as Elvis Costello, Charlie Parker, and Van Morrison. Mr. Baker was the subject of many books and documentaries throughout the decades and he was even portrayed by Ethan Hawke in the 2015 film Born to Be Blue.

​Chet began his musical career singing in a church choir and his mother said that he had begun to memorize tunes on the radio before he was even given his first instrument. Peers called Baker a natural musician to whom playing came effortlessly. In the early 1950s he was chosen by Charlie Parker for a series of West Coast engagements…shortly after this, his song “My Funny Valentine” became a hit and would be associated with Baker for the rest of his career. Mr. Baker (with his quartet) was a regular performer at famous Los Angeles jazz clubs such as The Haig.

Chet Baker’s quartet released popular albums between 1953 and 1956 and he won reader’s polls at Metronome and DownBeat magazine, beating trumpeters Miles Davis and Clifford Brown. In 1956, Pacific Jazz Records released Chet Baker Sings, an album that seriously increased his visibility. During most of the 1960s (before heading to Europe more frequently) Chet recorded music that could be classified as ‘West Coast jazz.” From 1978 until his death in 1988, Chet Baker lived and played almost exclusively in Europe, returning to the U.S. once a year for a few performances. This was Baker’s most prolific era as a recording artist.

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“Seems impossible to tell seasons apart, or know exactly which way the weather’s going to go,” states singer-songwriter Marcus Eaton in “Closer,” the third moodily introspective track on his EP “Invisible Lines,” released last month on vinyl. New and timely in its themes of isolation, sociological questioning, and nature awareness, Eaton’s EP stands as a semi-unintentional testament to the wild, sad, and unpredictable times we are currently living through.

The release date of mid-May was chosen months before the pandemic took center stage. But over the course of the EP’s five original tracks and one cover song, Eaton makes it clear that he is the ideal artist for the right now. He puts forth thoughtful and comfortable-in-uncertainty reiterations and spin-offs of his “Closer” observation. The revolutionarily minded “Step Aside” that inspires personal power and potential political change, the flight-focused “Shadow of a Bird” that encourages risk-taking and assuages fear of failure, and the responsibility-oriented “Handed Down” that investigates the concept of cultural inheritance, all address eternal themes of the human experience: physical and emotional solitude, penning one’s own most authentic creed, and trying to do the right thing while also honoring personal spiritual and material desires.

Different musicians who surmised the same truths that Eaton has on “Invisible Lines” could have reverted to rebellion, rage, ridicule, or disenchantment. But he appears to have chosen an alternate path, that of pursuing newness and insisting on hope. Even his choice of cover song, Sting’s classic world-conscious “Fragile,” merges with these same themes and fits perfectly alongside originals. Eaton’s guitar prowess, carefully cultivated over years of inquiry, practice, and spiritual searching, has served as his artistic calling card for much of his career and once again takes center stage—and exquisitely so—on “Invisible Lines.” As does his compositional penchant to get to the heart of the matter—for the universe at large—via the most musically captivating route.

Eaton released his first album with his jazz fusion-forward group The Lobby in 2003, which was followed by three solo albums before “Invisible Lines.” And his ongoing musical collaboration with the legendary David Crosby ultimately spawned last year’s acclaimed Grammy-nominated documentary Remember My Name, directed by Eaton’s brother A.J. and for which Marcus wrote and recorded a stark and stellar original guitar-based score (with Bill Laurance). And really, what better than intense instrumental acumen and sonic sophistication, to prepare a younger musician for working with an eminent and complex artist like David Crosby?

In conversation with Marcus Eaton, we learn more about the genesis of “Invisible Lines,” his myriad of guitar heroes, and his musical collaboration with one of the most talented and paradoxical artists in rock history.

You produced this new EP, “Invisible Lines,” yourself, but the whole thing—the sound quality, the mixing is very impressive.

Thank you. I’m really proud of this new project because I did it myself. My friend Billy Centenaro mixed it, and he took it way beyond what I expected. When I got the mixes back from him, it was the first time I heard the emotion that I put into the album come back to me. It really affected me; the emotion was translating—before, the emotion wasn’t hitting people. So that just shows you how important mixing is. My friend tracked the drums for me in his studio. We did the strings at my home, the violin parts on “Invisible Lines.”

Those were live players?

That was one live player named Lizzie Ball, she’s incredible, she used to play with Jeff Beck, a top violin player in London. I’d had some temporary synth parts that were replicating strings. She got into it, just went crazy, did like thirteen or fourteen tracks.

Can you discuss working with David Crosby in the past, and your connection to him, as a younger person? Did it feel special, like “not everyone gets to do this,” working with the legends, the masters?

The Crosby thing—what I love about it is that it was so organic. It happened through my friend Norm Waitt, who saw me open for Tim Reynolds, this incredible guitarist I’ve always idolized who plays with Dave Matthews. I started listening to him at 18 and thought if I could ever play with him, that could be the thing. And I ended up touring with him a lot. So on one of these tours, in Aspen, I met Norm Waitt, who asked if I wanted to play at his Christmas party in Omaha, Nebraska. It was a blast, and then Norm said “I really think you need to meet my friend David Crosby.” I found out that Norm had a record label, which he’d built around Crosby, because he loved his music so much. So that’s how I met David. A couple of months later he asked if I’d like to come and play on his album which became Croz (2014). So it was very organic, not through management, or lawyers—a lot in music happens that way—but this was organic. A ’60s-style “hey man, come and jam in my living room” sort of thing. It was very special.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | For The Nomads, a charity organization started by crew members of the music industry at the start of the COVID-19 shut down, has launched the second round of a massive auction to help aid others within the industry today.

​Fans can bid on limited edition memorabilia, one-of-a-kind experiences, merchandise and more from artists like Rage Against The Machine, GWAR, Rancid, Deftones, New Found Glory, Pennywise, Nofx, Wage War, Suicidal Tendencies, Fever 333, Rise Against, Killswitch Engage, I Prevail, Incendiary, Despised Icon and more today at https://www.forthenomads.org/ftnauction. Co-founded by former The World We Knew vocalist Frank Fanelli, and touring Production Assistant and Merchandise Manager Tatiana Danielle, For The Nomads has already raised over $78,000 since it’s start in March 2020.

“After touring steadily in the music industry for the past 14 years as a crew member, musician, and everything else in between, I felt obligated to use my reach and ability to give back to as many people who work their asses off full time on the road like myself and Tatiana (co-fonder) do,” shared Fanelli. “Some of my most cherished memories throughout my life have come from this line of work, so if we can help a few hundred crew members get some food on their tables through our strategic planning, donors, telethons, and auctions, I have no problem utilizing this down time we have due to quarantine to make a difference for the betterment of our peers.”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Adam Schlesinger was a prodigious and prolific songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist. He died on April 1 at the age of 52 as the result of complications from COVID-19. Not only was Schlesinger in multiple beloved bands—including the power-pop-leaning Fountains of Wayne and sophisticated electro-pop act Ivy—but he also collaborated on songs for movie soundtracks and the TV show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

​A wide array of artists touched by Schlesinger’s life pay tribute to the many musical projects of which he was a part via a Bandcamp-exclusive benefit compilation, Saving for a Custom Van. The 31-song collection features collaborators, tourmates, friends, and fans putting their own spin on songs spanning his entire career. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend co-creator, executive producer and star Rachel Bloom turns Fountains of Wayne’s “Stacy’s Mom” into a jazzy cabaret moodpiece, while Schlesinger’s Fountains of Wayne bandmate Jody Porter contributes a melancholy, shimmering take on Ivy’s “Four in the Morning.” Sarah Silverman—who teamed up with Schlesinger on the upcoming musical The Bedwetter—joins with songwriter Ben Lee for a gorgeous, folk-leaning take on “Way Back Into Love,” a Schlesinger song central to the film Music and Lyrics.

Other musicians on the compilation tackle Fountains of Wayne songs (Letters to Cleo’s Kay Hanley, “Radiation Vibe”; Motion City Soundtrack, “Dip in the Ocean”; Nada Surf, “Sick Day”; Vivian Girls/Upset member Ali Koehler, “Hackensack”), while Ivy songs are also well-represented (Belly members Tanya Donelly and Gail Greenwood, “Undertow”; Ted Leo, “Everyday”; HUNNY, “Tess Don’t Tell.”) A full tracklist is below.

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“My life wouldn’t have been much without CDs, cassettes, and vinyl! It would have been pretty empty. I’ve sought solace and comfort in records over and over and I think there’s been music playing during most of the memorable or most powerful times of my life.”

“One of the things I love about vinyl is the visual aspect. It’s two for the price of one; a good square foot of beautiful artwork or a photograph plus the music. A friend and I discovered an LA band called Valley Queen fairly recently fronted by lead singer Natalie Carol, she just released a B side single on vinyl called “Red Light and Bad Astrology” and the vinyl artwork is very evocative of sixties and seventies psychedelic artwork. I feel they’ve created a time capsule through the vinyl with the momentum of the current time partnered with a note of psychedelic nostalgia. The fullness of the sound on vinyl compliments this record perfectly.

I remember discovering Shine Eyed Mister Zen by Kelly Jo Phelps—someone must have left his record at my house or something as I don’t remember buying it, but I was bowled over when I put it on. The album conjures up images of trees, dusty trails, wind, mountains and rain for me, and it’s one of those records that makes me itch to pick up an instrument and create upon hearing it. The record and all of Phelps work to me has a purifying effect when I listen to him. Music like Phelps feels like an old friend you trust and you can rely on to pick you up.

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