From the surfside crab rock of Rachel Weldon:
You have an artist picked out, or have been assigned a review. You’ve got 100 words or less to describe the music, evoke a response, and put a feeling into words. Go!
Rachel Weldon has contributed words to the weird cause for 1.5 years in varying capacities (mostly low). She holds a BA in English Literature, and is going back for more this Fall. The special quality of Weird Canada’s literary style has always inspired her, so she unpacked her own process for us, to show how it’s meaningful to her.
Du « crab rock » du littoral de Rachel Weldon:
(Traduit par l’euphorie de Geneviève Faubert)
Une fois que tu as choisi un artiste ou qu’on t’a confié la critique d’un album, tu disposes d’un maximum de 100 mots pour décrire la musique, susciter une réaction et traduire l’émotion sur papier. À toi de jouer!
Depuis un an et demi, la plume de Rachel Weldon apporte une contribution variable (surtout faible) à la cause WC. Elle détient un baccalauréat en littérature anglaise et a repris les études à l’automne. Elle s’est toujours sentie inspirée par le caractère particulier du style littéraire de Weird Canada. Elle nous dévoile ici son processus pour montrer à quel point celui-ci a de l’importance pour elle.
From the orchestrated collectibility of Max Cotter:
Since its first batch of releases in early 2011, Craft Singles has been steadily cultivating and curating “a series of snapshots of interrelated communities.” Perpetually delving into disparate sounds and geographies, the subscription-based label educates its listeners in Canadiana through brief, single-driven cassette doses. Each meticulously orchestrated batch of releases offers a unique visual aesthetic and attention to packaging, adding collectibility to the already enticing array of singles. Weird Canada spoke to Andy March, founder of Craft Singles.
Max Cotter: What are the origins of Craft Singles (CS) and how did it evolve into its current form?
Andy March: CS started as a project where I wanted to try my hand at production. I had been recording, playing in bands, and running labels, and I thought it would be a worthwhile exercise to see what I could do to put all that together and try to produce recordings. I wanted to be able to work with a lot of different artists, to do it without needing to find much money, to work quickly and release things rapidly, and to publish the output in a coherent form, as a project, in a format that was collectible. I also wanted to be able to give the bands something that they could sell, which could get reviewed, with the result of garnering some attention.
The cassette single format is one I have always liked. It made sense to me that the project as a whole could gain some momentum, even if the releases were very short, and the editions very small. I bought a cassette duplicator, a glue dispenser gun, and trained with Charles Austin at Echo Chamber Audio, reaching an agreement where I could use the studio at night for a reasonable rate. The first half-dozen or so releases followed this ethos, and I made some recordings I am really proud of. Friendly Dimension, The Ether, Special Costello, and Lantern really stand out for me as sessions where I put a lot of thought and effort into being the perfect producer for that particular group at that particular point in their career, and I think I gave them something that made sense for them that, at the time, did justice to their development and their aesthetic.
As I began to spend less time in Halifax and Montreal (where I had studio access as well), and as I became more focused on my own band, CS morphed into more of a traditional label in that bands, such as Play Guitar and Grand Trine, submitted their content for release through the label. I was still doing some recordings for bands like Bad Vibrations, but the emphasis was more on making the release process affordable, without losing quality, for bands that were near the beginning of their careers.
At this point the label began to grow in its ability to provide exposure across Canada, in part thanks to Weird Canada and campus radio. It fell into its current character; a series of snapshots of interrelated communities, a rhizome of bands and musicians and scenes.
There seemed to be a heavy focus on the Halifax scene that has slowly shifted to documenting other parts of the country. What led to this change? How has CS’s relationship with the Halifax music community changed with this shift?
I am fairly nomadic so as I spent less [time in] Halifax and started exploring other parts of the country, I found relationships between cities that made it possible to expand the label to other regions. Sackville, Montreal, Toronto, and Calgary all have threads in common; dialogues of various degrees between certain threads of creativities, which was very exciting for me to realize. My relationship to the Halifax scene is still strong. I go back all the time and try to keep tabs on what is up, and I hope to be able to continue this forever.
Especially considering the aforementioned shift, how does the CS curation process work? Has it become more of a challenge to make informed release decisions when looking with a wider lens at Canada as a whole? The process of deciding on releases is pretty straight forward. I try to determine if a release is mutually beneficial for all parties involved: the band, the label, and the other bands under the label. If so, and if the band is keen, I do whatever needs done to make a tape happen. I find that the wider the scope geographically, the more cohesive the project becomes. Releasing Homebody (from Denver, Colorado) and seeing the ties with, say, Heaven For Real or You Are Minez, was really sweet.
With each round of releases featuring a different-yet-cohesive aesthetic, it seems graphic design is an important aspect of CS. How would you desc