«Lions Are Eternal» double EP
by M. Whiteman / In Heaven (B)
LP / CD / MP3
NVLRM04LP / NVLRM04CD
In Heaven was formed around the dueling talents of Monsieur Whiteman and Dominique Van Cappellen-Waldock and it captures the chill of stormy weather, interspersed with rare sunny spells.
Imagine Nick Cave snogging Beth Gibbons to an Angelo Badalamenti soundtrack. If you can.
m. whiteman / in heaven
m. whiteman / in heaven
The Record Store Day thing was once a great idea : to bring people back into record stores, by creating titles that would be hunted by record lovers, collector scums and hardcore fans.
Limited edition, special releases, repress, collaborations, compilations,... Many of you loved the "Eight Trails, One Path" compilation on Three Lobed Recordings, housed in beautiful letterpress artwork by Dexterity Press. That was the top of a Record Store Day release : good original music, gathering talents and creativity in a small piece of art. Being anxious to get a copy (not on eBay or Discogs) was part of the thrill/fun. Many similar releases have surfaced, thanks to this yearly record idea.
Due to the success of Record Store Day, and the (wrong) direction it took since a couple of years, pressing plants are now going crazy for a few months, due to the insane amount of releases expected for the same period.
While most of us would be normally happy to see more and more releases coming out, it appears that most of these Record Store Day releases are actually vinyl editions of nineties albums that were not even recorded for vinyl. And they will be available in 3000 or 5000 copies, with a "Record Store Day edition" sticker on it. That's where the joke is. This sticker sounds to me like a big mercantile "Fuck you edition". Who'd want a blue vinyl edition of Oasis' Definitely Maybe limited to 3000 copies? Seriously.
And that it's because of these releases that pressing plants tend to stop taking orders under 500 copies. Even worse : orders above 1000ex are going ahead in the pressing schedule. That is completely killing the DYI process of small labels, and definitely reduces the will to pursue the vinyl media for future releases.
Navalorama Records launched in February a luxurious pressing of Monsieur Whiteman / In Heaven. The label policy is to create limited edition of "nice" objects, physical releases that are worth buying, and at benefit free price. Because we love music and find important that people still buy records in other forms than digital files.
Just like Record Store Day.
Because of the above mentioned schedule, "small" orders (like 250 or 300ex) are pushed back for months. Therefore, when we learned that the vinyl edition of "Lions Are Eternal" would not be pressed before end of August ("or later"...), we decided to end this ridiculous process. Release date (and party) was fucking June 5! We are really sorry for both Monsieur Whiteman, who invested a lot of time and effort in this process, and for the audience whose first reception was great.
The first year of Navalorama Records has been so far a great success, a cool adventure and a whole lot of packing. Marteleur's second album "My Anvil Is My Tuning Fork" blew everyone off by surprise and was drowned in super positive reviews. Boston's metal head Ice Dragon released "Born A Heavy Morning", an album that led them to be considered as "the best underground band of the internet age". Proud to show to the world that Belgium can produce six-strings geniuses as brilliant as the States or UK,yadayn's first album has been released last April on the label. Monsieur Whiteman's experimental double EP is an ambitious project that would have deserved a physical version at the appropriate level. Finally, two weeks before its first birthday, the label released a stunning album of Norwegian post rock icon The Samuel Jackson Five, which returns in the most splendid way possible.
More releases are in the can for the coming months : OMSQ, Ice Dragon, Hveda,...
We'd like to thank each and every one of you, who contributed by your support and listening to this first year, only polluted by this vinyl cancellation.
But shit happens.
And since a couple of years, it seems shit comes in April, in a 3000ex limited blue vinyl edition.
Thank you
