Friday, May 26, 2006

I Just Called To Say, I Like You



White labels are illegal releases. They are vinyl releases, with no label, no sleeve, no artist name, no serial number, etc. This way, an artist can release illegal or unauthorized music to the public and it is completely untracable to the band, singer, rapper, pressing source, whatever. White label releases are most typically seen in the hip hop, electronic scenes due to these genres' excessive use of sampling that is more often than not, used without clearance.

But what if say, you're a band from Baltimore, MD and you sing some Stevie Wonder in one of your songs? or what if you cover a Nirvana song, but you just know Courtney is gonna flip her shit if it's released? Well friends, it's white label time! The Baltimore band in question is of course none other than Animal Collective, who by the way, did not release the limited edition white label vinyl themselves. Either way, I'm pretty sure these tracks may have been circulating around digitally for a while, but they're brand new to me, so get 'em while the gettin's good.

[MP3]: Animal Collective :: The Purple Bottle (Stevie Wonder Mix)
[MP3]: Animal Collective :: Polly (Nirvana Cover)

This super limited edition 7" with both of these tracks may still be available if you send an Email here and say something like: "The panda is in the gunyard," which clearly means "I want the AC seven inch." Or, you know, you could just say: "Hi, I'm interested in the Animal Collective white label" if you want be all lame and boring.

Check out the awesome one-sheet for the 7" here. Man, they really outdid themselves with this one, haha. P.S. the Stevie Wonder Mix is infact mastered, for those of you who like to know these things.

Related interesting fact of the day: Belle and Sebastian's Tigermilk was originally released as the final project of a College music production class and distributed as a white label.

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