Winter Mist

Cruel Winter, ice on split knuckles
I’ve almost lost all of my vigour
No interest in what was held dearest
I’ll board a train, head towards the mist
Swift hours, dwindling distractions
A bluey fog fastens to the window
This bold venture does me no favours
A grinding halt, I haven’t begun well

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Idyllic

I’m purged of habits not thought artistic
I rest and smile, it is idyllic
I cut the shoots of my only talents
It is idyllic, fatigued and stunted

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Between The Acts

Those letters you thought to keep
Between the acts, uncle to niece
Your mid-twenties in passing weeks
The late-thirties, the end of peace
Your house has stood some fifty years
Nine grandchildren we wish you had seen

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Empty Carriage

Home is where I sit, in transit
Aboard an empty carriage
Never to alight, nor mind that
I haven’t touched a soul
I’d give them all the slip
But the heart sinks
Who knows, would there be mourning?
Steal away this ride
Leaving aside no trace, no scent, no litter

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By The Window

Oh, I have caught on, blinkered I know
My thoughts are grubby but they needn’t show
Once saw the stern oak, under the evening’s glow
Now, see the brown specks that stain my window

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Discovered In A Photograph

In a garden near my own home
Long before I was born
Those family members gathered
Held poses for our wall
It’s already been so long
Their names are cast in stone
Some may have been happy
All of them died alone
I peer at every figure
Guess at each one’s laugh
Their much-mocked stern expressions
Hide them from my grasp
It’s already been too long
I would wither alone
I want my name in someone’s heart
Before it’s cast in stone

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The Return

One searching look for assurance
By my admission I held back
Now restraint seems dull and unimaginative
What comes of this?
A hasty return
Then was the time for a proper gesture
Clear, firm and fast, now it’s passed
What comes of this?
One more page turned

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Our Lost Domain

Sing out the notes of an Autumn song
Call back the days when she linked your arms
Beneath the scent of rotting compost
A warm nostalgia, a borrowed calm
Loosen your scarf and pull up your bike
Fly down the dingle, chase dying daylight

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Far Too Hopeful

I haven’t left her behind
Tapped into youthful optimism
Record with care
For attached is tattered pride
A flame flickers wildly
A semblance left for posterity
Reflect in these dim rooms
On immeasurable kindness
And now for beginnings
Dust me down, adjust my coat
To make one offering
Please take me by the hand

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Those Phrases

A butterfly powdered
The lake, still, unbroken by your oars
That will be useful…

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As a Creative Commons record label, we believe in free and open source software and processes. We therefore use free and open source software as much as we are able as well as actively contributing back to the community.

Ribcage is our homegrown record label management tool, that operates as a plugin for WordPress. It allows us to manage our artists, their releases and the downloads these entail. Everything you see on this site is run using Ribcage.

We are currently re-writing the code completely for a version 2.0 which we will release under the GPL. We are intending to bootstrap this in a rapid development way and have created WordPress Abstract, a series of object-orientated utility libraries to make rapid development easier (for example the creation of custom post types). We envision this to be released in June 2012. We welcome contributions to development through Github.

The current version, which is not fully ready for production use outside of our own site (though some do) can be downloaded from our Github repository, which is also the best place to see ongoing development.

Anyone who can install WordPress and the Ribcage WordPress plugin can pretty much make their own record label that runs along similar lines to Records On Ribs. We hope this will democratise music production and distribution to a previously unprecedented extent.

We have also made additions to the code base of the WordPress plugin Events Manager to accommodate our use and developed a command line interface to SoundCloud to facilitate mass uploads. The WordPress theme for this site is also open source.

Ribcage Features

• Management of artists, releases, reviews associated with those releases and press cuttings associated with artists. Upload artwork easily via your browser and have it resized.
• Supports uploads of MP3, Ogg Vorbis and FLAC files for releases – checks tags are correct and zips into release packages.
• Artists can list their upcoming gigs and other events.
• RSS feeds for individual artists’ releases and releases for the label as a whole.
• Press areas for hosting one sheets and high quality artwork.
• Widgets for recent and forthcoming releases.
• Integration with Paypal for donations and purchases of physical versions of the releases.
• Every element of the plugin is themable to integrate seamlessly with your WordPress theme.
• Flash MP3 player as well as releases and individual tracks streamable as M3U and XSPF.
• Tracks downloads of releases and provides detailed statistics.
• Integrates with an external Bittorrent tracker (for example Clearbits).
• Interfaces with the Musicbrainz database to ensure data is consistently accurate throughout the internet, including on Last.fm
• Microformats throughout – hAudio, hReview, hProduct, hCalendar.
• Loads of other highly advanced functions.

You can also contact us if you are interested in learning more about Ribcage.

Records on Ribs make all their downloads available in the de facto standard MP3 format, for maximum portability and minimum mess. There is no DRM or copy protection and you can play them on anywhere and in any way you want. We actively encourage you to distribute them as much as you like.

Our files are encoded with LAME using the -v0 --vbr-new settings. This produces a high-quality variable bit rate MP3 averaging at around 230 kbps. It should sound transparent to most ears, with no discernible difference between the original file and the MP3.

To play we recommend Media Monkey on Windows and Play on Mac OS X. The ubiquitous iTunes is available on both systems. For Linux users Exaile (GNOME) or Amarok (KDE) are both great. Songbird looks like an incredible solution and is available on all major platforms.

If you are a audiophile hungry for a lossless format, we offer FLAC files on most releases as well. We also offer Ogg Vobris files.

EL Heath’s new album Snailbeach Mines Trust (on Wayside & Woodland records) is now available to buy from Norman Records and is currently at #6 in their ‘This Week’s Hottest Shit’ section- above Ikonika, Disappears and Ambarchi, O’Rourke and Haino  (among others). Naturally, we can’t recommend it highly enough: it’s a stunning evocation of place and memory. Dank, desolate and utterly transcendent. And all profits go to the wonderful people at the Shropshire Mines Trust.

Here’s what Norman Records have to say about the release:

This record left our Phil feeling ecstatic.

Over the years we’ve sold about a million Epic 45 records. You guys… you love ’em! Well here’s another one for you of sorts. It’s by EL Heath which is Eric from Epic 45 and it’s released on their Wayside And Woodland label. The album is named after Snailbeach lead Mine which was the largest lead mine in the UK back in the olden days when things were harder than they are now. He used to visit there as a child and it obviously had an effect on him as he’s returned as an adult after saving up for recording equipment 🙂 and recorded some of the sounds of the rusted up machinery and built up an album around those sounds. Listening to it though you wouldn’t know that. It’s gorgeous and there’s not an industrial clank in site :)…… The Music is very much like latter Stars of The Lid (the last album comes to mind). Rich warm waves of neo classical drone wash over. Occasional vocal tracks take on a different approach as they go down a more British 60’s folk route….. They blend seamlessly as the folk tracks still have some of the those warm sounding drones in the background. A remarkably moving and soulful album which gets my highest recommendation!

We’ll be helping Wayside & Woodland host a download of the album soon. Downloading it will require a minimum donation of £1 to the Shropshire Mines Trust.

I have just emailed the following to the Formica company after they forced our good friends My Formica Table to change their name:

Dear Formica,

So, you see fit to stop a group of people releasing music for free under the name ‘My Formica Table’ because you own the letters FRMOIAC when they’re put in a different order and you didn’t want them to use them. How grown up of you. In all honesty, I’m surprised that we – the people – hadn’t stopped them earlier. They were, after all, using the word ‘table’ with staggering impudence. Everytime I went to eat my tea in my dining room I found the whole eating experience very confusing. I put the food on the ‘table’- but this was not a table like My Formica Table the record label. It was a wooden one for putting food on. My miniscule brain really struggled to cope with these two uses of the word table. I can only imagine the trouble I would have been in had I had a Formica Table in my dining room.

Seriously: you bunch of staggeringly petty dullards. A group of people put a few years work into releasing music by DIY bands onto the internet for free (do you get that? making no profit), increasing the number of people who listen to this music by an enormous number. Having built a following, you tell them they have to change their name (which was meant reverently, because they’re fans of formica tables). You say their name causes “detriment” to the “distinctiveness” and “reputation” your trademark. I’ll tell you what causes ‘detriment’ to ‘reputations’- being petty killjoys. When you’ve got time, read Wilhelm Reich’s ‘Listen, Little Man’. You might recognise some of its insights.

All is not lost thankfully, because My Formica Table (that’s the record label, not the thing some people eat their tea off) is reborn as Foetal Orange, although how I’m going to cope eating my daily dose of citrus I do not know. The orange industry is surely bracing itself for a terminal decline to its reputation and distinctiveness.

Yours,

Records on Ribs

Hi all. An exciting month here at Records on Ribs towers. Scroll down to be filled with  joyous news some good news and some now less good news (starting with the latter).

No Lovve

That news that was here before, it might not happen. You can probably guess why if you read what it was.

Radio, Live Transmission

We were very humbled to be designated ‘Website of the Week’ on BBC 6Music’s Tom Robinson show on Saturday. Some lovely things were said about this here label and Talk Less, Say More’s Song About a Dream About a Phonecall from ‘Go Lucky’ was flung out across the airwaves (and down fibre-optics) to listeners across the globe. To listen to the show, click here. We’re mentioned about 1hr20 in, but listen to the whole thing: it’s worth it.

We’ve also been picked up by the good people (and believe us, they really are good people) over at indiestreetradio. Many of our releases are featured- along with much other fine music- on this podcast and this podcast.

Last & Least

Some little titbits of tantalisation for your perusal and consideration. Firstly, we point you in the direction of re:press– a fine group of people who’re releasing some top notch philosophy/critical theory/fiction/poetry for free under Creative Commons via the internet (with the request that you ask your local library to stock them, or buy one yourself if you have the cash) – including works by philosopher de rigeur – Alain Badiou. And lastly, we leave you with the news that new releases from Talk Less, Say More and El Heath are in the pipeline of hope and we should have something from The Exploits of Elaine- those psychedelic dwellers of the folky subconscious- around the new year.

New Releases

As one great band ends, so another begins. The Butterfly’s final EP Time Spent In Reconnaissance Is Never Time Wasted will be unleashed on the world shortly, and we’re absolutely thrilled to be able to bring you the self-titled debut EP from Oxford’s Elapse-O. Physical copies will be available to buy at the album launch in Nottingham on Friday 27th June (more details soon!) and it’ll be available for download from here a week or so later. You can get a preview by listening to the EP in its entirety on their myspace.

Physical Releases

Something we’ve been promising for a while now. We’re working on a way to make beautifully packaged CD-Rs of all our releases. We’re getting there and should have physical copies of our albums available soon (artist made copies of Les Etoiles’ and We Show Up On Radar’s albums can already be purchased in physical form). Elapse-O’s EP will be ready in physical form for their EP launch.

Tapes on Ribs

Tapes on Ribs is our new project: a sub-label of RoR. Whilst we love the way downloads mean you can have free music, we also love tapes. So we’ve decided to launch a tape label! Tapes will be available to buy from here fairly soon, but in order to keep in with our cash-less ethos you can send us a blank tape and we’ll post it back to you, plus the music, free of charge. The first release will be a split tape by EL Heath and Strap the Button’s Jack Hunter.

Releases on Other Labels

EL Heath’s ‘A (Rather) Dead Sea Liner EP’ is now available from Weymouth’s fucking ace Dead Sea Liner Records. We hope to have a few copies to sell here shortly. It’s a beautiful record of “abyssal drones and ambient sea shanties” and comes packaged in pages from the Manual of Advanced Seamanship (Volume 3). My copy informs me of the correct way to ballast a submarine.

Elapse-O, meanwhile, have gone transatlantic. Montreal’s YUL Records will be releasing a 7″ with two of the tracks from their RoR EP on in the autumn. Again, we hope to have a few copies to sell from here.

It’s worth reminding you that Strap the Button and their associated side-projects have an absolute shitload of stuff available for free download from My Formica Table.

What Our Artists Are Up To

EL Heath is working on about a zillion EPs. There’s Anime Songs– soundtracks for imagined Japanese anime films and the spaces they open up; an album called Pattern which is inspired by the likes of Cluster and Harmonia and is more beat orientated; some live improv with drums which sounds like it should be on Rune Gramofone and the first of a planned series of albums inspired by the machines of W Heath Robinson. EL is also playing a couple of rare live dates: at the Wheaton Aston Festival (Staffordshire) on Saturday 17th May (with Epic45, Millimetrik and July Skies) and at Lee Rosy’s Tea Room in Nottingham on Sunday 18th May (with Cat Green Bike and Glissando). RoR honcho Dave will be helping Mr Heath flesh out his sounds at both shows.

Strap the Button are set to record their epic The Blood’s A Shimmerin‘- a single track album- which we hope to release in late summer/early autumn. Sections of the track exist in live form on their myspace.

Les Etoiles and Talk Less, Say More are also working on new material.