Silber Records

Alright, minor slip-up on my year-end recognition of labels doing great things, but in my defence, I only became aware of this one towards the end of the year. Which is really a huge loss on my part, because these folks are among the newfound breed of independent music organizations that "get it": they get what's going on in the industry right now, they get how to find and work with undiscovered talent, and they get how to make it work for them.

Silber Records has been alive and kicking for over 10 years, doing the noble - and difficult - act of releasing varied and consistently great music. It'd be fair to say the focus is on "ambient"[ish] music, running the gamut from post-rock to the darker side of drone and noise, plus a healthy bit of experimental everything on side (is post-jazz a thing? There might be post-jazz). Something for all the kids, y'know?

Odds are, if words like "ambient", "post-rock", "drone" and "noise" have kept you reading thus far, then you're going to find something you'll like here. And for the avant-curious, everything is up for free download or cheap purchase, so you've got nothing to lose and horizons to broaden. There are literally days worth of free downloads and I still have a lot to sink my eager teeth into myself, but here's a couple of favourites I've stumbled upon:


Remora - Guitar Antihero


Download.

"Brian John Mitchell (Remora) boosted the sound to the next level by using five guitars, a bass, & four amplifiers instead of the standard single guitar & amp. The additional guitars were staged around the main amplifier to act as drone instruments. Probably the loudest Remora show ever (reports are it was heard clearly a block away) & often on the cusp of losing control of the wave of sound, the piece ended with Mitchell nearly throwing up from the volume exposure."

If you're not going to download this based on that quote alone, you're not my friend any more. Massive, hypnotic noise, pretagged as "guitar terrorism" and I can't say I disagree. Brian is also the head honcho at Silber, so evidently this label is in good hands.


Aarktica - Live at KUCI 6/15/05



Download.

Probably the most subtle of the Silber releases I've listened to so far, Aarktica tip-toe the thin line between post-rock and dream-pop/shoegaze: slow, methodical build-ups and blissful wall-of-sound embraces, with the surprise (and lovely) addition of vocals, horns and electronics. Don't be scared by the "post-rock" tag, I promise you this is not Explosions In The Sky-lite or crescendo-core.

Moodring - Live



Download.

Sorry, I'm really at a loss for how to describe this band. It's seems to be pretty free-form, and I might describe the drums as "free jazz-y" if I was rhythmically-inclined enough to make judgements about such matters; it's noisy but surprisingly listenable and the people involved in this are obviously talented musicians. I'll just go ahead and call this "pigfuckjazz" because it feels like a fairly concrete summation.


So go ahead and download and don't feel guilty. If you dig it, though, buy yourself a physical copy and throw some dollars at 'em through their online store. If nothing else, search through their archives for something that tickles your fancy. I can almost guarantee you'll find something.