It’s here!  The day is finally here!

After more than three years recording, and the better part of a year preparing the release, Bird City’s album is available to the public.

Bird City is the banjo/tenor guitar project of Jenny Mitchell, a Guelph, Ontario-based songwriter who previously performed as Jenny Omnichord and fronted the band The Barmitzvah Brothers among her many other musical projects.

Mitchell crafted the debut album by Bird City, Winnowing, over a three-year period with producer/engineer Scott Merritt at his Guelph studio, with a host of notable friends contributing. These included Bry Webb (Constantines), Nathan Lawr (Minotaurs), J.J. Ipsen (Jim Guthrie, Two-Minute Miracles), and Merritt himself on a multitude of instruments.

Tying it all together is Mitchell’s musical vision of creating out-of- body experiences through stark fragility, no matter how many instruments are on a track.

With Winnowing, Jenny moves beyond her quirky Omnichord persona, playing these exposed and poetic songs of paranoia, heartbreak and self-examination developed for nearly 15 years. Although she likes to describe her work as “tiny songs,” Winnowing is a towering achievement from an artist long considered one of Canada’s unsung treasures, who is poised to at last get the recognition she deserves.

As of today you can buy copies on bandcamp, Coax Records, and by requesting them at your favourite local record stores (distribution through Outside records)  The BEST of course is buying them directly from Bird City at one of the upcoming release shows (see posted dates below)  Check out this article about the record, from “The Record” 

Upcoming shows: 

Oct 28 :: Heritage Hall :: Guelph ON [w/ Scott Merritt]

Nov 5 :: The Burdock :: Toronto ON [w/ Sandro Perri]

Nov 18 :: House Show :: Meaford ON [w/Culture Reject]

Nov 25 :: The Casbah :: Hamilton ON [w/ Eiyn Sof & Mayor McCa]

Dec 9 :: Catalina’s :: Peterborough ON [w/Joyful Joyful]

Dec 10 :: Pressed :: Ottawa ON

Extremely excited to get to share this with you!  Tune in to Grayowl Point for an advanced stream of Bird City’s “Winnowing”.

We’re getting closer and closer to release date folks.  You can check out the upcoming tour dates below

Oct 28 :: Heritage Hall :: Guelph ON [w/ Scott Merritt]

Nov 5 :: The Burdock :: Toronto ON [w/ Sandro Perri]

Nov 18 :: House Show :: Meaford ON [w/Culture Reject]

Nov 25 :: The Casbah :: Hamilton ON [w/ Eiyn Sof & Mayor McCa]

Dec 9 :: Catalina’s :: Peterborough ON [w/Joyful Joyful]

Dec 10 :: Pressed :: Ottawa ON

It’s been over three years in the making, and Label Fantastic Founder “Bird City”‘s debut album “Winnowing” is finallyALMOST HERE!!!  It will be released October 27th – Stay tuned to labelfantastic.com and coax.com for release details!  

Well friends – guess what you’re looking at?  Remember our friend Henry Adam Svec, the songwriter who drew our attention to projects such as “The CFL Sessions”, “Folk Songs of Canada”, and “Folk Songs of Canada Now”?   Well here’s what happened: Henry FINALLY moved away from London, and ended up in Fredericton.  And while there, he developed an OBSESSION with donairs.  Photos of donairs, sound-collages, even a donair-themed radio show.  THEN Henry moved down to the United States.  And while some of us might have expected the result to be something innocent like “Folk Songs of America Now”, that’s not exactly what Henry had in mind.  THIS was his vision:

Henry has made a VIDEO GAME ABOUT DONAIRS.  And it’s totally bizarre.  It’s totally Henry.  I should have seen this coming, but I’ll admit that I really didn’t.  Congratulations Henry.  Here are the details:

The donair has been gaining steam. Invented by restaurateur Peter Gamoulakos in the 1970s, when he was having trouble selling the traditional gyro to his Maritimer patrons, the sweet, milky beef wrap was named an official food of Halifax in 2015. Now the dish gets its own interactive digital game, entitled Donair Academy.

Created by Henry Adam Svec and Chad Comeau, Donair Academy lovingly and nostalgically hearkens back to the RPGs and digital encyclopedias of the 1990s, such as Final Fantasy and Microsoft Encarta. Players can explore the historical, gastronomical, and acoustic dimensions of this culinary artifact, which is a fascinating compromise linking Turkish, Greek, and Atlantic Canadian tastes. One struggles to describe the experience (surprising? enlightening? surreal?). In a sense, perhaps playing the game is just like eating a good donair.

“One never knows when donair knowledge will come in handy,” says Comeau. It is hard to elaborate further without giving away the game’s provocative conclusion, so the interested reader will simply need to play to find out how. But the game also probes bigger, more universal issues, using the Halifax donair as a springboard. “We wanted to make a game that mixed several dimensions of donair history and culture. Education, canonization, mobilization, mastication—it’s all in here,” says Svec.

Donair Academy is the first collaboration between writer and performer Henry Adam Svec (The CFL Sessions, Artificially Intelligent Folk Songs of Canada) and game designer Chad Comeau (La vie d’Arcade, Granny Games). Each having worked as Media Artist in Residence at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton (Svec in 2014-2015 and Comeau in 2016-2017), the idea first came to light when Svec encouraged Comeau to make a game about donairs on his Facebook page. What began perhaps as a joke has finished as reality. Also featuring a tense, dramatic soundtrack by WL Altman and Andrew Penner, Donair Academy is available for free online at www.donairacademy.org.

Hey friends!

If you’ve visited us here in the past little bit, you would have noticed the site was glitchy.  Thanks to our pal Edwin over at Relaxe Ave Recording it’s now fixed!   What  a guy!  He’s currently working on Wax Mannequin’s new album (out this fall!) and in his spare time he just ever so casually SAVED LABEL FANTASTIC!’S site!!!  What a guy.  Check out his studio, he’s a gem.

The new Bird City record (the first official Bird City record) will be released this autumn on Label Fantastic! and Coax Records.  In the meantime, Jenny has teamed up with longtime pal/Constantines’ front man “Bry Webb” to accompany him on a bunch of his tour of small Ontario cities.  Bry is going LOTS of places, you can check out his post on facebook to see his full list of dates, the ones featuring Bird City are listed below.  Bry is carving out a beautiful reconnaissance mission of small town venue connections, quite a magical feat, and if the shows goes well hopefully many Label Fantastic! artists will return to these towns.  If you or your friends are near any of these places we’d love to see you out at the shows!

Bry Webb w/ Bird City:

May:

13 – Manitowaning (Manitoulin Island) – Debajehmujig Creation Centre

14 – Peterborough – Artspace

18 – Owen Sound – Heartwood Concert Hall - w/ Long Branch

19 – Sudbury – Fromagerie Elgin

20 – Durham - Garafraxa Cafe

25 Kingston – Next Church

26 Stratford – Montforte

June 18 – Grimsby – The Pumphouse

It’s here!  ”Saturn Return” by Old Cabin is officially released!  You can stream the album right now at Exclaim!   

Here’s the rundown: “The album opens with the previously shared addiction tale “Where Did You Go,” which is immediately followed by an accompanying suite cryptically titled “!?!” From there, we hear the stories of “Joe,” as well as “And Annie,” before Barr grapples with the absurdities of life on “I Got You,” and finally — and perhaps most powerfully — the aftermath of residential schools on “Don’t Leave Me Behind.”

Rich with layered characters and heavy themes, the album is am engaging exercise in modern musical storytelling told through a distinctly Canadian lens.”

It’s a great record – we were lucky enough to witness Jona perform it in its entirety on the Golden Bus earlier this month.  Be sure to keep an eye on his tour schedule.  If you’re out in western Canada, check out one of these upcoming dates:

Old Cabin is crossing Canada on tour!  In celebration of “Where Did You Go,“ the first offering from his forthcoming EP, Saturn Return, available later this summer via Label Fantastic!

Listen to the sprawling track HERE or below.

Catch him in a town near you!  Dates are as follows:

I am SUPER pleased to announce these two new releases.

One is a once-in-a-label-lifetime type of fantastical release, a compendium of 24 songs and beautiful art pieces that attempt to render a portrait to illustrate the mythological legendary “Mulagi”

One is a beautiful vinyl from one of my favourite bands from the BLOCKS Recording club era in my teen years.

We get to release a book/album about a legend, and an album FROM a legend.  This is a magical day.

Here’s some info about each – I hope your day is as great as mine is now!  Try to make it out to a release show near you!

The Ecstasy and the Void: an introduction to the Occult of Mulagi - The White Funz

Today!  One of my favourite bands of ALL TIME has given us a second full-length record to fall in love with.  If you had asked me three years ago if my favourite band in 2015 would be a MARKETING TEAM I would have thought that an extremely unlikely circumstance.  But marketing WORKS folks, at least when you’re marketing Blimp Festivals.  Check out their new album, check out their vintage office supplies, check out all things Blimp Rock at:  http://www.blimprockenterprises.com/

Here’s a word from the team themselves:

“ATTN: People of business!

We have a very important announcement for you today.  
Blimp Rock will be releasing our second album, entitled “Sophomore Slump” on April 7th.

“Let’s All Stay In Tonight” – the first single is not so much a rejection of the nightlife, but an endorsement of the indoors. It is a ‘call to couch’ for those of us who enjoy cheese plates, early evenings and small groups of people. Listen via Soundcloud, Bandcamp or watch the video.

As both a band and a marketing team, we have focused on funding our $700k festival that will take place on a blimp floating over Lake Ontario. We plan on reaching our goal by releasing albums, touring as a relatively unheard of Southern Ontario rock band, and selling vintage office supplies such as rolodexes, fax machines and floppy discs.

After the runaway success of “Lake Ontario Lifeguards (L.O.L.)”, expectations ran high at the BRE offices for a follow-up. Will we ever surpass the hype of L.O.L.? Was the first record better? Can we ever raise $700 000? Regardless, Blimp Rock has made a second album.

However, it is a good idea to get our sometime, so Blimp Rock will also be embarking upon a “Powerpoint Tour of Ontario” starting April 11th.
Each show includes a Powerpoint presentation on our business plan, followed by a rock concert.  

We’d be very appreciative if you shared the news with your associates.
Thank you for your business,

Blimp Rock Enterprises”

Presentations:

Apr. 11 – Guelph, ON – Kazoo! Fest
Apr. 16 – Oshawa, ON – The Moustache Club
Apr. 17 – Hamilton, ON – Homegrown Cafe
Apr. 18 – Maynooth, ON – The Arlington Hotel
Apr. 19 – Peterborough, ON – The Spill
Apr. 24 – Windsor, ON – Phog Lounge
Apr. 25 – Toronto, ON – The Dakota Tavern
May. 1 – Ottawa, ON – Raw Sugar Cafe
May. 2 – Montreal, QC – Le Cagibi
May. 8 – St. Catherines, ON – Mahtay
May. 9 – Midland, ON – The Boathouse