30+ years in the making and the sequel to both 2012’s underground soul diaspora Eccentric Soul: Omnibus and Tree Records 1995 scene document Eucalyptus, the capstone thesis, final boss if you will, of our Emo Endeavors: Sequoia.
Sequoia gathers 25 original nuggets from emo’s first decade. Each of the 25 7”s calls back to their original handmade roots, housed in sturdy chipboard jackets with facsimile inner sleeves and replica labels. The accompanying 136-page hardcover book tells the tale from D.C. to San Diego, Vermin Scum to Gravity, Jon Hiltz’s Basement to the Red House, studiously capturing the yelps, screams, and spoken passages that defined the oft-misunderstood genre. Illustrated with hundreds of flyers, ads, and photographs from Numero’s vast archive, Sequoia documents a vibrant, interconnected scene at the end of the American century.
“Sequoia is a celebration of the survival of this music,” compiler Ken Shipley said. “These 7"s were entirely ephemeral, souvenirs of an experience filed away in cardboard boxes in the attics and basements provided by our parents; thrown away during a move or sold when we got into indie rock or soul or drugs or kids; marked down to a buck or tossed into the free bin; abandoned by their creators as 33rpm moments of youthful exuberance.”
This isn't a 7" boxset as much as it's the defining document of where punk rock was in the '90s. The cities, labels, venues, zines, bands, predecessors and spawns. The 136-page book covers where the scene came from, where it was, wasn't and went. This is a tome for adventurous academic historians, deep-dive armchair archeologists and neighborhood dive-bar DJs alike.
Cheap to press, and even cheaper to package, the 7" was the format of choice for the scene similarly to the independent and private press soul 45s highlighted in our 2012 Eccentric Soul: Omnibus 7" boxset... and similar to that box and many of these original 7"s, this is a single-press, once in our lifetime compilation.
PRE-ORDER NOW / SHIPS MID JUNE:
Available in standard Black Vinyl or Sap Colored Natural Bone Vinyl.
BONUS: Pre-Orders will also get the Sycamore 2x7" set rounding out the box to a 29x7" discs. That's less than <$9 per disc for those with a calculator - You don't want to know how the discogs stats clock out.
Ken Shipley on Sycamore: "I’ve always loved the 2x7” as a format. From Maximumrocknroll’s Turn It Around! to Slave Cut’s Ghost Dance, Further Beyond’s Picking More Daisies to Subfusc’s How The Midwest Was Won… these bitesize surveys heavily informed my record making sensibilities. With a max run time of around 25 minutes, there’s no room for the fluff and bloat that plague many a compilation LP, forcing its maker to be a bit more cutthroat in the sequencing process. The format seems largely isolated to punk, perhaps inspired by the Cure’s 1981 “A Single” four tracker, but most certainly informed by the lower per unit cost.
My own Eucalyptus 2x7” was originally slated as an LP, but was curtailed for cost and a feeling of urgency to document the scene before it was too late. As it was, five of the seven bands had already broken up by the time of its June 1995 release. The record was the culminating project of my 18 years living in Cupertino, California, arriving in six United Record Pressing boxes just a few weeks before I skipped town and started my adventure in the record business."
Pre-order: Release date is June 20th
SHIPS FROM USA AND UK.
