The first episode of Santa Rosa Radio, hosted by Jesse Gilmore, exhibits an eclectic mix of underground dream-pop and experimental folk music in low-fidelity. The episode features Kid Indigo, The Kerosene Hours, Ivory Weeds, Mind Shrine, Hieronymus Harry, and Lychnis.
The footage for this episode was cut and edited by Jesse Gilmore.
Santa Rosa Radio is available to stream on YouTube, Spotify, Google Play, SoundCloud, iTunes, iHeartRadio, TuneIn (Amazon Alexa), Deezer, and Stitcher.
Note: This post is an updated synthesis of a two-part article published on Santa Rosa Records earlier this year.
The great vinyl resurgence
Even with the prevalence of digital music platforms and music streaming services, vinyl records are making a huge comeback — and seem to be here to stay.
Companies such as eBay and Discogs have strong data that seems to prove there has been a recent surge in vinyl sales — and popularity as a whole.
Sales for both brand new and used vinyl records have gone up by the millions.
Note that these figures don’t count offline sales — and also don’t seem to be slowing down here anytime soon. Data shows that sales for vinyl started its meteoric rise back in 2011, and has continued to rise since — thanks to collectors and radical hipsters alike!
Albums sold on vinyl saw double digit sales growth in the US last year, according to Genius. Vinyl sales grew by just shy of 12 percent from 8.6 to 9.7 million sales. It wasn’t quite the growth seen in digital streaming, but it’s still quite impressive for a medium that’s several decades old.
Some of the resurgence may be due to the fact that the quality of sound on vinyl and cassette is just so much warmer compared to music played online or even from a CD.
Nostalgia is in. Or maybe it always has been. The nostalgic value in the industry of music seems to be set in stone for the time being, but we’ll wait and see how this all plays out.
The cassette tape revolution
The 90s is also making a comeback, not only in style and fashion, but also in the form of cassette tapes.
These little pieces of plastic and magnetic tape have been resurfacing as of late, with some major stores carrying cassettes and cassette players despite the continued rising popularity of streaming platforms.
Cassettes still saw double digit sales growth in the US last year, according to Genius. Cassette sales grew by almost 19 percent from 99,400 to 118,200 copies sold in the US.
Bands such as Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins have been releasing their records on casette tapes, and surprisingly, they’ve been selling out from pre-sales alone.
Vinyl is also on the rise — but data reveals that vinyl is more popular among older records, while cassettes are more popular among newer albums. Meanwhile, CDs are dead — if you didn’t already know.
People adore cassettes because they produce that beautiful analog sound — a sound that our ears are made to listen to and fall in love with. It’s that nostalgic bug we just can’t quite seem to kick.
We might be living in some sort of dystopian future, but some things from the past are starting to make a comeback in a real, and physical way.
It seems the human race as a whole is yearning for more physicality.
Closing thoughts
The data says one thing — but we often forget about the underground world of music. There are a plethora of indie bands out there who are selling their ‘limited edition’ home-dubbed cassettes and vinyl records at live shows — off the books of course.
This is all great news for the world of music.
In closing, as long as there are introverted audiophiles, hopeless romantics, and loyal fans out there who simply want to support their favorite local artist — we don’t feel vinyl records or cassette tapes are going anywhere in the near future.
The past several weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the utility of music blogs as we throttle into the digital age. And, I just no longer feel the standard blog post, containing an embed and a slew of compelling words, is the best way for us to feature independent music at this point in space and time.
We feel we’ve been caught up in a vicious cycle.
From time to time I stumble upon a beautiful post that seems to bloom like a morning daffodil, and illustrates a particular track perfectly, but then again, these are few and far between, and how many people actually read these, and listen to the embeds within said post, are even fewer.
It’s sad but true. Music blogs have evolved into a sort of plastic legitimacy badge for the artist. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Example: Artist sends blog their track. If the blog digs it, they post track. Artist shares blog post with fans. A few fans skim the article. And that’s about it. Exposure is minimal. But, we think we can change this. However, we must evolve in order to do so.
The better blogs out there (you know who you are) also post a link to their social media, and if they’re really good, add track to a Spotify playlist. But sadly, most blogs are not this cordial, and do the absolute bare minimum. But hey, that’s okay. Most of us do this for free.
Anyway, all I’m really trying to say is that this will be our last standard blog post, ever. That’s right, in the future, we’ll be packaging tracks into a radio show that will be made available just about everywhere. So please, stay tuned my friends. I think you will all enjoy the new way we’re going to be featuring indie music.
Jon Campbell
Jon Campbell is an american singer-songwriter, and visual artist based out of Berlin.
His music fuses indie-folk and alt-country with a powerfully raw expression of his homosexuality and love for roots music.
Facets of “Work Boy” are brilliant. A vivid manifestation of Jon’s evolution as an artist.
“Two years ago I hoisted my bed onto 2-meter “stilts“, built a recording booth underneath it, and was stowed away in that hull every single night. Black Widow was filmed there; it represents the darkest moment in that journey. It’s my Land of the Lotus Eaters and the Sirens wailing from the shore. It’s Francis’ self-destructive little sister. It’s realizing that after all those years of fearing the monster under the bed, that it was you all along.” – Jon Campbell
Ryan Melone
Ryan Melone is an alternative rock musician and producer based out of Nashville.
Inspired by both classic and modern psych music, Ryan takes an organic approach to the recording process. And lets the cosmos do the dancing.
Over the course of his career, Ryan has performed with various alternative outfits in addition to serving as a multi-instrumentalist for a slew of recording artists.
“Diamonds” is a waxing track of psychedelic significance. Just as one drifts off to sleep, another wave breaks upon the shore, and opens up a brand new world.
Mother Mariposa
Mother Mariposa is a new project from the underground experimentalist, Jason Atoms (The Upsidedown) – an unprecedented sound from the niche record label, Little Cloud Records.
Mother Mariposa channels elements of contemporaries like Spiritualized and The Flaming Lips.
Having toured with bands like Brian Jonestown Massacre, Mother Mariposa has made close friendships with heavy-weights in their genre.
FYI, the band will join the Warhols on tour this Winter. So please stay tuned.
