A couple of nice write-ups of recent Peppermill releases... firstly a review of Volumina in Club Fonograma... and also Sky Barstow was the featured artist of the week at NRK Urørt, click on the link to read a funky Google translation.

In other news yours truly is beginning another season of planting trees in the Canadian North (Slave Lake, Alberta), however it's 2009 and it's getting easier all the time to keep in touch with the world even if you're living in a remote heli-camp... so we'll keep working on new projects, find a way to get our awesome Shel Silverstein inspired album released despite some legal complications, and plan our 2nd annual summer music festival, up top some BC mountain, it will happen on the weekend of August the 21st, keep checking back for details.

We've started a new project that is finally online, in an early form.  This is something we've wanted to do for years... an audiofilm consisting of various artists taking turns adding to the story, each taking the plot and style in whichever direction they like when their turn comes.  First up is Peter Fuhry...

Have a listen to a very hi-def live recording from festival alumni Lucas Henderson and Katie GoGo, as well as our friends The Wind Whistles, on CJSF radio show Melodies in Mind this Tuesday.  The first half hour is just Lucas, and then a bit later you'll hear an hour of them all taking turns performing, it's quite good.

2 new releases!

First, from Mexico, we have Volumina, who we at the Peppermill first saw with his excellent contribution to The Box... and secondly, from Norway we have Sky Barstow, who's a frequent contributor and we're very happy to put out and album of his own. Both are super, download now.

"Meanwhile, the sea ebbs and flows in these grander tides of earth, whose stages are measurable not in hours but in millennia-- tides so vast they are invisible and uncomprehended by the senses of man. Their ultimate cause, should it ever be discovered, may be found to be deep within the fiery center of the earth, or it may lie somewhere in the dark spaces of the universe."

That excerpt comes from Rachel Carson's 1951 romanticly geographic non-fiction The Sea Around Us, which in turn inspired the recent album In The Dream Of The Sea Life by one of Peppermill's favorite bands, Candy Claws.  We've been waiting for this one for a while now, have a listen to these tracks and then go order this lovely package directly from the band.  Seriously it's one of the greatest things you'll hear in '09.

By the way this first track was initially created for our 52 Weeks project, but has since evolved wonderfully...

Island Grows
The Sun Is My Girl

Check out this article in Discorder, a great Vancouver monthly, it's about the Shel Silverstein project we're doing.  Also you can read it on the writer's blog (might be easier on the eyes), or visit Discorder on the web.

There IS life outside of the peppermill.  Netlabels are all around us in fact.  At home, at work, at play.  They take our kids to school, they whisper lines of poetry in our ear on those important first dates, they watch us while we sleep... click right here to listen to some of the best free music of 2008...

INQ Magazine is a great netaudio resource, that through its Monographic series hosts exclusive mixes from various netlabels such as Thinner, Acroplane, Monotonik, the Kahvi Collective, and many others... and now also Peppermill!  Click here for a mix of old, new and even some unreleased tracks, sort of a Greatest Hits from our 4 short years doing this thing.

In preparation for our 5th, and probably busiest, year of operation, we encourage people to sign up with our new mailing list... where we'll keep you up do date on a monthly basis with new releases, festival details, artist interviews and things of that nature.  Plus we'll send you a signing bonus of $100.  Act now!  Previous statement may not be honoured.

Happy holidays! To ring in the new year, we present you with a super-long page of scrolling and reading and catching up on what you may have missed this year, be it the long-awaited return of Portishead, the writing of Bruno Schulz, a zombie survival guide, things Liger was afraid of, Globby art toys, hang drums, a post-nuclear Robot-Robot-Cockroach love triangle or the "best vodka" you "could ever taste".  Read further...