The global success of popular psych-rock exports Tame Impala and Pond has already managed to put Perth on the map (just ask NME), and now the bands’ Fremantle-based management company is set to expand on the worldwide attention with the launch of their very own independent record label.
As previously reported, the major label deal has “a structure and reach” far bigger than Spinning Top’s own, according to the company’s doyen Jodie Regan, but will retain their proudly independent working methods.
Chiefly by owning and controlling Spinning Top Records and using Warner’s powerful distribution channels to “make our music available globally,” adds Regan, “which is important given how widely and carefully we’ve built our footprint, and how lovingly we care for our fans. ”
Kick-starting the new venture will be the re-release of an album that’s as “rare as hen’s teeth” from a band that’s a Tame Impala/Pond prototype: Mink Mussel Creek.
First formed in 2007 and having featured an on/off roster of musos since, Mink Mussel Creek’s 2011 album Mink Mussel Manticore (previously available only on USB at selected gigs) features Tame Impala linchpin Kevin Parker (on drums), Pond members Nicholas Allbrook and Shiny Joe Ryan (on vocals and guitar respectively), plus bassist Steve Summerlin and synth-tinkler Richard Ingham. “Perth may be the most geographically remote city in some ways, but Spinning Top can bring the world to us.”
The album’s ultra-rare status changes with Spinning Top Records’ digital re-release of Mink Mussel Manticore on Friday 16th May, followed by a double vinyl release in June. A free download of 13-minute Mink Mussel Creek taster ‘They Dated Steadily’ will precede the reissue (available now online here) and is the first in a series of free digital giveaways each week in May that will herald each Spinning Top release, “to allow fans to ‘taste the rainbow’.”
The rest of that musical spectrum includes the upcoming solo albums from Gum and Shiny Joe Ryan (in June on digital and vinyl) followed by new releases from Nicholas Allbrook, his Allbrook/Avery side-project (with The Growl/Tame Impala’s Cameron Avery) – hopefully including the album they made with four-fifths of The Horrors – plus songsmith Felicity Groom, guitarist Peter Bibby, and more.
(Mink Mussel Creek live Image: Amber Bateup. Source: Supplied)
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“There is a huge amount of important music in our self-contained world and, although Tame Impala and Pond have benefitted from conventional labels, we have got a little frustrated with the rather tired strictures of the corporate world,” says Jodie Regan of the new label’s conception.
“Perth may be the most geographically remote city in some ways, but Spinning Top can bring the world to us,” she adds. “The new label will do this and let fans decide what they love and when they love it. We love that we are free to do whatever releases we fancy, and that [Warner’s] ADA structure will allow us that independence.”
In related news, there’s more even more new music from the Spinning Top family on the horizon. Pond already have the follow-up to last year’s Modular Records-released Hobo Rocket in the can, with the cheekily titled Man It Feels Like Space Again set to drop soon, while Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker has confirmed he’s been busy working on new material for the sequel to Tame Impala’s award-scooping, Grammy-nominated Lonerism – using pizza analogies for the sound of the new songs which make their second album “sound like amateur hour,” in Parkers’ words.
The prolific 27-year-old has also been dallying with his psych-funk side-project, AAA Aaardvrk Getdown Services, a vehicle for “all these disco, Michael Jackson megahits that he wouldn’t use for Tame because he’d be too sheepish about it,” according to bandmate Jay Watson. Parker also showed his “next-level Thriller-pop” credentials by recording a cover of MJ’s ‘Stranger In Moscow‘.
