Latest News from Mayday Records

01.Apr.2018: Welcome to the updated Mayday Records website! You'll notice some minor cosmetic and organizational changes, but the significant thing is that underneath it's all completely rewritten. Whew. We've been running special money-saving bundles for you since December 2017, konwing that it would benefit us both: you get more holla for your dollah and we get to show more sales at our monthly corporate meetings. We're gonna continue the two current specials - SquidPack and SuperSquidPack - and add a third one: to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of our first pressed CD release, Puer Aeternis, you can now get that disc plus our most recent pressing Suspensions Of Belief, both for the low low price of just $13. Normally you'd have to pay $18 to get both. We're calling this deal YayBig20! So head over to the special sale page and get bargains galore! Last big thing to mention here is a super awesome freebie for you, dear lover of weirdo sounds. We've collected all the tracks that Mayday artists have contributed to online compilations since 2011, added some never-been-released-anywhere cuts, and opened the curtains on this cabaret we call submit. Now you can entertain yourself in the comfort of your own home just by downloading and unzipping that thang. You're the boss of 28 tracks (that's an hour & 20 minutes) of free sonic offerings that'll melt your cold heart and transmogrify your mushy mind. Importantly, you'll also get links to the original releases these appeared on so you can go support those fine netlabels. Without them, these tracks would not have been created. 01.Jan.2015: We're ba-ack! Happy New Year to all our friends out there! Mayday Records is starting 2015 off the right way, with a brand new release from Infant Mortality Rate! While IMR is not know for their, shall we say, 'heroic' attention span, they did make a New Years resolution to put out a full length CD with longer tracks -- and they wasted no time in getting it to us. Only four cuts comprise this 72 minute release IMR calls Suspensions of Belief. While the first track, a generally calming one named A Call To Baryonic Prayer, might be considered 'dark ambient' by most, the remaining ones present the listener with a challenging suite of drones, loops, and religious deconstructions that engage the thoughtful mind in spacey and meditative tension. Lyman-Alpha Buddha layers on the chants, while Rosario's Mistic Yerberia puts modern religious commerce on the chopping block. The last track, Congregational Lensing And The Einstein Cross, focuses its attention on the power of the rural choir: in the end, there is no god, only noise. The tracks on Suspensions are typically densely layered and often loud. This is unmistakably IMR material that sucks you in and slaps your gray matter around, yet continues developing the longer format IMR explored on the mini-release Sorrow Is Always Black. 02.Dec.2013: It’s not like we have hourly updates that inundate you with annoying trivia but HAVE YOU SEEN OUR FACEBOOK PAGE? Sorry we had to yell that, but THE MAYDAY RECORDS FACEBOOK PAGE is updated in a more timely fashion than this news page, so please go there and Like us. As for actual news, in October we released a mini-CDR in celebration of Halloween called Sorrow Is Always Black  in a very special limited number of only 18 copies. Surprisingly there are still a tiny number left! So to complete your Mayday Records collection please go to the linked page, Sound Exchange, or Vinal Edge Records and buy one (they’re super cheap!!!). On it you will find one long track by Infant Mortality Rate and one medium track by frybrain, both based on the fable 'The Tale of a Mother' by Hans Christian Andersen. If you want to hear a live version of the IMR track, go to our Soundcloud  page and give that a listen. The story is easier to follow on the studio version but you’ll get the idea. 03.Feb.2013: Wow, you probably thought we were dead, right? Ha! Too busy enjoying life to write silly updates to the news page, that's all. Really, it's not like your life would be diminished any by our lack of updates. So we waited, crouched in the tall grass, poised for the perfect moment to strike! Raaaaaar! Today we proudly release Infant Mortality Rate's latest grand sonic offering, Uncivilization. No, not the Biohazard album, though if we sold as many copies, we'd be rather happy. Actually, this CDR is limited to 100 copies since merchandising is not our strong point. Plus it proves to the world that we're not trying to get rich off of all the unpermitted samples used throughout (as usual, we claim Fair Use clause). We simply like doing this sort of thing, that's all. Why can't you just enjoy it? All your friends do! It's full of thoughtful collages, dark ambience, noise, electronics, etc. And best of all, you'll want to play it over and over again, because it's just that good. As a bonus, we've reduced the price of Down in Waves of Ether, since that awesome disc is no longer the latest. Jebus, you just can't afford NOT to buy these two together! I know I would. 29.Apr.2012: And the comps keep coming! IMR is now featured on two more net- label releases and a new batch of Exquisite Corpse Audio Chain Letters. First up is The Chestnut Tree from Buddhist on Fire. This free download was put together to celebrate the first anniversary of The Chestnut Tree being on the air at 90.1 FM KPFT Houston and includes over 60 tracks that will blow your mind. A truly beautiful release which includes other Houston folks such as Charlie Naked, Night at Noon, and downercow. Next we invite you to download and listen to Coupe Of Negation Theorem As Contact Trickery from our friends Brownian Motion. This is a collection of audio art whose unifying theme is the contact mic, and IMR joins piezo-forces with 26 other artists including Houston's own downercow and Ayn Morgan. A great heap of experimentation from some very creative minds! Lastly but not leastly, our pal Hal (that's McGee, not 9000) has put up a whole new batch of Exquisite Corpse Audio Chain Letters. You can go to Volume 6 here, and IMR graces letters 410, 415, 449, 458, 462, 463, 471, and 474! Momma mia! And while your'e at it, feel free to check out the audio offerings of all the other letters :) since a lot of people put a lot of effort into creating these great sounds for you to enjoy. 11.Mar.2012: Hurray, another free comp with IMR on it! Net-label bent recs has released Glitch/Bent, a data-bending comp featuring 15 artists messing with files on their computers. The bent recs web page takes you to the archive.org site where you can download all or some of the tracks. IMR's contribution is called Naked Urologist Eats Germanium, Gets MRI (because that's what it sound like to us!). Please enjoy it with all your magnetic resonating might. 05.Mar.2012: Silence here doesn't always mean inactivity. IMR has actually been churning out some new material lately, most of it for other folks' compilations and such. Here are a couple that have recently become available -- and they are both free! Firstly, if you've been around the experimental music block a few times, you ought to know who Hal McGee is. If not, click the link and check him out. Anywayz, he recently organized an audio chain letter of sorts, called the Exquisite Corpse Audio Chain Letter. In this, Hal started with a 60 second audio piece that he then emailed to 9 agreeable folks. Each of them (mostly blindly) tacked on another 60 seconds of their music, and emailed the result to 9 more folks. This wildly permutating endeavor eventually made its way back to Hal after 9 artists and 9 minutes and umteen zillion tracks were completed. Then Hal put them all up on archive.org for you fans of good weird experimental music to listen to, download, and enjoy. Here are the links to song download pages with IMR contributions: Volume 3 letters 193, 204, 237 Volume 4 letter 304 Volume 5 letters 340, 366, 384 IMR did 13 letters, but some apparently got lost! If they don't show up soon, we'll post the IMR minutes ourselves. Sorta-secondly, IMR will also be on a few other comps which will be released soon and we'll let you know here and on the Mayday facebook page as well. The first one to be completed is To Gain Is To FX Send, a collection of "no-input mixer" feedback jams from a whole bunch of noise jammin artists. It's a name-your-price download from the cool netlabel Muchausen Sound, so go for it! IMR used analog delay and flanger in the effects loop, and there was very little post editing. Hope it makes you tingle, my tingly little friends. 22.Jan.2012: Just a quick update on some free music from IMR. We've uploaded two tracks originally recorded in June 1992 for an outdoor performance art event, the details of which are lost to my memory banks. Also lost are the original mixes, so they were remixed just yesterday for uploading purposes. The two tracks are called Tension and Destruction, and you can find them on both Soundcloud (here), and on Archive.org (Destruction, Tension) They're short pieces, so it won't hurt your busy schedule to check them out. ALSO, the show from 14 Pews is up for your free and joyful listening pleasure. You can find that at the same Soundcloud page as above, and at this archive.org link. 03.Jul.2011: IMR's next live show will be on Sunday, July 31 at 14 Pews as part of the Binarium Sound Series.