Sunday 27 March 2016

TRASH WAX.........Year one, pretty good so far !

The limited Green vinyl edition of TWLP001.
The idea behind Trash Wax as a label is to release material that we feel was unjustly overlooked at the time, mainly from the early 80's to the mid 90's, and there are heaps of shelved projects, demos and unreleased material just waiting to be rediscovered as we have been finding out. We also wanted to make Trash Wax a platform if you like, to release current bands that we rate highly, one of the upsides to DIY is you get to make records that you actually like and would buy yourself rather than make records you hope won't bomb too badly ! So far, so good !
Although The Vibes LP (the first Trash Wax release) came out at the end of May last year (2015) we had actually had started preparing it in February ! principally because of the long lead times at the pressing plants (currently around 10-16 weeks). Anyway we had a gas working with Chris 'Sick' Moore on the sleeve design and getting an acceptable sound from the source tape was an eye opener ! 

The rushed out TWCD001.
One of the funny things that we discovered was the opportunistic nature of some cheeky fuckers out there, within a week of The Vibes LP going on sale someone was selling CDR copies on Ebay for more than the cost of the vinyl album itself !  So we rushed out a CD edition in an attempt to give the folk that wanted a shiny beermat, something a little better than a CDR and photocopy of the album sleeve !......The vinyl only ethos lay in tatters from day one. Yep, originally we imagined releasing only vinyl but that was kind of shot down pretty quickly for a few reasons but in the main, practical ones such as finding factories that can keep to a deadline for vinyl and at a reasonable cost....    

TW7001.
The second release on Trash Wax was a 7" effort from Vince Ripper & The Rodent Show, basically DJ Vince Cornwall and Andy 'Ratfink' Wilson late of Alien Sex Fiend, both of whom are big fans of The Cramps...basically it's ASF go Rockabilly.............'Ex-ASF guitarist ‘Rodent’ unleashes his inner Cramp and delivers the goods with this fantastic cover. It’s the flipside ‘Rippersville’ which steals the show though, think wigged out ‘Peter Gunn’ meets The Meteors ‘Attack Of The Zorchmen’ on acid' quoting the blurb. There were just under 500 copies pressed with a 100 copies on Purple/Lilac vinyl....There will be a new 12" release from VRATRS later in the year (2016) which I guess you could call a homage to The Cramps 'Gravest Hits'.
They've been in the studio recently and their 3rd full length album should be released at the end of 2016......


In Go Go We Trust !
The third slab of lovely wax to see the day highlighted our amateur status in that it was a bit premature, coming out almost a year before due ! TWLP007  Mondo A Go Go's 'In Go Go We Trust' is their anthology from 1996 to 2016, so when it turned up in the latter part of 2015 we were a little embarrrassed but not at all unhappy. A really snazzy package was put together by resident ideas (and all round good) guy 'Mondosean', limited to just 300 hand numbered copies, alternative artworks included, digital download (whatever that is ?) and pressed on a pretty cool shade of red vinyl.
This went down really well in France where they received a full page review in the fab music mag 'DIG IT' ......This little gem ticked all the boxes for me, a bit of Rockabilly, a bit of Garage and even some Revillos/Rezillos type thing going on and way under produced to perfection as well !

Bontempi sleeve for TWLP002
The next one that we pulled out of the bag was 'Into The Valley Of' by Reading's very own Trash dealers 'The Go Go Cult'. We actually licensed this from Rockabilly/Psychobilly label 'Western Star' as they had initially released it as a CD a couple of years previously and I had loved the cool mix of Garage, Surf and Rockabilly. To make it distinct from the CD release a couple of the tracks were omitted and some of the others were messed around with (or maybe it was just one of the tracks ?) We also got 'Artiste and Scenester Extraordinaire' Marcel Bontempi to re-imagine the artworks while still keeping the themes in the original release, then we asked Go Go Nige to write some liner notes and Voila....Sorted !  No release order problems this time around either, TWLP002 was one of the easiest releases to do, Alan Wilson (the guy that owns Western Star) was just so straight forward and organised that everything was done without really noticing.....Way to go.

Seriously Cool !
The Guitaraculas LP 'Two Bottles Of Blood' (TWLP003) came next and for me, this was something fairly special as I'd been a fan of Messer Chups for a good few years and never thought for a moment that I'd actually get the chance to do anything with Oleg and the guys ! However....This album is absolutely amazing considering that it started out as a jam session but they ran with the concept and produced the full album as well as making several videos for tracks on the album, I'd highly recommend checking out the vid they made for the 'Coil' cover ' Loves Secret Domain' where Sasha (Bassferatu) gets to do the vocals...A brilliantly atmospheric clip indeed. Taking a touch of Surf, a bit of Rockabilly and a dash of movie scores (There are a couple of John Barry tracks in the mix) they came up with one killer LP....Even if I say so myself.

TWCD002. Supergroup in the making !
Next came a couple of CDs....Hmm, yeah well due to that global phenomena that is Record Store Day, trying to get any kind of commitment from a pressing plant is almost impossible, from about mid December to the second weekend in April it's majors first I'm afraid...So, we decided to put out a couple of CDs as a stop gap, first of these was a recording from way back in 1987 by The Shockwaves, it was actually recorded by Never Mind The Bollocks producer Dave Goodman for a release on Mike Spenser's (of The Cannibals) label. Anyways, we got to pick it up and put it out as it justly deserves, The Vibes & The Purple things are the over-riding influences here and they get it on the nail !  


TWCD003. The Hillbilly Werewolf.
Volume 3 in what appears to be turning into a 'Trash From The Vaults' series, is Germany's legendary 'The Raymen' these veterans of the Trashabilly sound have been releasing records since 1985 and we were really happy to get Hank on board in order to release their very first recordings.....dating to the latter part of 1984, these studio recordings were the ones used as demos in order to secure their initial album deal !  And includes one of the first covers of the Cramps version of Goo Goo Muck, the guys at the time thought that it was a Cramps original (they weren't alone in that regard...I did too). 

28 Years wait !  TWLP005.
Back on track with the vinyl releases, we saw the long thought lost album of The Charity Case, 'How To Fall' come out in Mid-March (2016) this really is Jonny/Charlie's labour of love, originally a set of demos which were recorded in 1988 by 3 ex-Sting Rays and the rather charming She Rocola they were critically feted and described as 'Psychedelic Goo Goo Trash' by none other than the NME at the time, unfortunately they only ever released one 7" but hopefully this release makes up for the lack of material.....you'll have to decide on that for yourselves ! At just 350 copies this is a beautiful item and deserves a place in any collection of UK garage/trash on it's own merits as well as having the obvious Sting Rays connection.
TWLP005 was released on the 14th March and if you like the idea of late era Sting Rays being fronted by a Surrealistic Pillow era Grace Slick then you won't be disappointed by this, you can read about the band in more detail elsewhere on the blogsite here.




Here's the discography so far and links to where you can get them :

LP   The Vibes : Voodoo Ju Ju.                        SOLD OUT.

CD  The Vibes : Voodoo Ju Ju.
http://www.trashwax.com/product/cd-the-vibes-voodoo-juju-ltd-edition-250-copies

7"  Vince Ripper & The Rodent Show : I Was A Teenage Werewolf    (Purple Vinyl SOLD OUT).
http://www.trashwax.com/product/example-3

LP  Mondo A Go Go : In Go Go We Trust.
http://www.trashwax.com/product/lp-mondo-a-go-go-in-go-go-we-trust-ltd-edt-300-copies-red-vinyl

LP  The Go Go Cult : Into The Valley Of.
http://www.trashwax.com/product/pre-orders-taken-release-date-2nd-october-2015-the-go-go-cult-into-the-valley-of

LP  The Guitaraculas :  Two Bottles Of Blood.
http://www.trashwax.com/product/lp-pre-orders-taken-release-date-16th-october-2015-the-guitaraculas-two-bottles-of-blood

CD  The Shockwaves  :  No Way In, No Way Out.
http://www.trashwax.com/product/pre-order-cd-the-shockwaves-no-way-in-no-way-out-ltd-edition-250-copies

CD The Raymen  :  The Goo Goo Muck Sessions.
http://www.trashwax.com/product/pre-order-cd-the-raymen-the-goo-goo-muck-sessions-ltd-edition-250-copies

LP  The Charity Case :  How To Fall.
http://www.trashwax.com/product/pre-order-lp-the-charity-case-how-to-fall-ltd-edition-350-copies


Next post will let you know what most of the releases that are coming out in 2016 will be, and there are a few real beauties in there !

Enjoy !

1 comment:

  1. Here's to many more successfull years for this great label - Well done guys : )

    ReplyDelete