Tiny Engines

So it’s 5 am as I type this and I think that my brain is about to fall out of my skull. Needless to say, we’ve done a lot of work tonight in order to finally make the announcement that we’ll be releasing the incredible Self-Titled debut full-length from Philly’s Everyone Everywhere!

I’ll let you do a little ’splorin’ on your own, but rest assured, we’re really excited about this record. Not only is it our first foray into 12″ territory, but this album has been on constant rotation at Beartrap HQ … at least according to mine and Will’s combined Last.fm stats that account for about 500 plays.

You can head on over to the band’s myspace page to stream two brand new tracks and read a little more about the record here as well.  If you’re a fan of The Promise Ring, Braid, Piebald or even Superchunk, you’ll definitely love Everyone Everywhere.  And I don’t think it’s that much of a stretch to say that if you’ve picked up older Tiny Engines releases from Look Mexico and Tigers Jaw, this latest record is probably right in your wheelhouse as well.

We will be pressing 500 copies of Everyone Everywhere’s Self-Titled debut on maroon and off-white colorways (350 / 150) and the official release date is May 04, 2010.  However, you can pre-order the record now and count on them being mailed out in early April.

As an added bonus, our good friends at If You Make It are giving away a digital version of Everyone Everywhere’s awesome 2009 7-inch, A Lot Of Weird People Standing Around. To download the four-song effort, completely free from financial obligations, go here.

Just a friendly reminder that Tiny Engines is now on Facebook … and we’ve been Twittering it up for a while as well.  Become the label’s fan and follow us as we navigate the high seas of indie rock (or something like that).  2010 promises to be a really exciting year for us, with several new releases scheduled from some amazing bands, plus lots of other  limited-edition / exclusive goodies to announce in the coming weeks.

If you can’t tell from the total lack up updates, business has been fairly subdued on the Tiny Engines front.  Over the past few months we’ve been plotting and scheming (sort of) but honestly, there just weren’t that many great opportunities for us to release anything new.  What can I say? We’re selective.

On the plus side, the Tigers Jaw 7-inch, Spirit Desire, has done really well – sold out, in fact – and the band seems to be winning over enthusiastic new fans every day.  They toured with End Of A Year in January and will be releasing a new split 10″ / EP with Balance And Composure on No Sleep and Run For Cover, the latter of which will also re-release the amazing S/T record and the much-anticipated  follow-up full-length.

Likewise, Look Mexico’s new long player on Suburban Home, To Bed To Battle, is about ready to drop, and soon the boys will embark on one of their epic cross country tours, something that has come to define the band’s tireless work ethic. They currently have a 7″ single for the song “You Stay. I Go. No Following.” available for pre order and obviously, you can still pick up a copy of the amazing Gasp Asp from us.  FYI – only a handful of the white vinyl remain.  Get on it, quick!

So at least our bands continue to stay busy, right?  Of course, we don’t want to be shown up, so Tiny Engines plans on following suit with at least two new 12″ releases in the next five months (one of which we’ll be announcing within the coming weeks), a repress of Spirit Desire and a bunch of all-around sweet happenings that are making us very excited to be running a label.  Who knows – there might even be another new 7″ thrown in the mix toward the end of the year.  One thing is for sure: 2010 will find Tiny Engines cranking things up several notches.  Seriously, if our notch is at 5 or 6 right now, in July it will be at, like … 13.

Just a few other things to be on the lookout for – we’ll be offering some Spirit Desire test pressings for sale and I think that Jeff is going to give up one of his personal Gasp Asp tests as well.

Also, If you missed out on the first pressing of Spirit Desire, all hope is not lost. Turns out that we have an extra 35 yellow vinyl.  We’re out of the jackets, but we’ve commissioned a great artists, Daniel Fishel, to draw an exclusive new design, which will then be hand screened by our pal Dustin Garrett.  It’s similar to what we did with the Look Mexico 7-inches.  Click here to jog your memory. Should happen within the next week or two, and those will obviously be very limited, so keep your eyes peeled.

That’s about it for now.  This was supposed to be a fairly short update, but quite frankly, I have never been able to keep anything I write short. Ever.

First order of business – a million thank yous to everyone who grabbed a copy of Spirit Desire from Tigers Jaw and your favorite fledgling DIY label, Tiny Engines. Your support is greatly apprecaited.

These sweet 7-inches arrived at TE HQ a few weeks ago and were promptly mailed out to everyone who placed a pre-order. If you haven’t received your slice of vinyl awesomeness yet – maybe because you live overseas or you placed your order within the past couple days – they’re definitely en route.

Hopefully everyone is enjoying the three amazing songs etched into this tasty slab of purple and yellow wax…not to mention the bonus 4th track included with your free digital download. And I reeeeeally hope you’re digging the artwork / packaging too. I didn’t adequately describe it in previous correspondences, but a ton of time and energy went into this release and we couldn’t be happier with the end result.

As you can see from the photo above, each copy of Spirit Desire actually has two jackets – one printed in full color on beautifully textured felt weave paper and the other on rad transluscent vellum paper. Plus, we did this fold / flap thing on the back that works to really nice effect, allowing the vinyl to be visible once everything is bundled up. I’m not saying that we’re the kings of innovation, but we’re very proud of our effort on this one. Of course, I can’t forget to thank the artist, Brianna Collins of Tigers Jaw, and designer Monty Todd for being the true talent behind the packaging.

Spirit Desire On iTunes
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If for some bizarre reason you don’t care about artwork or vinyl records in general (oh, the humanity), then surf over to iTunes and download Spirit Desire in all its digital glory. The cyberspace version of the 7-inch includes all four songs…and while it doesn’t look as pretty as its real world counterpart, it certainly sounds just as stellar.

Full Album Streams
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In related news, you can now stream the entire album at the venerable Punknews.org, as well as from our good friends at Vinyl Collective. Even cooler is that you can embed the Vinyl Collective media player on your websites, blogs, facebook and myspace pages. What are you waiting for? Support the cause and spread the word!

Test Pressing Contest Winners
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Moving on, our Test Pressing Contest was a rousing success…at least for the winners, right? First we assigned a number (1- 53) to everyone who placed a pre-order. Then, using a random number generator, we came up with these seven lucky names: Harold Wunder, Justin Odgen, Shirley Pham, Adam Slamas, Corey Ciresi, Greg Christman and Garrett Bowman. The first two (Harold and Justin) won test pressings for both Spirit Desire and Gasp Asp while the remaining five took home Spirit Desire tests. Congrats!

Additional Gasp Asp Test Pressings Available
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I realize that quite a few of you were really hoping for that Gasp Asp test pressing, so to remedy that situation, Will, Jeff and I will will each be offering a test pressing from our own personal collections. I’m not exactly sure how we’ll be handling it (hopefully avoiding eBay) but for now, just email me and let me know what you’re willing to fork over for it.

Thanks again for all your support! Stay tuned for news of our third release, plus some other really sweet items. We’re talkin’ some totally unique, one of a kind type things here. Talk soon!

Things have been awfully quiet at Tiny Engines HQ, and even though we’ve got plenty of ambition and aspirations to spare, we’re also pretty picky about the records we put out.  The Look Mexico 7-inch was a terrific success and we couldn’t be more proud to have made Gasp Asp Tiny Engines’ inaugural release.  Of course, we wanted our second 7-inch to be just as spectacular.

Enter Spirit Desire, the latest offering from Scranton, PA’s Tigers Jaw.  And yes, they realize there should be an apostrophe in their name.  Get over it, grammar freaks.

If you’re not familiar with this incredible five piece, take a quick trip over to Beartrap PR and listen to a couple mp3s.  The band’s 2008 Self Titled full-length was one of my favorites last year and Will ranked it #4 on his Best of 08 list.  As for Jeff, he knows a good thing when he hears it and was quick to jump on board.  He’s also the only one of us who has seen the band live, so bully for him.

Needless to say, even before we heard any of the songs for Spirit Desire, we were angling to work with the Tigers Jaw kids.  Listening to the incredibly infectious tracks that would eventually appear on the 7-inch sealed the deal.

So fast forward a few months later and here we are; the masters are at the plant  and we’re taking pre-orders for this awesome slab of wax.  The songs are amazing, keeping with Tigers Jaw’s nostalgic yet completely fresh indie-rock-cum-pop-punk M.O., but injecting even more tension, energy and ridiculously contagious melodies into the mix.  The title track is the darkest, most foreboding they’ve ever written.  Still, it’s probably the catchiest as well.  It’s this mash-up of styles and contrasts that make Tigers Jaw so damn unforgettable.

We’re pressing 450 copies of Spirit Desire, with 150 on purple vinyl and 300 on yellow.  While the 7-inch contains 3 songs, each copy will also come with a free mp3 download that features a bonus fourth track not included on the record.  Of course, if there are any of you are interested in simply picking up the digital version of Spirit Desire, it should be up on iTunes, eMusic and other online digital services soon.

The vinyl Release date is tentatively scheduled for “late summer” but if all goes to plan, we should have copies ready to send out before the band leaves for tour on July 10th.  For more info and to pre-order our copy, go here!

And finally, as a rad little bonus, everyone who pre-orders a copy of the record will automatically be entered to win a Spirit Desire test pressing, as well as our final two test pressings for Gasp Asp.  We had a lot of requests for the latter but I just couldn’t bring myself to put them on eBay.  I figured that the fairest thing to do was to have this contest / giveaway thingy.

To sweeten the deal, both Gasp Asp test pressings will include a limited-edition, hand-numbered, hand-screen printed jacket with exclusive artwork by Josh from Look Mexico.  Our buddy Dustin Garrett did us a huge solid and printed these bad boys for us…and they look so friggin’ good.  Not only did he use three different paper colors to mix things up, he was also  generous enough to give us 54 copies.  That means that  we have a bunch left over for you guys.  You can pick one up here!

Just a quick note to let everyone know that we just sold our last blue Gasp Asp 7-inch.

Don’t cry, emo kid – our good friends at Vinyl Collective still have a few blue copies left.  Plus they have ten Gasp Asp packages (all three colors) as well.  Go here to grab yours before they’re gone and you’re forced to buy one on eBay for a ridiculous sum of money.

Of course, we still have some of the white and a plenty of green as well.  That’s the good thing about having a few different color options: when one runs out, it’s okay cause the others sound exactly the same.  I swear to God.

Thanks to everyone who purchased a copy of Gasp Asp.  We definitely appreciate your support.  Keep your eyes on the site as we’re about to take pre-orders for our second 7-inch release, Spirit Desire from the awesome Tigers Jaw.  Plus, we’ll be giving away some test presses and we’ve got some sweet exclusive hand screen printed art too.  Stay tuned…

Look Mexico – You’re Not Afraid Of The Dark, Are You? from Punknews.org on Vimeo. 

Get it?  Cause it’s a video for Look Mexico’s “You’re Not Afraid Of The Dark, Are You?,” the first track from the Gasp Asp 7-inch released by your favorite one-release label, Tiny Engines.

I’m not sure exactly how it all went down; rumor has it that the band jacked a Florida State University campus van filled with fancy, high-tech video equipment, but not before swinging by the local Stop & Shop for a box of Franzia and 150 dollars worth of cherry pie supplies.  Requesting that Spike Mott serve them up, Blackest Knights of the Darkest Apocalypse style, Look Mexico then proceeded to create the greatest and most erotic baked goods-themed music video of 2009.

However it transpired, I think we can all agree that the video turned out amazing, and maybe a little stomach churning as well.  The part where Dave dips a pulverized fistful of cherry puree into his glass makes me throw up in my mouth a little. Other than that, top-notch entertainment abound.

Much thanks to the kids over at Punknews.org for premiering the video last week and featuring it prominently on their site.  Of course, if any of you would like to feature it on your personal blogs, websites or MyFace pages, go here for the codes.

As many of you already know, the Look Mexico Gasp Asp 7-inches arrived at Tiny Engines HQ a few weeks ago.  They were consequently assembled with tender loving care and then shipped to the masses.  Many thanks to everyone who bought a copy (or two or three) and who waited patiently for us to get our crap together.  It took a little longer than expected, but as soon as we received the goods, we worked really hard to put everything together and get it into your eager hands.

For those who haven’t picked up a copy, what’s your deal?  As you can plainly see from the images below, this 7-inch looks terrific.  The foil stamping on the blue and white vinyl was a costly, but totally worthwhile addition.  We actually don’t have many of those left, so get on it.

If anyone has any questions, comments or concerns, feel free to drop us a line.  We’re happy to help!  Also, we should have some more Look Mexico-related news to announce soon – and maybe even some Tiny Engines rumblings to talk about as well – so check back in the next couple weeks.

Some of you may have been wondering why it has taken longer than expected to get Look Mexico’s latest 3-song 7-inch, Gasp Asp, into your eagerly awaiting hands – to which I snarkily respond “You try starting a label from scratch, smart guy.”

Considering that none of us knew a single thing about the process of manufacturing vinyl, coupled with the fact that some of the decision making was rather deliberate and painstaking (as it should be with a first release), I think we did a pretty damn good job.

Simply put, this tasty chunk of plastic is going to look and sound amazing and we’re all really excited for you to see the final product.  Of course, let’s not forget that these are Look Mexico’s best songs yet, which certainly helps the cause.

Gasp Asp builds on Look Mexico’s past releases – that dynamic instrumental interplay, undeniably catchy melodies and a knack for keeping things unpredictable – but these three tracks inject a welcomed sense of maturity and craftsmanship as well.  The band sounds more assured of their songwriting skills than ever and they have truly discovered their own unique voice in indie rock.   We always knew they had it in them. Definitely the next step in the Look Mexi-dudes’ evolution.

Track List
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1.  You’re Not Afraid Of The Dark, Are You? (mp3)
2.  I’m Not Guilty, But I’m Used To It
3.  Don’t You Dare

We pressed 1000 copies of the vinyl in three totally sweet colors, as well as three different jacket variations that feature some rad foil stamping.  The breakdown is below and we’re taking pre-orders on this sucker now.  Please note that there is a “Package Deal” option where you can get all three for a special price. Orders will ship on November 25th.  Anyone who grabs a copy of the vinyl will also get an mp3 download code for the songs.

Pressing Info
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* 200 copies on light-blue vinyl / matte-finish artwork stamped w/ ltd. edition silver foil
* 200 copies on white vinyl / matte-finish artwork stamped w/ ltd. edition red foil
* 600 copies on green vinyl / matte-finish artwork (no foil)

To order your copy (or copies) of Gasp Asp, go here.

And for anyone who could give two craps about vinyl, head on over to Lujo Records, who released digital version of Gasp Asp on September 2nd.

Bonus Views
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Inside (full)

Outside (full)