Stones Throw shakes up model, offers $10 digital subscription

How's this for one-stop shopping? Highland Park-based record label Stones Throw, home to Mayer Hawthorne, James Pants, Aloe Blacc, the Step Kids and loads of classic collections, reissues and mixes, announced a shakeup in its digital strategy Tuesday: It will now start offering all of its new releases within a $10 per month subscription plan.

Under the model, developed to work with Ghostly International's Drip.FM service, subscribers receive a regular influx of Stones Throw MP3s (320 kbps, DRM-free) as each release -- or track, or remix -- comes available, downloadable anytime, anywhere. The label expands on the idea by not only offering new studio releases but also promising an influx of subscriber-only goodies to make the offer more enticing.

Peanut Butter Wolf talks 15th anniversary of Stones Throw Records

Those who try to pigeonhole Stones Throw Records' catalog are almost guaranteed to get it wrong. Even at Stones Throw's inception, DJ and label boss Peanut Butter Wolf (born Chris Manak) probably wouldn’t have guessed that a tiny hip-hop label born in the Bay Area a decade and a half ago could become a tastemaker, risk taker and archaeological site for genres that included shoegaze, soul and psychedelia. From innovative MCs and producers such as Madlib to retro-styled newcomers such as the Stepkids, no two artists here sound alike.

What started as a means of releasing  Peanut Butter Wolf’s now-classic debut album with the late MC  Charles Hicks (a.k.a Charizma), Stones Throw has grown into a multigeneration, multiracial underground powerhouse prospecting envelope-pushing artists that use classic music from the past, reformatted and twisted to fit the present.

As Peanut Butter Wolf sits down with Pop & Hiss before Stones Throw’s 15-year anniversary party at Exchange L.A. on Thursday, it’s clear that his mission to mine and release the music he loves has been harder -- and more rewarding -- than he'd ever imagined.

Stones Throw's 11-11-11 event to spin 1,100 records in one night

Numerology must be a really big deal in Peanut Butter Wolf's universe. How else do you explain the desire to play 1,100 records (literally a U-Haul's worth of wax) in a single night?

On Nov. 11 (get it, 11-11-11?), the fedora-wearing founder of Stones Throw Records (born Chris Manak) is hosting a party in honor of numerical symmetry with a one-night-only event maestroed by 11 DJs for 11 straight hours at the Eagle Rock Center for the Arts. And by the way,  that U-Haul's worth of records we just mentioned are all coming from his private collection of "favorite records" from a mixed bag of genres. And of course, in keeping with the theme of the night, it's even $11 to get in.

Spanning from 6 p.m. to 1 a.m., this ultimate test of dance floor endurance is the latest and most impressive episode in the DJ/ label boss' ongoing numbers fetish. But considering the kind of talent he's brought with him in the past, by no means are we complaining.

Since 2006, Stones Throw  has turned the day when all of the numbers on the calendar align into an excuse to hold a crate-digging marathon party session. Historically, each year has brought us a different theme, from goth and heavy metal music on 6-6-06, to Peanut Butter Wolf's nine-day string of L.A. and Orange County DJ gigs for 9-9-09. Last year, 10-10-10 resulted in another one-night only party in Downtown L.A. where a roster of 10 DJs, including Madlib, J. Rocc and Prince Paul, spun nothing but 45s for 10 hours straight.

A lineup of DJs for 11-11-11 has yet to be announced, though we're told that Peanut Butter Wolf won't be spinning the records this time, just hosting. Although it seems inevitable that with an arsenal of exactly 1,100 records to get through, he might have to pinch hit when one of his DJs eventually falls down from exhaustion. 

ALSO:

Peanut Butter Wolf talks about Stones Throw's new direct-to-disc live series

MED dips into his private sonic stash on new Stones Throw record

Sunday: 'Psych Funk Sa-Re-Ga' free listening party today at Palate in Glendale

-- Nate Jackson

Photo: Peanut Butter Wolf  Credit: Jake Green

Peanut Butter Wolf talks about Stones Throw's new direct-to-disc live series

Leave it to Stones Throw Records to take the age-old practice of vinyl production and combine it with the jet-stream speed of iTunes. The idea of watching a live show and having it recorded, mixed, mastered and pressed on wax before you leave the venue sounds like an act of sorcery. In celebration of their 15-year anniversary, the taste-making L.A. label is doing just that.

Starting Thursday night, the label is holding a series of ultra-exclusive shows featuring high-profile and unknown Stones Throw artists that will be recorded direct-to-disc at L.A. vinyl pressing and analog mixing plant Capsule Labs.

The series opens with a performance by Michigan soul troupe Mayer Hawthorne and the County and L.A. jazz group Rick (featuring Sam Gendel of Teen Inc.). A master will be recorded in real time and pressed on vinyl, limited to 500 copies. No CDs or digital copies will be manufactured or sold.

The plan has been to maintain a small house-party atmosphere for the show series. Alas, tickets for this one — given away on Stones Throw’s website, Twitter and Facebook pages in April — are long gone. However, according to DJ and label founder Peanut Butter Wolf, more shows are expected to come down the pipeline shortly, with more tickets to give away. Speaking briefly with PBW (born Chris Manak) we got a glimpse at how the event came together.

Pop & Hiss: Aside from Capsule Laboratories being a vinyl laboratory, how did you manage to hook up with them to throw this event? Had you worked with them before?

Peanut Butter Wolf: It almost by accident really. We were doing a Christmas holiday party for friends and family, and I was looking for a place to do it. A friend of mine, Carlos Greco, said we should check out this place Capsule Labs. I went there, and I couldn’t believe they had this vinyl pressing plant right down the street from where we do all of our stuff. It wasn’t really ideal for our holiday party, but the meeting gave us the idea to do something like this. Carlos Greco told me that they were able to do direct-to-disc recordings, but he said we should do it in front of a crowd. It is very difficult, though, and I don’t understand all the technical stuff involved.

The electric madness of Bruce Haack and an exclusive Peanut Butter Wolf remix

The late producer J Dilla’s ability to re-oxygenate creaky soul samples is often celebrated as one of his preeminent gifts, but it reflected only a portion of his body of work.

Less analyzed but equally important was the legendary beat maker's ability to seamlessly infuse the automaton funk and fractured experimentation of electronic music pioneers such as Raymond Scott, Giorgio Moroder and the Belleville Three (Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson and Juan Atkins).

Even less known was Dilla’s love of vocoder pioneer Bruce Haack, a Julliard-schooled, peyote-ingesting polymath from Alberta, Canada. Largely obscure to mass audiences in his lifetime, Haack's appearances on “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” “The Mike Douglas Show” and “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson” fostered his reputation as a kooky uncle playing extraterrestrial-sounding synths to dazzled audiences a decade before Kraftwerk.

Like Dilla himself, Haack was an inscrutable shapeshifter impossible to pigeonhole. He spent most of the 1960s and '70s switching between children’s music, experimental rock operas and acid-rock synth opuses. His collected output runs the gamut from Roald Dahl at his weirdest, Tangerine Dream being covered by Kraftwerk and Devo on strong drugs. Sampled by Cut Chemist and covered by Beck and Stereolab, Haack’s work remains the right kind of weird 22 years after his death.

If no description is more overused than “visionary,” Haack is one of the few artists worthy of the word. Even his swan song, 1982’s “Party Machine,” telescoped toward the future, with Haack collaborating with a young Russell Simmons to create a funky vocoder jam that would probably warp Kanye West’s circuits if he heard it today. The tune is collected with all of Haack’s seminal work on the Stones Throw-released “Farad: The Electric Voice,” a compilation named after his trusted homemade vocoder.

It was executive-produced by Peanut Butter Wolf, who was first exposed to Haack via a road trip with Dilla and Madlib. An instant convert, he’s fittingly remixed Haack’s “Stand Up Lazarus,” a song that references a biblical parable about a man who rises from the grave. Haack isn’t about to escape the cemetery anytime soon, but the stellar “Farad” ensures that his music will get a second lifetime.

-- Jeff Weiss

Download: (Pop & Hiss Premiere)
MP3: Bruce Haack -- "Stand Up Lazarus (Peanut Butter Wolf Remix)"

MP3: Bruce Haack -- "Electric to Me Turn"

Peanut Butter Wolf premieres an exclusive mix in advance of this Sunday's 10/10/10 celebration

Slightly more than a decade ago, Stones Throw titan Peanut Butter Wolf dropped "My Vinyl Weighs a Ton," a crate-digging classic that remains one of the seminal statements of the Underground golden era. Even by 1999, San Jose-bred Wolf, birth name Chris Manak, had already assembled an army of wax that deserved its own ZIP Code (at least, according to popular folklore).

But to paraphrase Hunter S. Thompson, once you get into a serious record collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. Thus, Wolf remains a vinyl junkie, even though among the Stones Throw family (Madlib, Egon, J-Rocc, et. al), they probably own every record you've ever heard of, and tons more you haven't.

Thus, regulars at endangered L.A. record stores may have seen a familiar sight last week: Manak trawling the used record bins of Amoeba, Freakbeat, Counterpoint, Records LA, and Rockaway for 45s, in preparation for this Sunday's 10-10-10 celebration. A yearly ritual that began with 2006's 6-6-06 Heavy Metal set, each year has had a different theme. 2007 featured seven events in seven days, including the 7-7-07 Gospel set. 2008 and 2009 topped that with eight- and nine-day marathons that obviously would prove unsustainable as the century progressed.

Thankfully, Manak has spared himself, scaling down the festivities for this Sunday's event to a 10-hour, 10-DJ mini-festival, with all 45 sets from himself, Dam-Funk, Prince Paul, Baron Zen, Danny Holloway, J-Rocc, Madlib, Mayer Hawthorne, Mahssa, and Rhettmatic. Previously scheduled to have been held at downtown's Sex, the location has been switched to 740 S. Broadway. The show starts at 4 p.m. and goes until 2 a.m.. $10 before 6 p.m. and $20 thereafter.

In honor of the festivities, Wolf has crafted a mix, premiered here, consisting exclusively of records he scooped up in the last 10 days. It runs the gamut between psych rock, boogie funk, post-punk and more, and it's predictably excellent. If it's not a 10/10, it's close.

-- Jeff Weiss

Photo credit: Peanut Butter Wolf

Download: (Pop & Hiss Exclusive)

 
ZIP: Peanut Butter Wolf-"10/10/10 Mix" (Left-Click)

 

Peanut Butter Wolf and Stones Throw plan a DJ decathlon

The Stones Throw impresario Peanut Butter Wolf has pulled impressive feats of numerically themed DJing in recent years, gallavanting across L.A. to spin wax in all styles at all sorts of venues. On Oct. 10,  though, he'll up the stakes again with a sprawling event featuring 10 Stones Throw-adjacent DJs rolling deep for a 10-hour set. And just to be difficult, they'll spin only vinyl 45s.

All the lineup and venue info will be announced 10 days before the set (that would be Thursday), so go ahead and get your dispensary orders placed early.

-- August Brown

Photo by Los Angeles Times