Megadrove by Meredosia

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I've always loved video game music, and for a while have thought I should try to make this kind of stuff on a professional level. But with electronic music, I have trouble with Options Paralysis, in which it's hard to choose a direction instead of wasting the day playing with different synth voices. So for this collection, I decided to use all fm/pcm samples from Sega Genesis games. That being the case, these aren't true chip tunes, but I could transpose them into a tracker if needed. Either way, I kind of like the voices I chose for these tracks. Some took parts from my old tunes, and others were first composed when I was learning LMMS in 2016. I decided not to make tapes of this collection, mostly because it's entirely digital, and sounds great with digital compression. Check out the google drive link to get the tracks in tiny .ogg files.

Laodicea Volume 1

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Laodicea is an epic dark metal band I play guitar and sing in. In 2018, I'd been contemplating doing another band that had be playing guitar and doing vocals. However, I wanted to write all of the music. I never wrote riffs without a clear idea for what I needed from the drums and the bass, to achieve what I needed to make the riff effective. It seemed like every month, there was a new hardcore band in town with a ten minute set. They'd play a few shows, and if they weren't an instant hit, the members would form a different group with another ten minute set. Instead of that, I wanted to do a set with two songs that were both twelve minutes long. With these things in mind, my friends Zach and Garrett got on board to play this music with me. Before our first set, I recorded myself playing our two songs as a way to solidify how they went and how they were intended to sound. After a time, the recording started to feel old to me, and it seemed like a shame to not let people hear it. So this is it. Two songs that are twelve minutes long, of epic dark metal.

Garrett Oliver split with The Stone Wings

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I had a lot of fun doing the fake band of Menards, while sitting on a stack of fake band ideas. One of those fake bands turned out to be The Stone Wings, playing romantic songs with acoustic guitar, the way I used to with Super Famicom, back when I had a lot of fans. A lot of those old fans are parents now, so I thought I'd make some music for them, and perhaps see if they'd be into it. I've always been a fan of Garrett's music, having engineered his two solo albums from 2009 and 2011. That was a long time ago, and I was really excited to hear he was working on some new stuff, but a new album was a lot to tackle. So it made perfect sense for us to do this split. I hope you love it!

Grind by Civilized Worm

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It took almost no time for Civilized Worm to to put together enough new material for a new tape, and I got to write the music for three of these new jams. Our last release was recorded live in my basement, but we did this one in separate sessions, with the drums tracked first. It sounds pretty heavy. We decided not to release it until the band started playing shows again. If I'd known the pandemic was happening, I would have spent a lot more time getting my drums perfect. Either way, I think this tape shows a great progression for the band.

Menards split with Noah Eagle

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Sometimes I wonder about having a solo project that uses a wide variety of styles. Like, most popular bands only make one specific style of song, and once they have a hit, their sound becomes more specifically focused on the sound of their hit. And before long, all of their songs sound almost exactly the same. With Super Famicom I never did that, which was probably not a very smart career move. In 2020, Noah Eagle asked me to do a split with him, and I said yes. It was always in my plans to start a punk band that played punk for grown-ups. It was going to be called Menards. Instead of playing grown-up punk, Menards ended up playing true midwestern emo. I made up fictional people who are supposedly in the band, playing 2nd guitar, drums, and bass. It makes me seem cooler, having access to a set of musicians with my exact skill level, playing exactly how I would like them to.

Balrogs by Super Famicom

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In 2018, I had been sitting on a lot of songs for a long time, and I wanted to record them really well. A very daunting prospect, considering the lack of external encouragement I felt I'd been receiving to record new music. So instead of recording old, smart songs, I decided to write a bunch of new stuff without putting much thought into it. Often a piece of work isn't improved by puttig extra time and thought into it. Balrogs turned out to be, possibly, by my best-sounding Super Famicom album thusfar, and the playing on it's fairly tight, considering how it was very much thrown together. It was finished in 2019, but I had some complications with getting it released on tape. I didn't want to release it myself, because I wanted to have some form of extra help in promoting my release, and getting it heard. Also, I was hoping to collect a little more external encouragement for recording my next album. That didn't work out, so I released the tape myself.

FAQ

Q: Why do you still make tapes?
A: I like the things I create to have a physical form of some kind, something that can't be erased if I change my mind about some little detail. I like to collect things my friends have made, like tapes and books. I like having a home for those things. So I make tapes, not a lot because I don't sell a lot. If PJ Records is a business, it's not the kind of business that makes products for a profit.

Q: Why do you have a blog?
Because I want to practice writing for readers. I don't have very high standards with the words I write for just myself.

Q: Will PJ Records release my awesome tape?
A: No. This isn't that kind of label. However, I like to do splits, and I have a lot of ideas for fake bands that I could do for a split tape with your awesome music project.

Q: Will you review my album/thing?
A: Probably if you ask nicely. I don't trust authority, so I don't want you to trust that I know what's good and what's bad. Instead of writing Reviews, I like to think I'm writing Reports, like Book Reports.

Q: Why do some of your new tapes cost $10?
A: In the 1990s when a new album was released on cassette, the store would charge $10. 30 years later, most new goods have more than doubled in cost. There was once a saying 'If it ain't cheap, it ain't punk'. But physical releases used to need to be cheaper, for the sake of accessibility. That's not the case anymore. Some of my tapes cost less because they are old and taking up space.

Q: What if I have a question that isn't listed here?
A: Feel free to use the comment section.

3 Shirt Agenda by Civilized Worm

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In 2018, Porunga was slated to be without a vocalist and on a haitus from doing shows, and I couldn't very well be on a haitus from playing shows. My friend Danny McKinley was a fan of Porunga and said we inspired him to play guitar in his own heavy project, and I offered to play drums, and we got Mitch Duncan to play bass. I had a lot of band name ideas for this group, like The Schwartz and The Gods of Jesus. For a while, we were going to be called Ranglefant, but settled on Civilized Worm. We are to The Melvins what Hatebreed are to The Misfits, maybe not. However, I would call this music sludge. These 8 songs were recorded in my basement in 2019.