braycoughlin
Anna Butterss, Josh Johnson, Jeff Parker, all these cats on this record are laying down the foundation of our musical futures
Favorite track: Shorn.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Purchasable with gift card
Download available in 24-bit/48kHz.
$9USD or more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
140g Classic Black Vinyl inside a heavyweight reverse-board jacket, with IARC OBI strip and poly-lined dome patterned innersleeve. Pressed at Pallas in Germany with lacquers cut by Daniel K at SST.
**Order ship from US. Sold out in UK and EU*
Includes unlimited streaming of Mighty Vertebrate
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Download available in 24-bit/48kHz.
ships out within 7 days
Purchasable with gift card
$24USDor more
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Shiny Compact Disc in a 4-panel Digipack. Orders ship from US, EU and UK.
Includes unlimited streaming of Mighty Vertebrate
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Download available in 24-bit/48kHz.
ships out within 7 days
Purchasable with gift card
$15USDor more
This single parcel includes all SIX (6!) LPs to-be-announced across Fall 2024, with a bundle-exclusive discount of 10% off the LP prices, plus a ~60% discount on shipping costs.
This bundle contains 5x single LP releases and 1x double LP release, the Limited Edition Color Vinyl versions. (*IARC0087 is a limited edition Black Vinyl only release, it is included in the color bundle, which is priced accordingly : )
Bundles will ship from our warehouses in the US, EU and UK, but don't sleep.. the quantity available in each warehouse is limited! Early purchase is recommended to ensure the lowest possible shipping, tax, and VAT costs.
All items will ship around 11/11/24, you will receive half of your bundle 2-4 weeks after their initial street date, and the other half you will receive early. Bandcamp downloads will be sent via email for all the releases by, or before, the ship date. Thank you as always for your trust in our label's output <3
(Included releases are IARC0086, 0087, 0088, 0089, 0091, 0092.)
...more
shipping out on or around November 15, 2024
Purchasable with gift card
$161USDor more
All SIX (6!) LPs to-be-announced across Fall 2024, with a bundle-exclusive discount of 10% off the LP prices, plus a ~60% discount on shipping costs.
This bundle contains 5x single LP releases and 1x double LP release on Classic Black vinyl.
Bundles ship from our warehouses in the US, EU and UK, but don't sleep.. the quantity available in each warehouse is limited! Early purchase is recommended to ensure the lowest possible shipping, tax, and VAT costs.
***UPDATE: Sold out in EU, remaining bundles ship from US or UK*. Color bundle still available to ship from EU*
Shipping in a single parcel around 11/11/24, you will receive half of the releases 2-4 weeks after their initial street date, the other half you will receive early. Bandcamp downloads will be sent via email for all the releases by, or before, the ship date. Thank you as always for your trust in our label's output <3
(Included releases are IARC0086, 0087, 0088, 0089, 0091, 0092.)
...more
shipping out on or around November 15, 2024
Purchasable with gift card
$136USDor more
IARC0086 Limited Edition "Fossilized Chartreuse" Color Vinyl
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Limited Edition 140g "Fossilized Chartreuse" Color Vinyl inside a heavyweight reverse-board jacket, with IARC OBI strip and poly-lined dome patterned innersleeve. Pressed at Pallas in Germany with lacquers cut by Daniel K at SST.
** Sold out in US and EU. Remaining copies ship from UK **
Includes unlimited streaming of Mighty Vertebrate
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
'Mighty Vertebrate' is the International Anthem leader debut from Adelaide, Australia-born bassist and composer Anna Butterss.
Butterss has steadily become a first-call for tour and studio work since moving to Los Angeles (after a stint in Bloomington, Indiana) in 2014. They’ve racked up credits with notables across the indie, jazz, and pop worlds alike – including Makaya McCraven, Phoebe Bridgers, Jason Isbell, Andrew Bird, and Daniel Villarreal – but their most notable contributions to the burgeoning West Coast creative music scene have been as a core member of both Jeff Parker’s ETA IVtet and rising proto-trance supergroup SML, who Pitchfork says “represents the thrilling next phase of a vibrant L.A. community.”
Their first solo album, 'Activities', was similarly hailed by Pitchfork as "one of the most exciting, undersung jazz releases of 2022," but the improvise-edit-reconstruct method used on that record couldn’t be further from the foundation of 'Mighty Vertebrate', which began amid the very real challenge of threading solo work into the dense calendrical web of an in-demand collaborator.
“I had just gotten off of a bunch of touring at the end of 2022 and just wanted to write music,” says Butterss. “The best way for me to do that, I’ve found, is to set myself a discrete and focused task."
- I’m going to make a song where the bass doesn’t function in the role of a bass.
- I’m going to work on this for an hour and then I’m going to stop.
- I’m going to make a song that uses groups of three-bar phrasing.
- I want to sample something and make it into a song.
- I’m going to start with a drum machine.
“Every song was like that,” they continue. “Then once I got started I just followed where my mind wanted to go. It was very structured.”
The music itself reflects that structure beautifully, with the material being tightly composed and melodically realized by Butterss well in advance of production concerns. They eventually migrated the operation to Chris Schlarb’s Long Beach hideaway BIG EGO to track a selection of full band material. With Schlarb at the controls they reconvene a group of trusted longtime collaborators to bring their compositions to fruition: Josh Johnson (sax), Gregory Uhlmann (guitar), and Ben Lumsdaine (drums, guitar, production).
“I am definitely hearing this group when I’m writing the music or thinking of how it’s going to be played live,” Butterss notes. “I’m hearing these specific people. They’re going to understand what this is supposed to feel like. We’re not going to have to talk about it much. It’s just going to feel very natural, which it was.”
The results speak to the natural quality of those interactions, and their breadth and scope might have been difficult to achieve otherwise. From the Robbie-Shakespeare-in-groove-mode intro to the album opener “Bishop” to the spacious cinematic doom of “Seeing You”, there is a lot to wrangle into one cohesive concept. It’s the bedrock of the lineup which keeps the circle unbroken. Butterss’ deep rooted musical relationship with the album’s co-producer, multi-instrumentalist and IARC labelmate Ben Lumsdaine, is also an undeniable factor in the cohesion. The duo have played together since meeting as teens in music school, and worked closely with one another on every aspect of the ten tracks that make up 'Mighty Vertebrate'. That comfort level extends the confident and natural feeling of the sessions to post production, granting the internal arc of each piece the same tidy-yet-adventurous quality found in the compositions themselves.
For instance, “Dance Steve” opens with overlapping samples expanding, contracting, and quickly focusing into a rhythm blended with a lo-fi bedroom beat just before the sonic scope is widened with a tuff-and-crunchy guitar riff over a straight boom bap 808 rhythm. Synth repetitions chirp dizzily while chorused guitars soften the scene and the subtly dense percussive layers build and unbuild. The song’s halfway mark finds the listener cooling down as the melodies retreat and the rhythm settles into ambient-trance mode. It’s only a chance to catch a breath, it turns out, as the last third of the track is the big reveal. Enter Jeff Parker (the album’s lone featured guest) on electric guitar along with Lumsdaine in a deep-pocket tambourine-accompanied groove. All synths, samples, and guitars have brightened and been rendered percussive – a web of tiny pulsing rhythms – and Parker uses the moment to lay down a classic JP solo. Butterss steers the ship with a dubby bass groove threaded between the beats. It’s as if the shades have been thrown open to greet the sun, but most importantly it’s a complete story. A narrative arc in under five minutes.
Jeff Parker’s impact is hard to miss when discussing any forward-thinking, groove-oriented jazz and experimental music. Perhaps even more accurate in the case of 'Mighty Vertebrate' is the influence of Tortoise, the long running post-genre group of which Parker is a member. Butterss’ “Pokemans” echoes the band’s excellent 2001 album 'Standards' as much as it does Four Tet or any of Junichi Masuda’s 8-bit school bus classics; but this is more than just inspiration, influence, or some detached version of a musical continuum. Butterss has played with Jeff Parker for years; Tortoise’s John Herndon did the cover art for 'Mighty Vertebrate'; these artists exist within the same close-knit community. Here Butterss finds themself firmly in the protégé-to-peer pipeline.
Ultimately, each track on 'Mighty Vertebrate' could be excavated and studied or simply taken at face value. It’s a solid, mature, and endlessly fun glimpse into the world of an artist whose potential for growth is seemingly unlimited.
credits
released October 4, 2024
All compositions by Anna Butterss.
Produced by Ben Lumsdaine and Anna Butterss.
Josh Johnson - alto saxophone, effects
Gregory Uhlmann - guitar, effects
Ben Lumsdaine - drums, percussion, guitar, lap steel, drum programming
Anna Butterss - upright bass, electric bass, guitar, synths, flute, drum machine
Jeff Parker - guitar (on “Dance Steve”)
Recorded by Chris Schlarb at BIG EGO Studios and Ben Lumsdaine at Laundry Works II Recording Services.
Mixed by Ben Lumsdaine.
Sequenced by Scott McNiece.
Mastered by David Allen.
Artwork by John Herndon.
Layout by Jeremiah Chiu.
Photographs by Robbie Jeffers.
International Anthem is a Chicago-born recording company that produces and promotes progressive
media.
Founded in 2014, the IARC label has grown to embody a global community of like-minded artists, musicians, and cultural workers dedicated to craft as a means of discovering truth and celebrating humanity....more
supported by 119 fans who also own “Mighty Vertebrate”
Incredible composure, fantastic drums here and there, great pacing overall, and to top it off an experience that can be heard from the top to the bottom without interruptions. Lovely record and an absolute "trip" of a listen. Fantastic job Nala, you really killed this. 106lil
