#headless owl

[goldenbus]

August was a busy month outside of Golden Bus world, but we did manage to have this beautiful show featuring local songwriter Nicolette Hoang (of “Nicolette and the Nobodies”) and Whitehorse songwriter Jona Barr aka “Old Cabin”.  Old Cabin was celebrating the his newest release “Saturn Return” out now on Headless Owl and Label Fantastic!

[upheremagazine]

Handmade music

Whitehorse’s Headless Owl produces sounds you can see and touch. By Matthew Mallon

A decade or so later, Stratis is cofounder of Whitehorse’s boutique vinyl label Headless Owl, with six releases under their belt since 2012. He runs the label out of his house, where his small construction company is also headquartered. Why vinyl? The 32-year-old is an avid collector, with 3,000 records “lying around in my house. It’s the medium I prefer.” He’s part of a niche, passionate 21st century analog revival. “People are drawn to these tactile things that we don’t have a lot of anymore because everything [now] is so immediate and digitized,” he explains. “You can do so much with the medium. Your artwork is on display.”

There’s nothing specifically Northern about the label’s current output. Partners Kyle Cashen and Mathias Kom are now based in Vancouver and Halifax respectively, and most of their releases so far are by East Coasters. Stratis says Headless Owl has “plans to work with Northern artists.” But they need bands with the ambition and resources to tour the rest of the country, much less sell records. “Touring out of the North is hard. So I totally get why other local bands don’t do it.” 

Stratis’s construction company specializes in building doors—“boring stuff,” he says. But with Headless Owl, he’s still building connections, between the North and the rest of the world: “I like living in the North but being able to represent the rest of Canada. And it also gives me an opportunity to bring friends up here and bring outside artists up. It’s kind of a losing game, because it costs money to fly people up here, and you can’t make that money back on ticket sales. But it’s worth it just to be able to provide that experience, and to try to bring the Yukon into the rest of the Canadian music scene.”

[videofollies]

I made this video about a month ago for a new Jon Mckiel ep, which was just released today on Headless Owl Records.

Get it here.