26th February: Record Store Day UK is excited to announce that The Big Moon are the official ambassadors of 2020.
Ahead of the 13th edition of the annual event on Saturday 18th April, Juliette, Fern, Soph and Celia will be flying the flag for independent record shops all across the UK.
They follow in the footsteps of previous Record Store Day ambassadors: The Mighty Boosh, Rag n Bone Man, Sir Elton John, Kate Tempest and many more.
The Big Moon have played a huge role in supporting the culture-independent record shops over the last few years and are the first band to take on the role.
Talking about their role Celia spoke about their love of record shops: “We’re so excited to be ambassadors for RSD! When I was a kid music was still a really tribal thing and if you were into alternative music the record store was a really important space to hang out and spend weekends browsing through things with mates, discovering whole new sounds and genres just because you liked the artwork, picking up music magazines and finding out about gigs."
"We’ve played in lots of excellent shops up and down the country and met wonderful people every time, from the people who work there and organise events to the generous souls who have parted with their money and time and bought our records, come to see us play intimate shows and just generally made us feel like what we’re doing is sometimes worthwhile. As we become more and more aware of the toxicity of spending the majority of your life online it’s important that we protect these physical communal spaces and make sure they feel accessible and welcoming to all. Support your local record store!"
Record Store Day is supported by BBC Sounds, who broke the news on BBC Newsbeat this morning.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/newsbeat-51652574/the-big-moon-why-record-shops-still-matter
Live to Vinyl
To celebrate their role The Big Moon will be recording their Record Store Day release live in front of an audience at Metropolis Studios on 5th March. The organisers believe this is the first time, globally, an artist will have recorded 3 tracks in 1 take in with a live audience in the studio with them.
Recording ‘live to vinyl’ is the original process that artists used to record music for public consumption. No modern technology, just plain old playing and recording. In our digital age, the art of capturing music live to vinyl has long been forgotten. Metropolis have recreated the experience using their unique cutting lathes. Part of the magic of recording music in this way is that you have to get it right first time...and sometimes the best things happen when you get it wrong.
Gavin Newman, Brand Director at Metropolis explained “It's such a privilege to be able to get behind the scenes like this and experience an intimate window into the recording process. To see something cut live to lacquer and then pressed onto a physical product is a rare and exciting opportunity. The live to vinyl experiences incorporate everything we love about music at Metropolis - having access to our favourite bands, being able to feel that sense of creative artistic tension with all of it captured on to the vinyl format which we know and love so well. Metropolis are proud to be on board with Record Store Day to help keep vinyl and independent record shops alive!”
Once the recording is finished, Record Store Day’s manufacturing partner Sound Performance will be taking the lacquer hot off the press (literally!) and fast-track through the pressing plants so that the product will be available in record stores up and down the country on Record Store Day itself (18th April).