Music People

behind the label with flower sounds

Independent music labels! I love them!! The people who run the businesses that help get good tunes out into the world should be honored. And so I am doing today in this blog post, which features the label flower sounds.

Run by Jon Shina out of the great state of Massachusetts, flower sounds is a label that does limited edition runs of cassettes for artists like b*o*b*b*i*e and The Lentils. Last week they dropped two singles: "The Most Unlikely Place," a mellow and meditative pedal steel-kissed number by The Fruit Trees; and "Possessed," a '90s-style anti-ambiguity indie rock churner by All Feels. I sent Shina some questions about starting and running flower sounds—below, the answers!

[Molly] When did you start the label, and what inspired you to do it?

[Jon] It was something I've always wanted to do since I was a kid. Vinyl was always so expensive to press, so I was never able to take the leap into releasing vinyl albums, or even putting out my own music on vinyl. Then, in 2017, my friend Alex gave me a copy of his band Power Mystery on cassette which was released by Spring Break Tapes. Up until that point, I always thought that cassettes were so bulky and ugly, and all the major label releases on cassette that I grew up with as a kid were all 9 page J-Cards that had tons of text on them, and were all hideous graphic designed nightmares. Spring Break Tapes was the first time I fell in love with the aesthetic of a cassette tape, and they presented the cassette as this beautiful thing that correctly captured the beauty of an "Album." They made it look so much less commercial and so much more soulful, and their approach to the design and artwork around the cassette was just so much more artistically pleasing.

Between Spring Break Tapes, and another tape label (now defunct) Patient Sounds, I had fallen in love with the vibe and aesthetic of the cassette. Lucky for me, I was still kind of early to the tape renaissance, and in 2018 when I started flower sounds, it was still very cheap to press to cassette, which is about half the price as it is currently. My initial idea was to find an established musician, and sell them on the idea of pressing their already released album onto cassette for the first time. For my first release, I asked my friend who is the manager of Dave Bixby to put me in contact with him, and I pitched Dave on the idea of re-releasing his cult album Ode to Quetzalcoatl, which is so super crazy, because the original vinyl pressing goes for like a thousand dollars on Discogs. This made for such a great first pressing for flower sounds.

Later, and this was still pre-Covid, my idea for flower sounds morphed into pressing cassettes for friends of mine who were going on tour, and this would help them sell merch while on the road. Now, six years later, flower sounds has turned into my initial love of running my own music label, without any gimmicks or idealism. flower sounds is now simply dedicated to putting out great music.

When it comes to finding artists + releasing their music, what do you generally look for? What qualities does a band/artist have that would make them prime for a flower sounds release?

Luckily, I have friendships or acquaintances with every artist I work with, so I've mainly been working with people that I already know and love. For example, when I started the label, I gave The Lentils an open invitation to put out anything they want, and they’ve taken me up on the offer twice!

For Bobbie, I saw them play live, and they blew me away. Quickly after that show, I went to their Bandcamp to check out their recorded music, and pitched them on the idea of releasing their demos on cassette. I fell in love with Bobbies' music, and through collaborating with them, we have now created our own unique friendship.

And speaking of demos, people do solicit me all the time, but nothing really grabs me. The only demo submission that ended up becoming a flower sounds artist has been The Fruit Trees. I immediately fell in love with what The Fruit Trees were doing, and that was because they initially contacted me because they loved The Lentils. So, if you're friends with me, and I like your music, I usually end up releasing your album. The next level, that is happening organically with the release of The Fruit Trees, is if you're friends with the artists on flower sounds, you will be the next artists to have releases with us. I guess we are organically building a community of like minded musicians and artists.

You do limited-edition cassette runs—will you tell me about the process of getting tape releases off the ground? Is there anything that goes into it that might surprise someone on the outside?

I love collaborating with the artists I work with. It is so much fun. To me, the most fun part of releasing an album is the track listing and the art work. Every release that I put out, the artist has 100% artistic control of their release. What surprisingly often happens is that the artist has no clue what to do for tracking listing, and often they will let me curate their album for them. Surprisingly, I would guess that I’ve made the track listings for half of the releases that I’ve put out.

Yes I do release limited pressings of 100 copies. That is both to create scarcity, but honestly, with the level of artists that I work with, it's the perfect amount to press to break even. Luckily, I have sold out of many of the releases that I have pressed, which has helped me to continue to put out more albums! I even have my first full length vinyl album that will come out early 2025, which I am very excited about.

Is there a recent flower sounds release you're super proud of, or something upcoming you're excited about?

I’m so proud of everything I release. For me, it’s quantity over quality. Quality can change over the years, but quantity doesn’t. The last step I do with every release is posting it to Discogs. The Discogs page for each release is a tiny triumph to everything I’m trying to do. When a release hits the Discogs database, it will live on in the history of recorded music (for nerdy people like me who love Discogs).

Currently, I am the most excited about both singles that are coming out this week. "Possessed" by All Feels and "The Most Unlikely Place" by The Fruit Trees, are two songs that I am in love with at a molecular level. I think both songs are so amazing in each of their own special way. It is rare that you fall in love with a song or band upon hearing the first note, and I believe that both of these singles contain that special something. I couldn't be more excited about both of these singles. I hope you all enjoy them as well.

Thanks Jon! Check out flower sounds' Bandcamp page and link aggregation.

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