Farmer & The Owl Festival is a festival for lovers of all thing’s music, and to enhance that experience we’ll be hosting the Record Room! A sprawling space in the Salt Building within the site, dedicated to all thing’s vinyl.
Get ready to deep dive, rummage, uncover, and expand your collections….At the heart of Farmer & The Owl festival’s name sake is an independent record label that develops and releases artists from Wollongong and its surrounds. In conjunction with the label artists(Hockey Dad, The Pinheads, TEES, Tropical Strength & Totally Unicorn) the 2019 festival has been curated to help music fans discover some of the label artists favourites from around the world.
Independent labels run like a family, the greater independent music scene is an extension of this.With a large number of artists on the festival line up part of those indie label families, we thought it only fitting we invited some of our favourite labels from around Australia to set up stalls and play DJ sets in the Record Room across the whole day.
Australian independent labels,Spunk,Rice Is Nice, Pieater, Hotel Motel, Bedroom Suck, Our Golden Friendand Farmer & The Owl will host stalls in the Record Room. Independent retailer MusicFarmers will cover releases from artists across the line up and a specially curated selection of must have vinyl from some the world’s best indie record labels.
To soundtrack the Record Room, we’ve invited abunch of our favourite vinyl DJ’s to spin wax! Spunk Records, Rice Is Nice and Our Golden Friend will spin some of their favourite tunes alongside local vinyl DJ favourites Catman, Chelsea Dagger, Sultans Of Spin and Honeybear.
Meet the labels heading to the Record Room……
FARMER & THE OWL
Established to develop and release acts from Wollongong and surrounds, Farmer & The Owl has released music from Hockey Dad,Totally Unicorn, TEES, Tropical Strength, Bec Sandridge, Tumbleweedand The Pinheads. The current label artists helped curate this festival, highlighting the broad and eclectic music tastes of our label family. Farmer & Th Owl also release a compilation series calledBeached Friends which focuses on discovery the next crop of great artists from the Wollongong area.
BEDROOM SUCK RECORDS
Bedroom Suck is a Brisbane born label that provides and avenue for independent, like-minded artiststo record, release and distribute their music to a global audience. The label has worked withartists such as Blank Realm, Boomgates, Scott & Charlene’s Wedding, Terrible Truths, Lower Plentyand many more.
HOTEL MOTEL
Hotel Motel Records is a label run out of Melbourne. The current guest registry includes CoolSounds, Quivers, Nat Vazer, L.A. Mood, Orlean and S.M. Jenkins. There’s no rules to the genre ofmusic on the imprint, it’s just gotta sound good while you’re wearing a bathrobe and wayfarers.
OUR GOLDEN FRIEND
Our Golden Friend is an independent record label and management collective from Melbournewho have a love for Australian music and Labradors, home to 808s and Greatest Hits,Chitra, Moonlover, POPPONGENE, RVG, Way Dynamic.
PIEATER
Winners of the 2017 Australian Independent RecordLabels Association ‘Best Label’, Pieater is anexpanding local collective offering record label, artist management and merchandise services; and arecently completed music studio BellBird. Home to Airling, Christopher Port, #1 Dads, Tom Snowdon, Slow Dancer and No Mono.
RICE IS NICE
Rice Is Nice is an independent Australian record label which aims to promote unique Australian artists. Rice Is Nice was formed in 2008 and has since signed and released the works of a number of artists, the musical genres of which vary greatly. Artists Rice Is Nice have released include Straight Arrows, Donny Benet, The Laurels, Den and Angie.
SPUNK
Now in its twentieth year Spunk Records have licensed many of the world’s great albums for release in Australia while also establishing a local roster of quality Australian and New Zealand artists. On the international front Spunk has released music in Australia from Mac Demarco, Arcade Fire, Animal Collective, Mogwai and hundreds more while also developing local artists a local stable of artists that includes Holly Throsby, Aldous Harding, The Ocean Party as well as Farmer & The Owl Festival artists Shining Bird and Sunscreen.
MUSIC FARMERS
Since 2004, Music Farmers has established itself as the go to music retailer in Wollongong with an emphasis on vinyl. The Music Farmers stall at Farmer & The Owl Festival will feature vinyl from artists across the line up and in conjunction with Inertia Music a specially curated section of vinyl from some of the world’s best independent labels such as Sub Pop, Matador, Secretly Canadian, Flightless and plenty more.
FULL FESTIVAL LINE UP:
Beach House || Hockey Dad
Deafheaven || Snail Mail || J Mascis
Joyce Manor || The Garden
Kirin J Callinan || Rhye || Alan Braxe
No Mono || Flint Eastwood ||Stella Donnelly
The Aints! ||Amyl & The Sniffers
Gavin Rayna Russom || Fascinator
A Place To Bury Strangers || Foxing
Banoffee || RVG || These New South Whales
Shining Bird|| Retiree ||The Pinheads || Totty
Party Dozen || Flyying Colours || Clea || Milan Ring
Totally Unicorn || Sweater Curse || TEES || Lucianblomkamp
Tropical Strength ||Mother & Son || Carla Geneve || New War
Ella Thompson || RAT!hammock ||Planète || e4444e
Wax Chattels || Sunscreen || Lucy Cliché || Godtet
Jacob || After Touch || Spit Chewy || Droves || Obseen
Jon Watts || Velvet Elevator || Enfant Terrible
Lyre Byrdland || Dream Dog || Luke Spook || Chelsey Dagger
Honeybear || Sultans of Spin || Catman
Saturday March 2nd 2019, McCabe Park Wollongong