Name: Special Interest
Brand: Damion

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

LPEL252LE

{"blocks": [{"data": {"text": "LPEL252LE"}, "type": "paragraph"}]}

Colour

Black

Colour details

Discogs ID

Format multiplier

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music GB

Limited edition

Release date

2022-09-02

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier GB

Proper

Tax rate GB

Standard:20

UPC / Barcode

810017649891

{"blocks": [{"data": {"text": "810017649891"}, "type": "paragraph"}]}

Total Cap

1 / Extended format: No / LP / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No / black

Artist

Damion

Genre GB

Singer Songwriter

Label GB

Earth Libraries

Started by a prestigious group of librarians and archivists from around the globe, Earth Libraries was originally formed to ensure protection of the world's knowledge and social history during times of war.

While the group kept their identities unknown, its members are widely associated with the forming of ethnomusicology—the study of music from the cultural and social perspectives of the people who make it. With participation in over 20 countries, the number of chapters peaked in the 1960s. Unfortunately, this once bright light quickly faded due to global political change and funding cuts in the decades that followed. As the 20th century came to an end, Earth Libraries existed in relative obscurity, including a brief period as a mail order catalog during which time the organization sold many of its assets to fund operations.

Nearly 50 years after its creation, Earth Libraries has resurfaced as a new global group of musicologists exploring underground and experimental music. Now functioning as a music label, it focuses on strong artist relationships and technology.

"After 11 pm, you stop hearing regular rock on the classic hits radio station and start hearing more strange stuff, one-hit wonders from 1976, or really minor singles from artists I thought I didn't like because I just hadn't heard this one weird song before," says Bloomington, Indiana-based singer-songwriter Damion.

Rather than let those offbeat classics fade into the twilight on his late-night drives, Damion returned home and went straight to the Tascam cassette machine - Inspired by both the sound and the bleary-eyed ambiguity, the result of that late-night recording is the bronzy Special Interest, a record bathed in memory and the antigravity of '70s AM radio.

Once he had finished demoing songs at home, Damion brought the nine tracks that would make up the album to his preferred studio, Russian Recording, and worked with Ben Lumsdaine and Lewis Rogers to polish them up. Aesthetically, Damion aimed to ft within the limits of the era that inspired the songs. "Recording to cassette tape, you either have to play the part right or learn to love the way it sounds wrong, so even in the studio we abided by those same limitations," he says. Rather than limitations, the structures and styles of vintage rock perfectly suit the album's lithe falsetto, eerily familiar melodies, and hazy storytelling--the listener immersed in a soup of poetic fragments, Damion himself always at a beguiling arm's length. 

On lead single and opener "Company Man", resonant acoustic guitar and Super Ball bass provide a platform for Damion's knowing ability to split the difference between confident swagger and laid-back charm. The singer-songwriter pulls joy out of musical echos and lyrical wordplay, in part coming from his love of classic songwriters and long history as a performer. 

Special Interest

Music GB