As the founder, owner, and sole employee of one
of WTSH’s favorite labels, Graveface Records—the
word “Graveface” somehow emerged out of a night’s dreaming that also involved
fishing and miniature golf—Ryan is responsible for the release late last year
of The Stargazer Lilies’ full-length
debut We Are The Dreamers in a package
exquisite on all levels: visual, musical, and sonic. The label, which issued
its first record in 2002 and got fully underway with the 2005 release of BMSR’s
Lost Picking Flowers in the Woods in both LP and CD formats, is presently home
to Whirr, Xiu Xiu, Serengeti, Experimental Aircraft and a score of other worthy
artists.
Graveface Records has a one-of-a-kind sister
business in Savannah, a bricks-n-mortar retail establishment called Graveface Records & Curiosities,
offering such diverse categories of merchandise as vinyl, cocktail supplies,
effects pedals, taxidermy, and more.
One of our favorite Graveface Records artists is
The Casket Girls, who have wowed us with the haunting (and haunted) electronic
dreampop of their 2012 debut full-length
Sleepwalking, which evinces a
sensibility that is morbid-tinged but still somehow ultimately upbeat. Ryan
himself is the musical engine that drives The Casket Girls, composing and
performing all of the backing tracks, which are characterized by a rich signature
fuzzed keyboard sound, while sisters Elsa and Phaedra Greene, whom Ryan first
came across singing strange songs together under a tree in a Savannah park
space, provide melodies, lyrics, and beautifully blended pop vocals. We posted
the delightfully demented video for Sleepwalking’s title track here;
you can view the completely amazing clip for “Heartless” from the same album here. We’re very excited
about The Casket Girls’ sophomore LP, True
Love Kills the Fairy Tale, released by Graveface on February 11th, 2014,
and we’ve posted singles from that record here
and here.
Ryan’s primary musical outlet is a
shoegaze/post-rock project called Dreamend,
with an impressive discography of its own including a two-piece epic that tells
the true story of a serial killer’s life (Ryan bought the murderer’s journals
at auction years ago) on the full-length albums So I Ate Myself, Bite By Bite (2010) and And the Tears Washed Me, Wave After Cowardly Wave (2012).
The Casket Girls, The Stargazer Lilies, Dreamend,
and Dott have joined forces for the colossal Graveface Roadshow 2014,
a tour that began in Atlanta on February 14th, 2014.
With even more projects up his sleeve than we’ve
managed to mention, we can only imagine that Ryan Graveface is one of the
busiest, most energetic people alive, not to mention pretty damn talented and
probably the only guy you’ll run into who seems to have named himself after his
company instead of the other way around. With humble awe we thank him for
taking time out from all that to share with us this list of things that meant
something to him in 2013.
Ryan Graveface:
Things That Meant Something To Me In 2013
Ryan says:
As the “pusher” of all things Graveface, I tend
to listen to A LOT of Graveface stuff throughout the year. This year we had a
jam-packed release schedule with LPs from The Appleseed Cast, Serengeti, Xiu
Xiu, Stargazer Lilies, Dosh, Whirr, Hospital Ships and many more. It was
crazy. So my list is certainly biased but I tried to throw in a few
non-Graveface related tracks so it doesn't seem like a sales
pitch. There's no order to anything. Some stuff isn't new but that doesn't
matter to me. Additionally, I threw in some food/drink/fun that impacted me in
a positive way. These meant something to me in 2013:
Buying the prom photo of Bradley
Scott Pauley at the Mission in Sav. It's a salvation army like place and
this was $1. I opened the back and inside was a prom invitation, hence me
discovering his name. I did some digging and found he's now a lawyer in CA and
I attempted to contact him multiple times with no luck. He won't write
back. I may have freaked him out with my initial pitch. Haha.
The monster cereals coming back (Fruity
Yummy Mummy etc.)