Barsuk Records CIMS Showcase

We are admitted huge fans of Barsuk Records so it was nice to see them release this very cool streaming special up on their site recently. Back in spring of 2005, they hosted a little shindig along for CIMS (The Coalition of Independent Music Stores), which featured live acoustic performances by some of their artists including Ben Gibbard (Death Cab For Cutie), Matthew Caws (Nada Surf), John Roderick (The Long Winters), John Vanderslice, and Jesse Sykes.

Now, they’re making the recordings of the event, which were held at the Experience Music Project in Seattle, available online for anyone to listen to. Mucho cool, since these are all indie artists we’re interested in.

You can check out the streams at a special flash interface site they put up at:

http://www.barsuk.com/songwriters/ecard/

They are releasing the songs in 4 batches. The first batch was made available today (well, actually last week) and the rest will come through on February 27, March 13, and March 27. I’ve heard all but one of these songs before on their respective albums, but it’s sorta cool to hear them acoustically live since I’ve seen none of their shows before (something I hope to rectify this year).

Now, while we’re usually not huge fans of Flash interfaces because of its insular technology (and the fact that a lot of the flash sites around are just needless fluff) we’ll have to make an exception in this case because the of the quality of the songs available. But just in case you don’t have Flash, here are the links to Itunes for the songs available starting today. I couldn’t seem to find the Jesse Sykes track; I think it is on a Barsuk split release from another label, so I’ve just included the link to where you can get the album on their site.

Note, these are the album versions of the songs and not the live versions from the performance:

Matthew Caws (Nada Surf) - “What Is Your Secret?”
John Roderick (The Long Winters) - “Ultimatum”
John Vanderslice - “Radiant With Terror”
Jesse Sykes - “Your Side Now”

And here is the full listing of live tracks that will be appearing on the Barsuk site along with their dates of release:

February 27, 2006
Matthew Caws - “Blizzard of ‘77″
John Roderick - “Bride and Bridle”
Ben Gibbard - “Title and Registration”

March 13, 2006
John Vanderslice - “Dead Slate Pacific”
Jesse Sykes - “Doralee”
Matthews Caws - “Always Love”
John Roderick - “It’ll Be a Breeze”

March 27, 2006
John Vanderslice - “Pale Horse”
Jesse Sykes - “Untitled” (unreleased)
Ben Gibbard - “I Will Follow You Into the Dark”

by Palebear