For more info email info@trademarkrecordings.com

The show is free. Password: Superstition.

Early in February I reread a Richard Brautigan poem titled Karma Repair Kit. At the time I was in the infancy stages of planning a group show focused on music, the act of eating, and poetry.  Here is Brautigan’s poem:

Karma Repair Kit:
Items 1-4

by Richard Brautigan

1. Get enough food to eat,
and eat it.

2. Find a place to sleep where it is quiet,
and sleep there.

3. Reduce intellectual and emotional noise
until you arrive at the silence of yourself,
and listen to it.

4.

The simple poetic list struck a deep chord within myself and resonated into the title of the show.  Karma Repair Kit it had to be.  I set a date 2 months in the future and began the process of finding artists.  By the time April 25th came around, most musicians who had expressed interest had become too busy or flaked.  I became disenchanted and laid down the ideas to waste.  In planning events, shows and parties, you come to realize over the years that you can excite people about the idea of being part of a collective experience, but when it comes down to setting up, showing up, and cleaning up, the group grows thin.  I knew I couldn’t do this alone.  It’s not worth it.

Eben Stewart showed up at my house last week and said “Are we doing this still?” with enthusiasm.  Eben and my band Lantern just played a couple shows in Big Sur and Monterey a early in April.  I said “Yea if you help”.  We shook hands and Karma was back in action.  We quickly hatched a new plan, strung lights and a chandeleir, borrowed my father’s BBQ, and we were set.

People started showing up around 6PM on Saturday and Lantern went on a 8:30 to our best show yet.  I was slipping around in wet grass and I almost fell off the stage down a hill while losing myself in a heavy part of one of our songs.  Comedian Tommy Ritter then hit the stage for a venomous set that offended everyone, which is an amazing feat.  Although offended they laughed like hell especially when this crazy Hungarian man Andras decided to loudly argue all of Tommy’s jokes.  Eben finished off the night to a huge crowd and babes dreaming about the dusty roads of the musician’s mind.

Karma Repair Kit was a huge success and although it was stressful I can’t wait to have another one sometime this summer.  Next time maybe charge for beers.

Thanks to the following people:  Trademark and Thomas Mahoney, Eben Stewart, Kyle Burns, Michael Hamm, Joe Imes, Fernie, Tommy Ritter, my neighbor Paul for the stage, Andrew Paszterko for the pasta and BBQ, Caseman, and Jess for the extension chord.  Also thanks everyone for showing up, you are all great friends I love you dearly.

All Photos and Documentation by Kyle Burns

I did an interview with Los Angeles taste makers Evil Monito Magazine.

Click the the EM logo for the interview.

Photos from the last 3 months of Lantern Black Lodge life.

We at Trademark Recordings just released the grimmest black metal album album of the year, MURDER/SUICIDE.  Go to TRADEMARKRECORDINGS.COM/FREE for the EP.

An evening of friends, strangers, and fine music from your loyal friends at Trademark Recordings.  April 25th, 2009 will be a celebration of music and fraternity set in the hidden realms of Echo Park.  The Echo Park Lodge is returning from it’s collosal slumber, and it offers us it’s service like the haunted mansion has so many time before.

Tentative list of musicians and artists:

SAMURAI DREAMS . EBEN STEWART . HT HEARTACHE . LANTERN BLACK LODGE . MARTY

DJ TOM HANKS will be handling the jams.

There are other’s on our wish list, but I’m not saying any names until I get a confirmation.  If you would like to know more about the event please email camerin@trademarkrecordings.com

Also if there are any musicians or bands interested in adding their magick to the stage, please let me know.

There is plenty of time to plan, but rome wasn’t built in a day, so I decided to plant the seed.

For more info go to TRADEMARKRECORDINGS.COM

After 2 1/2 years of existence, we’re pleased to announce a gift to you, our loyal cult members. On 24 February 2009 (next THIS Tuesday), we’ll be releasing Trademark XV, a compilation featuring every artist in the family (and a few friends).

With a track off of nearly every release we have done, including some that have yet to be released, Trademark XV is both an introduction to new fans and a reminder to those who’ve been with us since September 2006. We will release this digitally on Tuesday for a period of two weeks absolutely free*. We took our time compiling this, even convincing our great friends Lesbian and Moab to chime in with a few epic tracks. And we’ve included a couple of tracks that while available through us may have slipped through your fingers due to their super-limited nature (Science Friction, Samurai Dreams).

As always, we bow down to you, our fanatic cult members, because in the end, we’re in this together.

Always. Forever. Now. TRDMRK.

TrademarkRecordings.com

(*Free is an interesting word these days. To access the CULT section of our site and get the free album, you need the current password. And the current password can only be given to you if you sign up for our mailing list on this site. Don’t worry - we ain’t Nigerian scammers or spambots. Sign up, and you shall receive…)

Tracklist:
1. Lesbian “Bad Man” (Repo Man cover from the ltd. tour EP)
2. Moab “The Loon” (previously unreleased)
3. La Fin du Monde “Nascar Santa Claus”
4. The Motherless Children “Wicked River”
5. Lantern Black Lodge “Shine On You”
6. The Instant Messengers “iHuman”
7. Science Friction “II” (featuring some secret humans; email us for the details)
8. Akasa “Yomi”
9. Z F . Lantern Black Lodge “Zambique”
10. Samurai Dreams “Shadow Memory (888)”
11. Dynamite Walls “Spin In Circles”
12. The Jan-Michael Vincent Car Crash “North London Book Of The Dead”
13. Whitechapel “Living Splendor”
14. Castle Bravo “Acceptable Losses”
15. Swarming Hordes “Not A Mock Arsenal”
16. Conifer “Turning Sand Into Glass”

Trademark News . March 2009

The official video for Akasa’s “The Limniad,” from the self-titled album available via Trademark Recordings. Produced by Company of Owls.

Directed by Camerin Kelly

Director of Photography Kyle Burns

Produced by Camerin Kelly

Executive Producer Thomas Mahoney

Akasa is Josh Benedict and Camerin Kelly

Really excited that this is finally finished. Come back in two days and you get it for free!

Also, thank you everyone who downloaded “Lantern Black Lodge . Shine On You”. Those were all b-sides to the current album I am working on right now. “Shine On You” will be released on the LP completely rerecorded. That album was only available a month, and it will never be released again unless I die and someone really wants to make a ton of loot off my postmortem career. Here is what we have in store now from TRADEMARK.

TM15: Trademark 15 - compilation

BUY: Coming soon…

TRACKS: see below

ABOUT: In celebration of our 2 1/2 year anniversary, we decided to honor…OURSELVES! Trademark 15 features one song from each of our releases. That means Conifer, Akasa, Whitechapel, Dynamite Walls, and the rest of the roster. It also includes unreleased songs from upcoming albums by La Fin du Monde and the Motherless Children, and extra-special tracks by Lesbian and Moab, unavailable anywhere else except super-limited tour CDs. Oh, you still don’t think we go off? How about we make it available for fucking FREE? Do you love free? All you have to do is click. The world of Trademark is yours for a limited time, on the house. Thank us later. XO.

SEE ALSO: http://www.myspace.com/trademarkrecordings

RELEASED: 27 January 2009

Tonight I miss my time as a youth locked in my room with Richard Brautigan books scattered round like leafs in a winter storm. Pages of golden paper poetry forever floating through the rivers of my mind like oak trees stripped bare on the raped winter skyline of Northern California in 1997.

Here is an unreleased song by Thomas Mahoney and myself from a party last year. It’s titled “Nicer Than you think”.
Nicer Than You Think

The coast is beautiful yesterday.

I leave you this.

“There Is Darkness on Your Lantern”

There is darkness on your lantern
and pumpkins in your wind,
and Oh, they clutter up your mind
with their senseless bumping
while your heart is like a sea gull
frozen into a long distance telephone
call.

I’d like to take the darkness
off your lantern and change the pumpkins
into sky fields of ordered comets
and disconnect the refrigerator telephone
that frightens your heart into standing
still.

- Richard Brautigan

From Trademark Recordings:

BUY: FREE TRADEMARK RECORDINGS  -TM D7i 2 (16 Dec ‘08 - 22 Dec ‘08)

ABOUT: Los Angeles’ Echo Park Lodge (a.k.a. the Black Lodge) is a dwelling rich in paranormal activity, including known registrations of the “Hum” phenomenon, apparition sightings, and cult activities related to Thelemic and other black magick teachings. Akasa vocalist Camerin Kelly descended directly into this den of iniquity on a solo mission to capture the influences of this spiritual graveyard, inspired by minimalist folk, dub echo, and the unearthly surroundings. The results are presented in the form of his alter ego, Lantern Black Lodge, in a recording known simply as, “Shine On You.”

TRACKS: 1.) Shine On You 2.) No Down Time 3.) Piano Tree

SEE ALSO: http://www.myspace.com/echoparklodge, Akasa

RELEASED: 16 December 2008

Trademark Recordings has posted it’s official News and Winter Update:

Check it out: NEWS FROM THE TUNDRA

Trademark Winter Compilation and “Best Of” coming within the next week.  Come back soon.

‘Tis all. Happy Winter Solstice — celebrate the thousand lotus petals crowing the Third Eye of Horus.