Yes. Yes it is. Whew. Okay boys, it's safe to emerge from the dark caves now. We're still scraping the New Year's Day goop from the corner of our eyes. The holidays are gone and we're quite happy about it. Why? Because 2008 marks our TENTH ANNIVERSARY of existence as a small weird-jazz label clinging to the vast underbelly of the Los Angeles Music Golem. We have a lot of cool shite happening to mark it -- as we speak, our Fearless Leader Jeff Gauthier is putting the finishing touches on his extensive liner notes for Assemblage, 1998-2008, our 2-CD retrospective chock full of great memories and recordings from the Crypto famdamily as well as some unreleased goodies from the abandoned-trailer-on-pallets we call "The Vault."
Accompanying the CD will be "Nothing To Teach" a special 10-minute DVD of a trippy experimental short film from our friend filmmaker Carole Kim, based on a track from The Other Shore, a 2000 Crypto collaboration from percussionist Alex Cline, guitarist G.E. Stinson and Jeff G. (We went to the official screening on Sunday night in Culver City, which was attended by Nels and Alex Cline, Michael Vlatkovitch, Steuart Liebig, David Witham, Susan Allen, G.E., Jeff, Carole and many other friends. Great party! The tequila and veggie Indian fare flowed nicely.)
In the meantime, while we wait for Jeff to dry the ink from his feathered pen, there's some bits of news to take care of: If you haven't seen the bio-doc My Name Is Albert Ayler yet, keep it on your radar. It's fantastic. What's more, it's accompanied by Cuneiform Record's tribute to Ayler featuring some extended Crypto friends Vinny Golia and Henry Kaiser. Also, our friends from "Mipples, Minn" The Bad Plus got themselves written about in The New Yorker magazine over the holiday by writer David Remnick. Congrats boys! (If you haven't checked out Do The Math, the blog by the Plus' pianist Ethan Iverson, it's part of our Blogroll.)
In not so ebullient news, another Crypto friend percussionist/composer/visual artist Dan Morris [pictured] died an entirely untimely death over the holiday at age 37. Composer Alex Shapiro has posted a moving tribute to him on her music blog.
And of course, Mr. Oscar Peterson, Rest in Tempo.
