SASAMI (Sasami Ashworth) has been making music in the Los Angeles area, in almost every way you can, for the last decade. From playing French horn in orchestras and studios and playing keys, bass, and guitar in local rock bands (Dirt Dress, Cherry Glazerr), to contributing vocals/string/horn arrangements to studio albums (Vagabon, Curtis Harding, Wild Nothing, Hand Habits, etc.) and producing on tracks for other respected artists (Soko), she has gained a reputation as an all-around musical badass.

After graduating from the Eastman School of Music in 2012, SASAMI spent her time scoring and making orchestral arrangements for films, commercials and studio albums, as well as being a deeply committed music teacher in Los Angeles. She spent the previous two and a half years touring the world non-stop playing synths in the band Cherry Glazerr and is now taking a turn to focus on her own music. SASAMI's first ever self-released single "Callous" was given Pitchfork's "Best New Track," and this year she has already shared bills with the likes of Japanese Breakfast, Liz Phair, The Breeders, and Blondie.

Rhiannon Giddens is a celebrated artist who excavates the past to reveal truths about our present. A MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient, Giddens has been Grammy-nominated six times, and won once, for her work with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a group she co-founded. Pitchfork has said of her “few artists are so fearless and so ravenous in their exploration,” and Smithsonian Magazine calls her “an electrifying artist who brings alive the memories of forgotten predecessors, white and black.”

Since 1995, NYC’s Other Music record shop has had a big hand in defining the sound of the underground, helping to establish the careers (and career resurgences) of hundreds of artists, with a wide-ranging aesthetic that includes everything from indie pop to left-field electronica, folk, funk, psychedelia, dub, free jazz, post-punk, avant-classical, hip-hop and much more. For more than a decade and a half, through myriad changes in the “biz,” Other has stayed true to their one goal, connecting great unheard music with passionate music fans, and with their weekly new-release newsletter reaching more than thirty-five thousand subscribers, an MP3 download store, a mail-order website, and a busy East Village retail shop, they have become an icon and last bastion of indie retail. Now, in partnership with Fat Possum, Other is launching their own label, Other Music Recording Co., to bring the same varied taste and enthusiasm that has always defined their retail store to this new venture.

Other’s first release, OM-001, drops on April 24: Ex Cops’ debut 7-inch,  “You Are a Lion, I Am a Lamb” b/w “The Millionaire.” This new Brooklyn group’s hazy mix of influences draws on vintage British and New Zealand indie, Factory Records and a Velvets/Feelies jangle that is distinctly New York, all with their own sunbaked pop vision. What began as a bedroom-recording project for Brian Harding has been fleshed out into a full band, and Ex Cops are now putting the finishing touches on their debut album in the studio with producer John Siket, due out on Other later this year.

Also due this spring on Other, the debut solo album from Shintaro Sakamoto, the former frontman of the legendary Japanese psychedelic group Yura Yura Teikoku. Over the course of their 20 years together, that band rose from the storied Japanese psychedelic underground to huge mainstream success in their homeland (and cult status around the world), with a wholly original sound that defies definition. The group disbanded in 2010, and Sakamoto set off into uncharted waters on his new solo material, working mostly alone to create a stunning set of quiet, percussive songs that draw on ‘70s folk and AM radio pop from the U.S., U.K. and Japan, as well as folk forms from across continents and eras; How to Live with a Phantom, released late last year in Sakamoto’s own Zelone label in Japan, is an enigma and an instant classic that blew so many minds at the Other Music shop when a few imports trickled in, they had to release it themselves.

Other Music Recording Co. will surprise and enlighten fans of underground music with a roster of diverse artists from around the world, releasing new music and under-appreciated classics from their reissue division, and with this strategic partnership with Fat Possum you will be hearing a lot more from Other in the coming months.

Eli “Paperboy” Reed is a survivor. He’s been making Soul-inspired music since before it was cool and tearing up stages all over the world with his heart-stopping falsetto screams for close to a decade. From humble beginnings outside of Boston, at 18 Reed moved to Clarksdale, Mississippi and cut his teeth playing in juke joints all over the Delta. From there he took the well-trod path to Chicago where he spent a year as minister of music in a Southside church. Soon after returning to Boston, he was bit by the songwriting bug and released his first full length, “Roll with You” in 2008. The world began listening. Soon there were calls coming in from everywhere; television shows in the UK, festivals in Australia, and a jaw-dropping schedule of national and international tour dates. Major label deals were signed and his star kept rising, now with the help of song placements in major movies, television shows and commercials. The albums “Come and Get it” (Capitol) and “Nights Like This” (Warner Brothers) went on to do more than $2.5 million in total licensing, while Reed and his crack band continued to wow audiences on five continents. Now, after some much-needed time off from the road, Reed has returned to the studio and crafted a new album that is at once back-to-basics and startlingly current. “My Way Home” represents a return to the sonic character that Reed’s career began with, but it does more than that: It captures the essence of his sound. A sound that, over everything else, prizes feeling, energy, and, yes, Soul. 

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