We’ve recently discovered Art Is Hard Records, a two-friend collective based in Plymouth, Weymouth and Portsmouth (depending on season). Their first release titled ‘Brink Of The Clouds’ is a 10 track sampler featuring some of their favourite artists from the South West (including some Bournemouth talent), and mighty fine it is too. This debut release will be available as a limited edition t.shirt containing a hand sewn download code and also on CDR. Each CDR version of ‘Brink of The Clouds’ is completely individual. In addition to being hand numbered the front cover contains an individual photo print of clouds – taken at the time of order. No two copies are the same.

Upon word exchange we found out a little more info…

Q. You’ve chosen Dutch Husband & True Swamp Neglect as two of the bands from Bournemouth, but both of who are not currently together…

A. I know, it was horrible to get into Dutch Husband and True Swamp Neglect just as they were both starting to become a bit inactive. We felt we had to include them on the compilation anyway as they both serve as such a good blueprint for the type of band we’d like to put out in the future. Good to hear some new Expedition Guide / Head Of A Cuban Trojan stuff though. We’ve also got Bournemouth exports Colours on there and Kinnie The Explorer who I’m sure you’re aware of.

Q. Can you give us a little more info on the label, and your plans for this, and future releases…

A. The record label was started by me (David) and Rich and one of us works in the co-op and the other works in a block of council offices. After our first valiant but mostly unnoticed attempt at promoting the South West’s music scene with Boring By the Sea Festival we thought it was time we did something new.

The idea behind our first release is that it seems like a lot of people buy cassettes and vinyl without ever being able to actually listen to them and instead just want to have an actual product. So we thought if people aren’t even going to listen to the music on the means intended, why does the release have to be anything that’s music related… when it could in fact be any sort of object in the world.

So we’re ‘releasing’ the compilation as a limited edition t.shirt and also a zine with content and interviews generated by each of the nine bands. Even though I’ve explained it a few times, I’m still not getting any better at articulating it all properly. We’re going to split any profits equally between the bands but at the moment we’re more worried about just breaking even. We hope to put out a vinyl release in November sometime but at the moment we’re just taking things one step at a time.

We like this a lot. You should check them, and their compilation out.

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