Land Animal

Various Artists - Ra Meat

Land Animal Tapes takes on artists that offer their fans a lot of B-side material, often for name-your-price download, often self-recorded. Do-it-ourselves artwork, hand-numbered cassettes, no other middlemen––band to fan. An accompanying focus of the label, however, is to highlight the scenes I’ve come across in the travels posted about here on Zhargon. LAT’s first release, a compilation called Ra Meat, features music from a Ukrainian, a Russian, a Canadian expat in China, an Australian expat in America, a variety of other USA-dwellers, Macedonians, and some Taiwanese. The latter two are personal; one of the more immediate reasons I moved to Taiwan five years ago was the music scene and its people, and Macedonia is a country that I made a point of visiting on a trip through Southeast Europe because of its own scene. Both countries are represented twice on the compilation. I guess it’s a way for me to still arm––ear?––chair travel now that there are different adventures at hand. - Aaris King