“I contacted him via MySpace and we started talking and he agreed to record something for my idea of a label.” “I asked Joshua Blatchley, a finger-picking guitar player from San Diego who had a demo posted on a blog,” recalls Lowenthal of VDSQ’s origins. That void in cassette culture would soon be filled by Lowenthal’s new record label.
“There wasn’t much going on there with acoustic music, there was just starting to be new age-y revival stuff but not what it has become today.” “I was working at Hospital Productions by 2008 and I was surrounded by the cassette tape underground, which at the time was generally reserved for noise and punk,” says Lowenthal.
With Swingset’s singular aesthetics helping shape his path, Lowenthal’s soon-to-be-discovered mission of an all-acoustic label manifested itself courtesy of a soul-searching stint behind the counter at a now-defunct East Village record store owned by Dominick Fernow, a/k/a noise music pioneer Prurient. In any given issue throughout its fruitful seven-year run, a peep into its pages found a hodgepodge of music, art and literature including, Thurston Moore and Ian MacKaye in conversation, the art of Raymond Pettibon, a Liars tour diary or a Black Dice spread. Swingset proved way ahead of its time, leading the ‘zine movement of the early-to-mid Aughts by operating through a freethinking lens. With friend and co-conspirator Sheila Refael, the two teamed to launch the groundbreaking Swingset Magazine-not a copy machine-spit out, shoddily stapled glorious DIY mess but a sublimely constructed underground glossy rife with the independent spirit. For Lowenthal, it’s no shocker the label he runs with business partner Peter Kolovos (of L.A.-based experimental imprint Thin Wrist Recordings) specializes in an ever-thriving catalog where each release is meticulously handcrafted and numbered, ostensibly with a fine-toothed comb, complete with artwork that shares, for the most part, a likeminded aesthetic.īack in 2001, Lowenthal cut his teeth with a similar vision but in the print world.