Berkeley Cat Records is thrilled to announce a new single by a new artist for the new year! Matte Plastic is Paul Jackson and Charles Stella and Eric Din. That’s right, Uptones own dynamic trio made a new track in October – of a Jackson original song called New Threads. We decided it’s an appropriate New Years single, so it is now available at our beloved Bandcamp plus Spotify and Pandora and Apple Music and other streaming music contraptions.
I also had Paul as a guest on the Berkeley Cat Records Podcats on New Years Eve for our first Outerview! An outerview is an interview, you see, but we borrow Lee “Scratch” Perry’s name for them – he did outerviews, not interviews. There ya have it.
An exciting milestone this year was completing and releasing the Russ Ellis album. Along with all of the wonderful experiences we had recording and producing it (with a great cast of Bay Area characters only Russ could cat-herd) we ended up getting some excellent press coverage on this unique story, even a write-up in the New York Times. In time for the holidays, we manufactured some actual CDs with a lovely package design, and cover art by Russ’s grandson, Dex. The Ellis’s and I had fun passing these along to all of the (many!) cats who helped create the album, and to some friends and fam as gifts. They’re available thru (you guessed it!) our beloved Bandcamp, if anyone wants a copy, and you can also listen to the album there or download it for free.
In September we celebrated the release of Matte Martin’s second BCR album Violent Order, a completely original self-produced work from a unique young artist we’re very proud to know. He’s coming on as a guest to do an outerview soon, as it happens, and we’ll talk about the album and what he’s up to now and beyond. Oh and the spelling of our two “Matte” artists is purely coincidental, if anyone’s wondering! It’s a Matte Matte Matte Matte Matte World.
My Eric Din “solo” album drops in April! I put “solo” in quotes cos I had some great help creating the album, from some fellow Uptones and other marvelous cats, and even though my name is on it, I could not have done it without them. I’ll send a pre-order link in another mewsletter soon.
Also in April! On Earth Day, my remix of Mankind by Comeback Pete hits the streaming services! We’ll send a pre-save link soon and if you have any playlists in the Spotifys of the world, we’ll invite you to include this unique and timely gem!
And that’s all, really. We hope it’s enough, and not too much!
Love and a bright and creative 2022 to you all, from all of us at BCR,
Dinsky
