G7 Welcoming Committee Records. Uncooperative since 1997.

You don’t have to hide it, nor be ashamed. We’ve heard the murmurs; the whispers on the street; the hushed gossip at the water-cooler; the uninformed, poorly-punctuated and de-capitalized ramblings on internet message boards …

Is G7 ever going to release another recording? Was this “digital transition” all a facade behind which they are preparing to shut the whole operation down?

Well, yeah, that was the plan. But! We changed our minds, and now we bring you not 1 … not 2 … not 3… but 4 new digital albums on August 28th!

THE REBEL SPELL

You know, for a “punk” label, we sure haven’t put out many “punk” albums. In fact, you know what? If someone had of told me a year ago that there was a “really great young punk band” coming up, I would have stuck a broom-stick in a pail of wet cement, let it dry, gotten up on a ladder – naked – laughing hysterically while pointing at the person who said it and then jumped as high as I could in the air with my legs spread, impaling my own asshole on said broomstick, gasping and convulsing but still pointing and trying to laugh at said person while my eyes watered uncontrollably.

But then along came a band from East Vancouver called THE REBEL SPELL. And I stopped laughing. I even put my pants back on (though slowly).

It has been a very, very, very long time since a punk band has reached through the speakers and made me believe something was going on beyond the requisite and obvious elements that make one stop and listen to a “good” punk band. Something is going on here. It’s not something you can try to put your finger on without sounding like an ass, but I’m not being glib when I say that I feel something unusual and important will come of this seemingly conventional street-punk band. Mark that bold and cryptic statement on your calendar people. Don’t come crying to me in 5 years if you miss this boat and are subsequently left without any street-cred YOU FUCKING POSER.

Not surprisingly then, we’re genuinely (yes, genuinely) excited to bring you the digital release of their 2005 album Days of Rage, and a brand new EP entitled Four Songs About Freedom.

Read more and listen here.

JAMAICA PLAIN

Speaking of not being considered “punk” … next up, we bring you Jamaica Plain, MA’s Chris Pastor, otherwise known as JAMAICA PLAIN (I’m going to start a band called Portage La Prairie by the way). Four years ago, Chris Pastor sent us his first self-produced CD entitled Letters to the Leader. When we put it on we literally could not believe what we were hearing. Some laughed. Others just stared at the stereo, apparently not sure if it was a joke or not.

So 4 years later, what do we find? Well, I believe it was nineteenth century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer who said “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident.” Step one we thoroughly took care of, step two we avoided only by virtue of Chris Pastor living too far away to actually attack, and finally step three comes to pass as it is certainly evident to us now that Chris Pastor is a genius and that we had to be a part of JAMAICA PLAIN’s completely sane insanity. He is truly a fellow traveller on this spaceship of madness.

Consequently, on August 28th we will be as giddy as school children when we present King of Hearts – a compilation of both JAMAICA PLAIN releases (Letters to the Leader and Blue in the Face) resulting in 10 tracks of pure synth-pop genius. You heard that right. Synth. Pop. As in: Pet Shop Boys meets a guy completely at the end of his rope.

Read more and listen here.

HEAD HITS CONCRETE

Lastly, we present our 3rd “anthology” to date. Rising from the literal and aesthetic ashes of SWALLOWING SHIT, Winnipeg’s HEAD HITS CONCRETE pummelled and bashed and weirded and jarred their way through 5 years of existence before choking on their own vomit in 2004. We now present their entire recorded output of this all-out insanity in one digital album. HEAD HITS CONCRETE’s Thy Kingdom Come Undone (+9) will arrive like an unexpected steel-toed boot to your aghast face August 28th.

This thing rules. If the medium is the message, then the message here is “dear occupant, there is a bulldozer full of screaming, maladjusted bangers being dropped from 13,000 feet from the cargo hold of a C-130 Hercules onto your location in T minus 3 seconds. The bulldozer is also on fire”.

As if that weren’t enough, vocalist Mike “Soiled Depends” Alexander was kind enough to provide us with a swear breakdown of the release. We offer here for your perusal:

Fuck: 43
Shit: 13
Goddamn: 5
Ass: 2
Cock: 2
Bastard(s): 2
Asshole: 1
Ass: 1
TOTAL – 69 SWEARS

Read more and listen here.

This entire batch of releases will be available for download as top-quality MP3s (as in, not terrible low-quality iTunes files) – along with full digital packaging – from the G7 Download Store on August 28th of this miserable year.