Vin Du Select Qualitite, new acoustic guitar LP series, launches

Announcing the release of the first three albums from Vin Du Select Qualitite,
a new acoustic guitar LP series featuring
the debut recording from Joshua Blatchley of Mountain Home,
Mark McGuire of Cleveland's drone hero's Emeralds,
and indie rock legend Chris Brokaw of Codeine, Come, the New Year, Pullman and the New Wave Bandits.

MEET THE PLAYERS

Joshua Blatchley
Singer/Songwriter Joshua Blatchley fronts the band Mountain Home and this is his first solo instrumental guitar album. Blatchley says his live performances are always improvised and unscripted affairs to keep the music interesting to the audience and himself.

As he told the San Diego Reader, "I don't want my music to come across as too rigid. I know where [the songs] start and what should be in them, but there is no real structure."

Stereogum praised his music as being "wandering, openly structured, classically tuned atmospherics." Of his song, "City of Trees Rag," Blatchley says, "(D, A, D, G, B, E), Written originally for the first Mountain Home record while residing in 'The Base of the Mountain' western Idaho."

Mark McGuire
As one-third of Cleveland noise trio Emeralds, Mark McGuire has more than 20 releases and over 70 shows under his belt, with cassettes, CDRs, CDs and vinyl containing his inventive guitar work on it all over the world.

Of his music, McGuire says, "I'm not really trying to 'achieve' anything in particular, I've just always felt connected to music and felt compelled to play. It's the only thing that has always made sense to me and felt right. Music is one of the only things in the world that is truly real, and I just want to be able to devote myself to it as much as I can."

Of his song "Front Porch Breeze," McGuire says, "A song which is mostly improvised, recorded live in an open tuning. It started out as a ten-minute track, but I was only really into the last few minutes. I had just come in from outside when I recorded it and I remember my hands being too cold from the wind to play at first. If I had waited a few minutes to start this would probably be a much longer piece."

Chris Brokaw
Time Out New York has said, "If art is the communication of feeling...Chris Brokaw proves himself to be an artist in full," and Dusted Magazine has praised previous work as, "fully-formed...with peaks and valleys, and a diversity of styles held together by a cohesive aesthetic."

He says of his "Outside My Window" - "written and recorded on the first beautiful afternoon in April. Something terrible was happening that day but I managed to get this out anyway." Lazy Comet Blog has said, "what he's transmitting is quintessentially American" - we concur .

What is Vin Du Select Qualitite?

VDSQ (Vin Du Select Qualitite) is a new acoustic guitar LP series curated by Steve Lowenthal of Swingset Magazine and Plastic Records. The first three releases include the debut recording from Joshua Blatchley of Mountain Home, Mark McGuire, who plays guitar in Cleveland drone hero’s Emeralds, and session-man, indie rock legend Chris Brokaw, who played in bands such as Codeine, Come, The New Year, Pullman, and the New Wave Bandits and many others. The series will be released on high quality LP with Letterpress sleeves, each with a picture of the guitar used to record the record. Track-by-track liner notes will be included.

"The idea behind VDSQ was really to do a label that was a nod to the great guitar-oriented labels like Takoma and Transatlantic but focusing on contemporary artists rather than reissues," said Lowenthal. “I tried to curate a series that transcended genre and really pull together some exceptional musicians from different geographic and musical scenes. The goal is to hopefully bridge the gap between traditional and contemporary styles of music all within the context of acoustic guitar music. The process of each edition of the series is such that it really lets the personality of the player come to the forefront so each record really reflects the essence of the personality of the players."