When I was first tapped to be a junior member of the we're twins records collective, "Halloween Dot Com" by then-defunct And Spiders was already in the label vaults and became an instant favorite of mine. By Halloween 2002, the band had restarted with me along on bass, and I had caught a recording of the Most Dangerous Game of Cat and Mouse Band playing "Monster Mash" off-season in order to confuse their audience. Putting together "We're Twins All Hallow's Eve" as a CDR single was pretty low-hanging fruit. We distributed many of them at the CMJ New Music Conference in New York, and I was personally able to hand one to outsider music expert Irwin Chusid at the WFMU record fair. A huge success overall, it was only available for free.
At this point, creating a body of work of festive holiday music for the underserved Hallowe'en market seemed like a great idea, but it was tough to get motivated to put it together early enough in the year to have it out by October 31. Remember that this was happening in olden times when this process actually involved burning physical audio media and photocopying artwork. The 2003 Halloween went a little more conceptual with an import maxi-single format with four new original halloween songs, plus alternate versions and the two songs from 2002. The back said "Made in Romania" to fit the import maxi theme and shout out to all the draculas over there.
I think that there was some amount of progress toward a 2004 iteration, but it didn't come together and instead we put on a Hallowe'en show at Totally Awesome House in which local bands played tribute to other local bands. It was a mixed success, and confused the community which is always a good sign. With an extra year to plan, the 2005 hallowe'en release became very ambitious. It included 2 CDRs, one of brand new halloween jams and one of selected recordings from the 10/31/2004 show (none of which appear here) plus a 3" CDR of the 6 old jams, a plastic spider, stickers and bonus artwork by EJC. The whole thing was wrapped in a hallowe'en napkin and duct-taped and mod-podged together so it couldn't be opened without destroying the package. I consider it a big success in my creative exploration of innovative CDR packaging formats, but I'm not sure it sold any copies. I bought some back from Encore a couple years later.
By chance this year I happened to get these recordings out at an inappropriate time of year so here they are in case anyone is interested in hearing them. - JAV 31oct2017
credits
released October 31, 2017
cover drawing by Eleanor Josephine Clowney 2003
color process by JAV 2005 & 2017
tracks 1-2 originally released on We're Twins All Hallow's Eve CDR EP 2002
tracks 3-6,15 originally released on We're Twins All Hallow's Eve 2003 CDR maxi
tracks 7-14 originally released on We're Twins Hallowe'en 2005 CDR multimedia assemblage
tracks 1,3,5,8,10,11 are new "remasters" by JAV 2017
We're Twins Records was.a CD-R label that existed from 2001-2007 in Ann Arbor, MI and put out about 50 releases in very
small quantities. This page is an archival repository of selected music released on the label and other related sounds from the period.
Patrick Elkins and Aleise Barnett performing spontaneously composed a capella songs in bookstores and libraries, originally released in 2005 on our sister label Chew Your Own Records weretwins
Pairing lo-fi indie rock with silvery folk instrumentation, the self-described "bedroom pop wizard" casts a cozy, poignant spell. Bandcamp New & Notable Jan 11, 2024