Independent Project Records

Part of the wave of UK artists that took advantage not merely of punk but independent labels and the DIY approach in particular, Woo made their initial mark in terms of formal releases in 1982 with the wonderfully titled Whichever Way You Are Going, You Are Going Wrong. Much like another pair of brothers, Nikki Sudden and Epic Soundtracks of Swell Maps, Clive and Mark Ives had been steadily writing, recording and playing songs at home since the early 1970s, in their case working on songs in an arty/moody rock vein but with their own particular quirks and unexpected twists, particularly with early Roland electronics. That sense of both accomplished practice and sometimes spare and rough but ready sonics is evident from the energetic opening instrumental “Swingtime.” Their singing only emerges here and there throughout, with the album focusing more on a series of atmospheres, with everything from clarinet to triangles adding to the arrangements, even adding a bit of full-on epic rock guitar on the dreamy “Razorblades.” (Independent Project Records first reissued the album in 1987, then with bonus tracks in 2026.)

It’s a short release at just over half an hour, yet it’s a classic example of a snapshot in time where nobody knew what was going to happen in both the short and long term future. Stockton, California’s Torn Boys never released anything formally during their short life, so 1983 pulls together studio cuts, a live concert snippet and two songs from a local college radio session, and the result’s an immediately engaging treat, of its time but at the same time interviewing various unexpected undercurrents. Founding members and general underground art fiends Jeffrey Clark and Kelly Foley had an ear for the dreamier side of early 80s indie rock harmonies as well as various Paisley Underground efforts from their home state, while Duncan Atkinson added drum machine and keyboard tech and later teenage recruit Grant Lee Phillips, soon to form Shiva Burlesque with Clark, brought on more guitar. Their evident and freely admitted love of sounds like Television’s intricate guitar interplay is apparent enough on songs like “Mystery” and “Lady Luck,” while a cover of the classic “Mack the Knife” has its own spooky groove going.

The second and final Red Temple Spirits album found the band at once exploring its sound further and giving a couple of smart nods to their inspirations in the past, creating as sharp a goth/postpunk fusion with psychedelic spacerock out there on either side of the Cure or their more direct contemporaries and fellow LA musicians Jane’s Addiction. With “City of Millions” feeling like a salute to its surroundings as well as a portrait of a state of mind to kick things off, William Faircloth’s slightly wracked and frail but never unclear vocals ride the sweeping flow of the music, Dallas Taylor’s guitar strong without being overpowering. Indeed if anything the rhythm section of Dino Paredes and Thomas Pierik always has the forefront, a moody churning stomp and rumble. While calling a song “Soft Machine” is a clear nod, there’s no direct connection as such to that band; instead, the quartet executes two inspired covers, of Pink Floyd’s “Set The Controls To the Heart of the Sun” and the 13th Floor Elevators’ “Rollercoaster,” putting their own particular stamp on them and sitting well with originals like “In The Wild Hills.”

The path from punk and post-punk musician to electronic maven was one followed by many different artists worldwide over the eighties and beyond, with one example being the LA based Barry Craig. After early work in acts like Afterimage, Craig began a lengthy solo run as A Produce with his debut album The Clearing in 1988. With the participation of various guests, including F/i founder Richard Franecki on keyboards on the moodily ominous “October 1st” and former Afterimage compatriot Daniel Voznick adding bass as well as vocals to “Ashes of Love,” Craig wasn’t so much aiming for the incipient techno scene as an at-times meditative but still generally rhythmic series of mostly instrumental compositions, with roots in artier and sometimes more austere fare than generic and more easily marketable New Age bin fillers. Some compositions are more of their time than others, feeling like soundtrack music for a straight to VHS urban noir looking for a home, but given how much of that music eventually fed into vaporwave and beyond, there’s value to be had in pieces like “Owachomo” as a result.

After the original incarnation of Savage Republic went into general stasis during the 1990s, Bruce Licher turned his main musical impulses to the formation of a new band, Scenic, with a goal towards instrumental albums and songs recorded with inspiration from various specific locations. In the case of their full length debut, 1995’s Incident at Cima, that was the east Mojave Desert, and from the start with the slow sweeping moods of “The Shifting Sand” there’s a definite sense of the mysterious at play. By no means is it simply steady atmospherics – “The Kelso Run,” first released as a single the previous year, is in a line of descent from Savage Republic’s intensity and their taking inspiration from all corners, where both Ennio Morricone western soundtracks and surf vibes mix and match. Throughout, the core trio of Licher on guitar, Shiva Burlesque veteran James Brenner on bass and Brock Wirtz on drums effectively create something that works in numerous modes, from acoustic-led pieces like “Down Black Canyon Road,” “Hole In The Wall” and “The Mid Hills” to the shimmering kicks of “On The Dune.”

One can be forgiven for thinking that Scatological might be something much more in a crude punk or metal vein given its title, but from the opening notes of Indian Bingo’s debut release on Independent Project Records, it’s much more clear that they have an ear for tuneful late 1980s indie rock with an ear towards the delicately melancholy post-punk side of things. A lot of this hangs on the vocals by Mike Boul, who has a tone that slightly suggests a less fraught and quavery Morrissey to a degree. Combined with the clear and direct arrangements and performances, led by guitarists Phil Carney and Bill Boyle, Scatological is often a rich experience, a kind of capturing of a sonic moment soon before grunge crushed expectations of what ‘alternative’ was supposed to be. Songs like “Separation Days” and “Pathetic Thing” showcase the group at its generally busiest, not quite rough sonically but quicker in pace and with Boul’s singing carefully situated in the mix. But it’s the slower flow of “Drowsy” and the very Smithsy feeling of “Goon Lagoon” that capture the album’s easy, engaging beauty best.

The Ophelias were a kind of classic of the form: the mid to late 1980s US rock band that thrived in an indie context specifically by wishing it was some kind of forever late 1960s UK trippy psychedelic pop art/proto-prog eternal moment. Led by Leslie Medford, who assembled this compilation for release on Independent Project in 2022, the Ophelias are well represented by Bare Bodkin, drawing on each of their three albums and a further handful of unreleased songs to provide a fine taster of their often excellent art. Many of said unreleased songs start the album, all proving to be quality enough that it’s a surprise they didn’t surface back then. (“Sleepy Hamlet” alone feels like an amazing theme song to an epic movie, while “The Golden Calf Played Rock’n’Roll,” with its alternately elfin and deeply dramatic vocals and trumpet parts amid the fuzz, is a lovely confection.) The older songs feel all the fresher here, whether it’s the massive stomp of “Holy Glow” or an engaging folky version of the classic “Mr. Rabbit.” (One other cover, the Kinks’s “Wicked Annabella,” is reclaimed from a 12” single release.)

On their second full album, For Against showed that they weren’t simply excellent students of 1980s UK guitar-led postpunk and its air of energy, elegance and power, but absolutely the equals of some of their teachers. Bassist/vocalist Jeff Runnings was in literally excellent voice, his sweet higher tones riding the overall flow of the songs right from the start, all with an air of intense feelings without having to strain for them. (It’s a slight stretch to say he was the US equivalent of his contemporary Patrick Fitzgerald of Kitchens of Distinction, but even without being as direct in his lyrics here, it’s a testament to both strong songwriting and real emotion.) Matched by Harry Dingman’s energetic and clean way around guitar and Greg Hill’s crisp drumming, it’s song for song a simply stellar showcase for the trio, whether the opening beats of “Sabres,” the title track’s ominous intensity, “The Effect”’s striking slower swing, “They Said”’s delicious melancholia,  Hearing the full band shift into a truly elegant bridge on “Stranded in Greenland” is pure sonic pleasure, and it’s just one remarkable highlight from December.

Jack Rabid made a name for himself not merely as a very active music critic from the 1980s on but as the co-founder and editor of the highly regarded long running zine The Big Takeover, rapidly approaching its fiftieth anniversary as of this writing. Rabid also put his money where his mouth is by working in the band Springhouse for many years, often featuring album and single designs courtesy of Bruce Licher. It was only with the band’s last full-length to date and first in fifteen years, 2008’s From Now to OK, that the trio released an album on Licher’s label Independent Project. Eschewing their earlier first-wave shoegaze days (aside from the concluding “Anew”), From Now To OK finds them in a more generally psych/pop vein – the strings on the opening “Passion” suggest that much – and with a brisk way around mixed acoustic/electric arrangements. The singing throughout is bright without being cloying, and Rabid’s playing combined with Larry Heinemann and Mitch Friedland’s rhythm work is consistently attractive, creating a dreamy way around Beatles and power-pop moves without being overly fussy.

Having signed some of the US’s most Anglophilic postpunk acts to Independent Project Records in the 1980s, Bruce Licher showed he had the same touch when it came to similarly Stateside bands in the 1990s going nuts for a newer UK sound: shoegaze. Part of an initial hotbed of acts out of Arizona in that era, including Alison’s Halo and Lovesliescrushing, Half String followed up some initial EPs on that label with their sole full-length, 1996’s A Fascination With Heights. With bandleader Brandon Capps leading the way on vocals, guitar and production, it’s still very much a lovely combination of talents at its core, with Matt Kruse adding extra guitar texture and melodies and David Rogers and Kimber Lanning an energetic, warm rhythm section. Not many albums might start off with a winsomely sung song to a tortoise (perhaps metaphorically) but “Shell Life” sets the tone just right with the feedback, hooks and gentle harmonies, and from there the quartet couldn’t put a foot wrong. Among the remarkable standouts: the exuberant indie-pop start of “Hurrah?,” the woozy kick of “Momentum” and the quick rush of “Departures.”

Following their vivid and unsettling debut album The Vision And The Voice, Kommunity FK aimed for a somewhat smoother approach on their second full-length, the compelling and still highly regarded LA goth rock classic Close One Sad Eye. The striking cover photo of lead figure Patrick Mata, complemented by Bruce Licher’s design, certainly helped set expectations but the opening track alone confirmed it with what turned out to be their signature song. “Something Inside Me Has Died,” a sharp combination of moody rhythm section drive from Kevin Kipnis and Matt Chaiken, Margaret Arana’s gently ghostly keyboards and Mata’s guitar dramatics and nervously intense singing, simply does the business. But the immediately following “The Other World” arguably ramps it up further with Chaiken’s blasting drum rolls and Arana’s ominous drones setting the tone, and from there it all unfolds in a series of dark ruminations. Having a three song title stretch be called “Debauchery,” “Junkies” and “Trollops” may gild the lily a bit, but the keyboard-led dance punch of “The Vision And The Voice” is another complete standout.

One of the flashpoint moments of the heyday of US 80s college rock, landing smack in the middle of the decade, Camper Van Beethoven’s debut album Telephone Free Landslide Victory was almost emblematic of the form in several ways. There’s its skew-whiff sense of humor, guitarist Jonathan Segel also busting out violin, above all its generally scrappy energy, drawing from any number established sounds and styles worldwide – not for nothing is the opening number a Tex-Mex ska instrumental called, simply enough, “Border Ska” – but clearly only existing right there and then. With punk already seen as something established and past – breakout single “Take the Skinheads Bowling” is the obvious reference, but so is a separate song called “Skinhead Stomp,” the woozy and slow runthrough of Black Flag’s “Wasted,” the full-on hardcore parody of “Club Med Sucks” – there’s almost a sense of an adept but never overly flashy quintet seeing what they can get away with. Meanwhile, David Lowery’s regular-guy-drawl speak/singing nearly invents slackers and Pavement at the same time.

While released by Independent Project Records in 1990, The Other Side of the Fence collected recordings made by the Abecedarians prior to their transatlantic debut on Factory Records with the epochal “Smiling Monarchs” single in 1985. Per the band’s liner notes on the collection, they felt the versions of the songs here, as separate from later versions on releases like Eureka, ‘more accurately captured the soul of the band,’ and there’s little question that they showed the Orange County, CA group to be in truly absolute but thoroughly accomplished thrall to the general vein of early 80s UK postpunk they clearly loved. There’s no early “Smiling Monarchs” itself, but from the opening “Beneath The City of the Hedonistic Bohemians” with its nervous John Blake bass line and gently heroic echoed guitar by Chris Manecke, not to mention the rushed drums from Kevin Dolan and Manecke’s lightly intense but never overbearing singing, any listener is in good hands. Hearing Manecke’s occasional keyboards add gentle texture on songs like “Come Out” is another plus, while “Switch” showcases a peppier New Wave side.

Originally released in 2020 as a bonus vinyl album accompanying the deluxe version of Bruce Licher’s art/label overview of Independent Project Records, Savage Impressions, Tape Excavation received a later expanded release on CD and digitally in 2023. Either way, it’s both a compilation and a very handy Licher career rarities overview when it comes to his music, from his pre-Savage Republic acts Project 197 and Bridge through to a 2019 recording with his wife Karen Nielsen Licher as SR2. The earliest clutch of recordings is unsurprisingly dominated by Savage Republic outtakes, including one of their famed UCLA tunnel rehearsals, with Licher alternating between wirey guitar and heavy bass. Later, the focus is more on Licher’s strictly solo work, including demos and a soundtrack session, though a couple of cuts from his striking 1990s/2000s band Scenic surface as well. Other rarities include an earlier effort with his wife as the Lemon Wedges from the mid-1990s, a live 2004 collaboration with Henry Frayne in the latter’s Lanterna guise, and a wholly separate recording project for Licher, Exploratorium.

While LA’s Afterimage existed as a band for some decades in one form or another via founding figure and lead singer Dan Voznick, its earliest version is the one celebrated here in this collection released on Independent Project Records in 2024. The original quartet, including future underground electronic musician A Produce on keyboards and guitar and later Psi-Com founder and eventual Shiva Burlesque member Richard Robinson on bass, demonstrated a ready ear for the wide roil of artier and moodier punk and post-punk sounds happening both locally and elsewhere in the world, with Voznick adding saxophone at points to contrast with his unsettled but clear singing style. Faces To Hide collects both their “Strange Confession”/“The Long Walk” debut single and the subsequent Fade In EP, both from 1981, along with a variety of further demos and live performances, including a version of the actual song “Faces To Hide.” A particular high point comes from the gripping one-two of the studio versions of “Afterimage” and “Satellite of Love” (not a Lou Reed cover, but including a sharp Bernard Sumner guitar quote).

In an inspired bit of work, David J’s 2026 album for Independent Project Records grows out of his previous release for them, a three disc effort from 2024 called Tracks From The Attic that showcased a wide range of demos for songs never otherwise released, from the 1980s until recent years. Revisited completes the circle with J producing exactly that – formal band versions of ten of said collection’s songs, with various changes here and there to suit newer times or other artistic impulses. J’s signature singing, understatedly gentle but with a distinct sense of presence and style, remains strong; if anything age simply gives him a sense of different possible approaches, such as the clear hint of Bowie on “I Wish Those Spacemen Would Come.” Similarly his eye for a good deft wry line or title gets a nice further showcase here, thus “Homo Sapien Blues” and “If Muzak Be The Junk Food Of Love.” Meantime, having nearly everything get a fuller arrangement nicely recreates the feeling of his live band performances, where the vibes are understated but easy energy in a comfortable club setting.

A friend of this reviewer once described this album as “Joy Division if they’d grown up in the desert,” and in a way that really does capture the impact of Savage Republic’s debut effort. Tragic Figures wasn’t just a striking album in its own right but, in the same way that Peter Saville’s designs for Factory Records captured something further, Savage Republic’s cofounder Bruce Licher’s own style that would inform all of Independent Project Records’ releases made its own vivid mark in turn, featuring images of executions from post-Islamic Revolution Iran on chipboard. But the key of course remains the music, and there is indeed deeply intense percussive and bass-driven energy not dissimilar from the famed Manchester foursome, as on the snaky “Ivory Coast.” But they were their own beast, vocals delivered in higher pitches of extremity and guitar parts feeling descended from Dick Dale’s Arabic surf shredding. Song titles like “Attempted Coup: Madagascar” and “Zulu Zulu” add to the sense of intercepted foreign reporting, but having a straightforward one like “Kill the Fascists!” has the gift of simple clarity.

The second of three releases that Deception Bay put out on Independent Project Records, 1991’s Fortune Days is in fact an archival look back to early recordings done by the group in 1984 and 1985. That sense of the first wave of postpunk’s driving yet dreamy impact playing out in America can be heard from the opening song “Days of Issue” – if it’s reductive to distill it all down to Joy Division, there’s little question they had a perfect home on Savage Republic’s label for these efforts, and the connections to numerous other musicians with an interest in the dark and driving can be heard throughout. As the core of the group, guitarist Jay Dunn and bassist Carl Boland already know how to make their instruments carry things well with the punchy drumming (“Watching The Right Fall” being a strong example there). Whatever sense of woodshedding is at play is easily balanced by how compelling songs like “Raven” and “With Not A Sound” are. Dunn’s vocals are understated rather than declamatory but this adds to the calmly alienated mood well, a sense of human connection finding its way among the shadows.

Amid all his years playing with Camper Van Beethoven and the Monks of Doom, guitarist Greg Lisher’s had a solo career running irregularly since 2000. His fourth album, as well as his first for Independent Project Records, 2024’s Underwater Detection Method, brings in a new musical approach, incorporating keyboards for the first time. Working with accomplished journeyman drummer Michael Jerome, along with Stevie Blacke on a variety of string instruments, Lisher handles that plus guitar and bass to create a series of engaging, often gently mysterious wordless pieces. Besides having a gift for wry songtitles that people like Leo Kottke might appreciate – thus “The Illusion of Depth” and “Zen And The Art of Long Distance Driving” – Lisher isn’t so much trying to create stereotypical imaginary soundtracks as perfect miniatures of mood, suggestive while being engaging in their own right, whether the steady, serene drive of “Travels Through Liguria” or the gently haunted tones of “Tunneling.” There’s even some polite funk jamming going on with “Finding The Future,” and why not indeed?

Following four years after Source, an overview of the Independent Project Records label released by them as part of their return to regular activity, 2025’s The Well acts as complement, sequel and extension of the original compilation’s brief. At over forty songs over two CDs, it’s very much a deep dive, but it’s also a way not only to sample some of the label’s all time acts but a wide variety of obscurities and one-offs across the years. Some of the most welcome tracks are from older acts yet to get full reissues or selections from acts new and old fitting with the label’s goals, including Fourwaycross, driveway ceiling, Bpeople, NEEF, Deception Bay and Kommunity FK. Newer acts to the label feature as well, including David J and Alison Clancy, while For Against are represented by a solo selection from Jeffrey Runnings from the album recorded before his tragic passing from cancer. Add to that songs from label stalwarts and standouts like Scenic, Shiva Burlesque, Half String and of course Savage Republic, and the whole is a remarkable portrait of a label and an aesthetic still developing over the years.