Musician delves underground, returns with gifts

Musician and founder of label-defying label L'Animaux Tryst (Field) Recordings, Matt Lajoie admits he has no desire for mainstream acceptance, and doesn't really mind playing to a crowd of ten people if he is making something that resonates.

“Much of my favorite music was made by people 30 or 40 years ago who lived and died in obscurity on various private press labels, so that kind of existence doesn't bother me in the least,” said Lajoie, who aside from his solo projects Herbcraft and Cursillistas, is a member of Planets Around The Sun and Tempera.

So if it’s top 40 fame and glory you’re after, stay well clear of Lajoie’s L'Animaux Tryst (Field) Recordings label, although Lajoie is adept as generating the sort of mp3-driven blog buzz that is the postmodern cred equivalent of a Billboard rating.

This buzz that has landed the Portland resident and Maine native opening gigs for former Sonic Youth members, connections with some of indie music’s fastest rising acts, and a release on prominent indie label Woodsist’s new sister label Hello Sunshine.And tonight, it brings a Brooklyn-caliber experimental show to The Apohadion.

Launched in 2006 by the USM librarian (many students were no doubt surprised to discover they were checking out books from the musician they'd discovered blog surfing) the Lajole label specializes in small cassette tape and CD-R runs of music from Lajoie’s various acts and like-minded collaborators in the local freak-folk or drone-experimental scene.

The label was born out of Lajoie’s internship with with independent Portland-based label Time Lag Records, which specializes in acid/psych-folk and act as a distributor for other independent labels who release music in a similar genre. Well known within the genre, Time Lag will close their retail location above Strange Maine at the end of August, but continue selling their wares through Strange Maine and their website.

“I remember the first time I met Nemo [Birdstrup, Time Lag founder] he asked me if I wanted to intern because I wanted to run my own label, and I said 'no way,' I saw myself just as a musician at that point, but learned everything I had to learn about running an independent label from those few months at Time-Lag,” Lajoie said.

“The lasting connection to Time-Lag was what got L'animaux Tryst and Cursillistas off the ground and into people's environment,” he said.

Tonight, Lajoie’s connections in the psychedelic underground pay off for Portland, with Herbcraft luring Matt Mondaile’s solo project Ducktails to town for a show at the Apohadion. Mondaile is the guitarist for the up-and-coming suburban psych-pop outfit Real Estate, and will be backed on stage by opening act and fellow Ridgewood, New Jersey band Big Troubles. (see today’s Featured Show for details).

The L'animaux Tryst label was born from a sort of solo experimentation that Lajoie likens to an audio journal or sketchbook — a way to throw sounds against the wall and see what sticks.

“I was starting to make recordings that didn't feel necessarily like ‘albums’, so I started it to sort of release small-scale sketches, like EPs on CD-R and cassette.”

Lajoie honed his 4-track chops and started releasing the work of his friends. “I started offering to put their stuff out as well, and it just sort of rolled along for a few years, getting bigger and bigger till I was doing vinyl editions,” he said.

But vinyl can be an expensive habit – Lajoie said he almost went broke putting out seven-inch EPs, and decided to refocus his efforts on CD-Rs and cassettes, a format that is gaining traction in the indie music sphere, where the unique hiss-and-pop grittiness of a tape adds a final filter to the low-fi, home-recordings.

"If 500 CDs cost $500 to make, 500 vinyls cost $3,000," Lajoie told the Portland Phoenix in a recent interview. But the same niche value that applies to vinyl can be extended to cassettes, especially those produced by Lajoie who, taking a page from the book of Time Lag’s Nemo, crafts handmade cover arts and colorful tapes that make the dated technology fascinating and collectible.

Lajoie is part of an unofficial collective of experimental musicians who haunt Portland bedrooms and shared living spaces.

“Some folks just kind of hide away, which makes Portland a somewhat mythical place for the underground heads in the esoteric music world, it seems pretty small and close-knit because there's a lot of cross-pollination,” he said; the live incarnation of Lajoie solo project Herbcraft is dubbed “Earthcraft” and is an amalgam of musicians from Cursillistas, Planets Around the Sun, and Tempera, a/k/a Lajoie’s roommates.

“The Herbcraft / Earthcraft live thing is a lot about me bringing a song into the living room and us all figuring out how to present it the most sincerely and accurately as possible,” he said.

During an Herbcraft show, it’s not difficult to imagine what that living room might look like; Lajoie et al do their best to recreate their communal living space for every gig, but he said it’s more than just window dressing.

“Another reason why when we play live we do the incense, candles, lamplight, blankets on the floor, afghans thing is because we sort of try to keep ourselves in that living room vibration, where we're all close and grounded and have these common connections to pull from, otherwise getting up on stage is a pretty alienating experience,” Lajoie said.

Herbcraft aims to create an experience that’s about more than just the music, taking inspiration from the Acid Test and Trips Festival and Exploding Plastic Inevitable events of the 1960’s, but recognizes that the ambient, incensed-infused drone can be a polarizing style.

“We've never really been able to draw much of a crowd in Portland, I do see how some of the aesthetics of our style is an instant turn-off to most listeners who have grown up listening to major label records, radio, even most indie labels, said Lajoie, whose show last month at Mayo Street Arts drew ten attendees, including the venue’s three employees. “But I don't think my records are that much stranger than most pre-The Wall Pink Floyd, and I'm actually far more inspired by Zeppelin and Black Sabbath than people might think,” he said.

Despite being lauded by influential music blogs, considered to be the taste-makers of indie music, Lajoie said the band has to make for Brooklyn, and even then there no guarantees. “Sacred Harp & Herbcraft was the best/most poorly attended show of 2k10,” tweeted the music blogger behind ChocolateBobka.blogspot.com after their NYC performance in July.

But for Lajoie, a good crowd is one that is interested in the show, regardless of size. “That was personally one of my favorite shows ever, and it was mostly because it was under-attended but attended by people who were really into it,” he said. “I'd rather play to a room of 10 folks who are enraptured by what's going on that to try to appeal to 100 folks in a bar or something,” Lajoie said.

So Lajoie will continue to churn out content, no matter who is listening, and continue to search the deeper, darker corners of the Portland underground for hidden talent to share with the world.

Currently on Lajoie’s radar? A CD-R from Jakob Battick, a local act who dabbles in the darker side of folk. “He just dropped this CD-R in my hands a couple weeks ago, Jared Fairfield's Mysteries, and it's like one of the greatest local albums I've ever heard,” said Lajoie.

“I'm open to releasing anything of any genre, it just depends on what I'm digging at the moment, maybe people are on a slightly different trip but I'm generally pretty open-minded about music that is honest and sincere and somehow idiosyncratic,” he said.

Herbcraft performs tonight with Ducktails and Big Troubles, 8 p.m. at The Apohadion. $5 suggested donation.