Statement Of Intent

Queasy Listening goes against the grain of mass production and its qliphothic underside: the devaluation of culture through mass discarding of its mass produced, but now no longer glittering artefacts. There is nothing more depressing than the sight of cut-price, low meaning CDs filling the shelves of our Megastores, or a festering, New Romantic LP, polluting the once fecund middens of our charity shops. Where is the treasure in owning such a commodity? Would an artist paint the same canvas a million times for the sake of mass-consumption (consumption in this context resonates its true etymology: that of disease, sickness, waste and starvation - cultural starvation). Maybe the painter would, if he were Warhol or Duchamp, but surely not without irony?

The Fabulously Rare

So the vision of the fabulously rare secreted in the dung heap emerges from that cultural and ethical hiatus. For this reason, Queasy Listening is dedicated to limited edition releases, not at extortionate cost nor compromised by cheap presentation or delivery. The exercise here is not to provide exclusive chic as useless and vapid as Armani toilet roll, but to rally against the unresearched consumerism that pervades our adult taste centres. By the other token, Queasy Listening is not merely a profit margin based on a pile it high sell it cheap policy - quite the contrary, our stance is very much against the record labels that run with the operational mentality of a biscuit company.

Chance Meetings...

The discovery of a rare recording should be as exquisite and toxic as touching a deadly but beautiful orchid in a forgotten oriental garden. A record (or indeed a book) has that certain power to change the direction of our lives. But what chance do we have of finding that metaphysical flower, if they are all laid out as categorised and dead as museum exhibits in our sterile megastores. Our spiritual identities have become fossilised by the oppressive taxonomy of taste and stratification - Thrash; Ambient; Rap;Soul;Indie - all Darwinian and dying in their comfortable gene pools.

It's a simple fact, it's not possible to change the course of your destiny by that wonderful chance encounter in the Megastore, the only way is for the flower to find you...

Lost Objects

"Lost Objects" is our attempt to provide that chance encounter: it is the logical, desparate and dadaistic endpoint of our angst - the apotheosis of our disdain for the record business - conceptually, a "Lost Object" is the aesthetic isomer of the "Found Object". "Lost Objects", initially anyway, are original recordings by artists on the Queasy Listening label that are to be tactically secreted at various symbolic locations, it is envisaged, both in the UK and abroad. Each discarded recording will be professionally produced and packaged, but distributed in very limited editions. Each release will be itemised in our catalogue for the intrepid butterfly collector, but unavailable for mass-consumption. In all likelihood, the recipient of that object will have no knowledge of it's origin or intention. These recordings may even be camouflaged by an innocous veneer, all the more to entice an unwitting 'victim' to touch it's poisonous tendrils...

Cultural Assassins And Guerilla Distribution

As the magickal artist and sorceror Austin Spare said "Does not matter need not be". Away with the lust of results, to lose our egotistic hold of creative endeavour is to experience a mild form of the cosmic grief that will be ours forever one day and who knows when. Hence, the deliberate loss of our recordings becomes vital psycho-spiritual training excercise for any would-be cultural assassin. We sincerely hope others follow suit. Politically, "Lost Objects" can be construed as a Guerilla Distribution campaign, a reaction to the tyrannical coolness of the major indie label/distributor clique.

The Commercial Arm

Of course all this high minded endeavour does not come without a little payback. To this end, the commerical arm of Queasy Listening operates as a purveyor of limited runs of publically available recordings. As with all releases on Queasy Listening, the available material will be a cross-pollination of unclassified and mediumistically scryed for genres. Practically, it is hoped that this facet of the operation will cover the overhead of the "Lost Objects" project but also fulfill the strategic aim of exposing, in a more public arena, the true intention of Queasy Listening: that of creative growth, alchemy, cultural revolution and situationist fun .