New Local Label GARY Records Does The Splits

By Sarah Cobarrubias in Arts & Entertainment on Jan 7, 2014 5:00PM

When Robyn Chang relocated from Chicago to Taipei in spring 2011 for her gig at Groupon, she didn’t expect to quit her day job and spend her time freelancing and making music around Taiwan with a couple of punk bands.

But that’s just how The Chang rolls, and we’re all the better for it—the local writer and Northwestern student brought back a piece of the Taipei music scene with her when she returned later that fall (read about some of her adventures in this Chicago Reader article) and was inspired to start up GARY Records in collaboration with her partner, Kelley Scott.

The Scott-and-Chang gang are taking a global approach to the label: They only produce international 7-inch splits and use them as tools for introducing faraway music communities. For example, for a split featuring acts from Chicago and Madrid, the Spanish locale would get distribution and public relations in our city and vice-versa (though these releases are also available to buy online as well as in-store at Bric-A-Brac and more shops to come). The label owners also write about the music scenes from which these bands emerge to give readers a taste of the venues, labels, etc. in each global city.

Chang said they started the label because they were fed up with the lack of access to and information on international music.

“[I]t's so annoying to do a search for bands in China—due to translation barriers and the fact that most of those blogs are just super out-of-date or focused on a different genre. Hopefully this label spreads more of an awareness about rad bands elsewhere.”

Today is the label’s first official release: a split featuring Forests out of Taipei and White Lodge from Queensland. As Change explains, Forests is one of the first bands from its scene to latch on to the garage/psych rock craze that’s all the rage over here, and White Lodge’s stuff has a similar surf-rock appeal.

Listen for yourself over at GARY’s Bandcamp then pick it up at Bric-A-Brac or through Garebear's website. The label also already has its next release ready to go—a split bringing together Philadelphia’s Shape Breaker and Dublin’s Fuck Mountain due out Jan. 14—and another one in the works pairing up bands from Allston and Brighton.