Mexican Summer presents Ariel Archives, a comprehensive series of reissues and retrospective collections concentrating on the treasure trove of material recorded and released by Ariel Pink as Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti.
The first installment of the series begins today with the announcement of Underground, Loverboy and Odditties Vol. 2. All three albums arrive October 25 on Mexican Summer. Watch two new videos for unreleased singles "Stray Here With Me" from Odditties Vol. 2, a reworked version of "So Glad" from Loverboy and a 10 minute video called "Chapter 8: Some Tutorials." The video is Chapter 8 in a larger film Dedicated To Boris Karloff that filmmaker Salvador Cresta made with Ariel's involvement. More details of the film will be announced in 2020.
Watch "Stray Here With You" Video
Watch "Chapter 8: Some Tutorials" Video
About the First Instalment of Ariel Archives:
Catalyzing Ariel Pink’s great creative burst from 1998 - 2003, Underground signaled a historic series of albums released as Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti. Underground was originally self-released on cassette in 1999 while Ariel was a 21-year-old undergrad at CalArts. The Ariel Archives edition expands the track-listing of the original Undergroundrelease to include twelve unreleased songs recorded in the same period. Unheard songs such as “Michelle” and “Let’s Stay in the Past” fill in beautiful missing details from Ariel’s earliest recordings, while familiar classics such as “My Molly” are collected for the first time on a full-length release.
Loverboy was recorded between October 2001 and July 2002. Loverboy was created alongside House Arrest and recorded in Ariel’s bedroom inside the Ananda Marga Ashram and Meditation Center. Despite this meditative environment, Loverboy was not a solitary effort. Several of the albums most outstanding songs were collaborative. “Ghosts” and “Loverboy” were co-written with John Maus. Another Loverboy classic, “I Don’t Need Enemies,” was written by Matt Fishbeck a new collaborator and close friend. The Ariel Archives edition presents an expanded reissue of Loverboy transferred and remastered from the original master cassette tapes.
Odditties Vol. 2 is the long awaited second volume of uncollected music by Ariel Pink, compiled from non-album tracks, outtakes and rarities spanning 1999 - 2018. The collection includes unheard music from Ariel’s run of releases as Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti as well as recent recordings made over the last decade. Contributions include tracks co-written with John Maus, Patrik Berger, Mac Demarco and Charlotte Ercoli Coe. In addition there is a cover by The Smiths and a quartet of recent songs recorded in between July 2017 - December 2018.
About Ariel Archives:
Ariel Archives will include definitive reissues of Ariel Pink’s albums released between 1999 and 2004: Underground, The Doldrums, House Arrest, Lover Boy, Scared Famous, and Worn Copy. Surplus material from this period to the present day will be highlighted in two new volumes of collected outtakes and non-album tracks, Oddities Soddities Vol. 2and Vol. 3., plus a new edition of Oddities Soddities Vol. 1. Ariel Archives will complete this retrospective project with the first-ever vinyl release of Stranded at Two Harbors (the debut Holy Shit album co-written by Matt Fishbeck and Ariel Pink) and a new collection of Ariel Pink’s singles and tour-only CD-Rs released in the last decade. Releases in the Ariel Archives series will be expanded to contain much of the original material left off prior reissues that were made available in the mid-2000s and are now out of print.
Ariel Pink’s historic run of releases as Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti unfolded in Los Angeles while Ariel was in his early twenties. Born Ariel Marcus Rosenberg in 1978, and raised in the Beverly Glen neighborhood of Beverly Hills, Ariel went to Beverly Hills High School and then UC Santa Cruz for a year before transferring to CalArts, a reputable art school in Valencia just north of Los Angeles. Ariel departed CalArts early however to concentrate on music: he presented his early masterpiece The Doldrums as a senior thesis project and then left without a degree. Following The Doldrums, and its rudimentary predecessor Underground, Ariel Pink released a half-dozen more albums that culminated in Worn Copy, the last album before Ariel’s five-year hiatus from releasing new music.
Ariel Archives makes an effort to reckon with the remarkable volume of outstanding music Ariel Pink made during this time. Rapidly evolving from crude proto-punk experiments to an adventurous home-recording aesthetic that explored a wide continuum of pop music, Ariel Pink developed a sound and image that would prove highly inventive and hugely influential. Early recordings by Ariel Pink mined his musical obsessions. Underground, for example, fused basic elements from krautrock, post-punk, and industrial / goth music. But soon these expressions of homage and youthful imitation lead Ariel Pink into a deep creative rabbit hole that became the genesis of the Haunted Graffiti catalogue of music.
