At-one-time-Long Beach-based label GSL–home of Mars Volta’s first EP, Le Shok’s LP, De Facto, Free Moral Agents, Coaxial, Operator and I think Sexy Time Explosion (no go for them but try Blood Red Orchestra and Look Daggers) right at the end?–officially shuts it down today, marking fourteen years that started with federal student loan funding and eventually put a Locust 7″ in every teenage California home. Label founder Sonny Kay explains a little here:

In recent years, we’ve experienced the onset of factors that have seriously limited our ability to maintain what we feel is the essence of the label; the experimental attitude and artistic freewheeling of times past are simply no longer sustainable. Rather than compromise our goals and beliefs, or allow our course to be charted by financial constraint and an industry in flux, we’ve decided the time has come for GSL to cease releasing new music, and to close this chapter of our story.

Your final spasm of mailorder to be completed with Le Shok’s We Are Electrocution, Mars Volta’s Tremulant, Neon King Kong’s Mix Up The Mix, Starvations’ Get Well Soon, Free Moral Agents’ Everybody’s Favorite Weapon, Coaxial’s Phantom Syndrome and Coaxial’s self-titled, and more as I think of them.

More info to maybe follow…

Tags: gsl, labels, local music, Music