By Zoe McCrea
When you grow up in a city like Winnipeg local talent can be found around every corner, which tends to inspire something different in every person to come across it. Birthday Tapes is the newest project started up by Austin Bouton and Isiah Shellenberg, a pair who plunged into Winnipeg’s music scene as soon as they knew how.
Isiah started off young as a solo singer/songwriter working on bedroom recordings, going by notme. Austin, found his own way to be involved by organizing shows at DIY venues, bars and other locations around the city. Coordinating shows became an interest out of the determination to bring close friends the opportunity to showcase their music. These opportunities gave notme and other young musicians their first chance to play live, and keep a string of shows to follow. The duo have known each other for as long as they could remember, and have developed their tastes and interests through each other, always sharing new ideas and music whenever they could. Keeping up with the local music scene together brought them to many new places, where they would meet all sorts of new people. Being immersed in everything the city has to offer has left both of them wanting to be as involved as they can.
Sometimes in order to get your stuff out there the best option may be to start a completely new platform. Birthday Tapes creates a space for emerging artists to make their own physical copies of their work on cassette. Tapes are an affordable format for musicians to put out their music, while also not costing too much for the listeners to take home a copy. Making the tape itself adds another level of creativity, from adding the artwork inside and out, to designing a logo for the label and customizing your own layout. Each album will have a release show to celebrate all the efforts that went into it. Much like a first birthday, each release show marks the creation of something new and unique being sent out to the world. Birthdays can be unpredictable and maybe even cause unease as you take on a new year. Releases reflect the uncertainty over what’s to come once the music is out there, and that the experience will be different for everyone.
Birthday Tapes’ first release is notme’s first studio-recorded EP Sinking with a second older EP Wasted Time included on the second side. The release show was on August 19 at the Handsome Daughter with notme, Sam Singer, Fever Rose, and Halcyon. Future plans include a compilation tape called Birthday Wishes: Vol 1. This mixture will feature local artists, mainly from Winnipeg but with a few tracks coming from various parts of Canada. Birthday Wishes will come out in late December with performances by a selection of the great artists used on the comp. With lots of exciting plans to watch out for, Birthday Tapes is open to any new artists or ideas for future projects!
Keep up with Birthday Tapes through their Bandcamp birthdaytapesmb.bandcamp.com