Moribund Tree is one of those anomalous, ultra-niche record labels that you can't believe is based in Orange County. Founder Steven Antonio decided to create a label that releases only
It sounds extreme,
“but there are a lot of nature and spirituality themes,” he explains. “The ambiance is a good way
to project the feeling of nature into music.” In addition, most of their releases are on cassette to capture that feeling more accurately.
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Antonio always wanted to start a record label, he said, and he
started Moribund Tree (named after a song from Pan's Labyrinth) in
2007. It's a purely DIY venture: each release is made up of 30 tapes,
and he makes five cassettes at a time. He makes the packaging himself,
dubs the tapes and works directly with the artists that he finds on
“MySpace, mostly.”
cassette because people prefer that format,” Antonio says. “I don't want to make more because
they sell out pretty fast, and I need to keep
up with orders.”
On his roster? “There's lot of ambient black metal coming from Canada right now.”
2. Niege N Noirceur
3. Venowl (“an extreme noise project”)
4. Yuko Imada (“Anaheim native that makes both harsh noise and
ambient music as well as runs local record label Zoom Lens”)
