WELL: THE INDEPENDENT PROJECT
VARIOUS (2CD) - CD

UPC: 761971509175
Label: INDEPENDENT PROJECT
Format: CD
Release Date: January 9, 2026
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“Snow White is hardly what you would call an indie rock icon (maybe it’s just that the sleeves she wore were too puffy), but she was savvy enough to go to a well in search of a good tune. We all noticed it when we were children: prompted by her old-fashioned coo, the medieval-looking structure made of rough-hewn stones turned into a far more elegant wishing well, whose echo joined Disney’s first princess in song. Literally or metaphorically, wells have always stood for bringing to the surface hidden depths. Whether secrets, desires, revelations or more simply (yet vitally) water, what emerges from a well tends to have regenerating qualities. What used to be underground is suddenly visible, audible, a pivotal new component in a character’s journey. This is Independent Project Records’ own take on digging deep and unearthing revelatory treasures. What you’ll find looking at these depths is not a Prince Charming (enough of those), but something far more rewarding. Music. A trip through the past, present and future of a label that for forty-five years has made the most prominent part of its name, that resounding “Independent”, not a trendy epithet but a mission.

Recently I found myself crate digging and talking to the record store’s owner. Nothing new, to be honest. But the conversation somehow turned to Independent Project Records, a label they were unfamiliar with. Predictably, they asked what kind of music IPR specialised in. For someone who can name both cornerstones and deep cuts from the catalogue with a certain dexterity, I was momentarily speechless. Indeed, what is the IPR sound I’ve so often enthused about? How can early Camper Van Beethoven and A Produce sit in the same roster of artists and have the label’s discography be so distinctive, so coherent?

The two-album compilation you’re holding in your hands is an invite to join the dots and find out what makes Afterimage – the early 80s band The Los Angeles Times once called LA’s own Joy Division – and Alison Clancy – the artist making ethereal ambient dream pop in the basement of New York’s Metropolitan Opera House, where she works as a dancer- kindred spirits. You’re invited to find similarities in the way The Ophelias reclaimed San Francisco’s unfettered psychedelic rock roots at a time (the mid 80s) when the city had consigned itself to the commercial muscle of arena rock, and the way Half String brought a wide-eyed shoegaze revolution outside 90s indie’s hotspots, heading the Beautiful Noise scene in Arizona.

What all the artists appearing in this decades-spanning, genre-defying compilation seem to have in common is a certain transfixing quality. It may be put in motion by the hypnotic rumble of a post-punk groove or by the celestial peaks of an ambient piece so immersive it seems capable of freezing time. These are musicians with a determination to do things their own way.

When he launched Independent Project Records in 1980, Bruce Licher saw the label as an opportunity to get his own music out. Housed in striking, instantly recognisable letterpress-printed sleeves, IPR releases soon started to include works by friends, fellow art students at UCLA and new underground musicians Licher admired. If he wanted to hear a band’s music and couldn’t find it anywhere, he’d release it himself. Through the years, IPR went on to give a platform to voices that didn’t quite fit into the stiff boxes of the music industry. The results may not have involved six-figure returns, but, instead, could count on perceptive intuitions (Camper Van Beethoven, of whom a rare early demo is included here, got their start on IPR), fruitful artistic alliances and lifelong friendships. Jeffrey Runnings, a young Savage Republic fan from Nebraska who in 1984 wrote a letter to Licher wanting to increase communication, would three years later release his band’s debut album on IPR. That was, of course, For Against, an all-time favourite to many long-standing IPR devotees. The album, Echelons, launched a lasting partnership and brought Licher a Grammy nomination for Best Album Package. In late 2024 Runnings sent a tape-worth of new songs to Bishop, California, where Licher now resides and operates. A few months later, that old-fashioned cassette tape had become Piqued, a stunning album released by IPR shortly after Runnings passed away due to stage 4 cancer. The single ‘Heretofore’ appears here: a timeless post-punk gem brimming with the warmth and the passion of a gentle soul sharing his lifelong love of music, and his last creations, with longtime friends.

The Well speaks to and of Independent Project Records’ past, present and future at once. There’s a rare track by Neef, the first group Bruce Licher ever joined. The bands that made IPR a cult favourite among tasteful record collectors across the globe: Savage Republic, Scenic, Kommunity FK, Deception Bay, Woo, Fourwaycross. Their side adventures, the ones even the most attentive of fans have not heard of, make a most welcome appearance: Spadra Moods witnessed the first steps of future Savage Republic bassist Thom Fuhrmann and future Scenic drummer Brock Wirtz, Snuffy was Fourwaycross bassist Steve Gerdes’ solo project in the late 90s. There are highlights from recent releases: East Coast purveyors of dreamy melodies Springhouse wearing their UK folk heart on their sleeve, The Ophelias leader Leslie Medford turning psychedelia timely political on IPR’s first ever digital-only single. Previously unreleased recordings from the likes of Scenic and Barry Craig (trance music pioneer A Produce and guitarist from Afterimage) make sure the compilation never runs short of surprises. Mike White, who in the early 80s played guitar with San Francisco punk trailblazers The Sleepers, makes his IPR debut with an instrumental reverie that seems to have originated from space. A self-released, cassette-only gem from The Sunflower Conspiracy, an Indiana group who in the mid 90s were among those drawing a connection between dream pop and shoegaze, awaits much deserved discovery now that the two genres are witnessing a renaissance. There’s the unexpected reunion of Shiva Burlesque: frontman Jeffrey Clark joining forces again with his old accomplice Grant-Lee Phillips to deliver one of the finest songs the two have ever recorded together (with Bauhaus and Love and Rockets founder David J lending contemplative bass). There is no shortage of firsts, either: the label’s first foray into the world of movie soundtracks – represented by an instrumental original piece from the award-winning documentary Louder Than You Think: a Lo-Fi History of Gary Young & Pavement – and its first flirtation with jazz, in the form of a track by Jazz Bedouins, an ensemble encountered in the 90s when IPR had its headquarters in Sedona, Arizona. Recordings from label heads Bruce Licher and Jeffrey Clark remind us that IPR is a place for artists run by artists – priorities have never been up for discussion. There are previews of the releases to come: retrospective reissues of Southern California underground essentials BPeople and Middle Class, David J revisiting favourites from his recent three-album compilation Tracks from the Attic with a full band. There is also IPR’s latest signing: Driveway Ceiling, a band of college students moving back and forth between 60s psych, 90s indie and modern bedroom pop.

As impossible to categorise as the label itself, The Well is a declaration of Independence in multi-coloured, stupefying musical form. Next time someone asks about Independent Project Records, we’re all allowed to remain speechless. These songs will do the talking for us. “

TRACK LIST:

Disc 1

1. Afterimage
2. Leslie's Dream
3. Midnight Chapel
4. Zen and the Art of Long Distance Driving
5. Sleepy Hamlet
6. Sea and Rain
7. Punishment By Roses
8. Honeycut
9. Heretofore
10. mr walden
11. The Valley
12. Tundra
13. The One That Got Away
14. Vegetables
15. Halloween
16. Anti-Pop
17. Sacred
18. It'll Be My Day (Live)
19. New Colours
20. Persecution, That's My Song
21. Hole in the Wall
22. Tunnels
23. Dark Spirits

Disc 2

1. Archetype
2. I Woke Up Dreaming
3. No One Looks Like Christopher Walken
4. Mystery
5. Politic (Body and Soul)
6. Raintree Road
7. Here I Am
8. Breezy
9. Tibetan Trains
10. A Wink and a Nod
11. Spacetime
12. Aegean
13. Hangliders Torn Wing
14. Mingus Mountain
15. Radiant Transfer To Non-Grey Walls
16. Film Music #6
17. Jimbe
18. Rank