Label Profile
Gravity Records
San Diego
Profiled by Chris Smith
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Formed by Matt Anderson (of Heroin fame) in 1991, Gravity Records has mined a unique and highly influential vein of hardcore punk throughout its lifespan. Its releases initially attracted attention for their idiosyncratic, high-cost packaging—thick 7” singles and 12” EPs (the label having ushered in a brief vogue for this format in the world of punk) issued in silkscreened paper bags, hand-spraypainted sleeves of heavy stock, with oddball typography and difficult-to-decipher lyric sheets. Once these eyecatching artifacts made their way onto underground turntables, however, their music was heralded as nearly unforgettable.

Along with Drive Like Jehu, Gravity’s bands pioneered what became known as the “San Diego Sound”: intricately played yet usually intensely chaotic hardcore that ran deeply contrary to what dominated the punk of the time. It certainly had its detractors (a notorious MaximumRocknRoll column after the release of Antioch Arrow’s messy-is-an-understatement emo masterwork “In Love With Jetts” wailed that “weird lyrics and keyboards are killing hardcore”), but it carried a do-it-yourself legacy. The Gravity roster reads like a crash course in incestuous punk/indie who-begat-who: Sonny Kay, of Angel Hair, went on to form GSL records and in essence discover The Locust, not to mention sing for pre-Faint synth-punk pioneers The VSS, members of whom are soldiering on today in Pleasure Forever; Aaron Montaigne, Heroin’s drummer, formed Antioch Arrow (this time as tantrum-throwing vocalist and equally distinctive Prince-Valiant-cut fashion plate), which in turn fragmented into a gothed-out redux of itself, then the queasy lounge-destruction of Tarot Bolero and the Get Hustle; Clickatat Ikatowi included an ex-member of Heroin and a future member of the Black Heart Procession; Anderson, meanwhile, produced some of the label’s bands (in a dark, slightly muffled style with distinctive sonic flourishes).

Like other vanguard labels of the nineties that possess a certain genre-defining cachet, Gravity now releases material at a more relaxed pace. In recent years, downtown art-punkers (Black Dice and The Rapture), calm instrumentalists (Physics and Tristeza), and assorted other oddballs (fellow BHP-mates Three Mile Pilot, stoner-rock monolith Sea of Tombs, and Scanner-like experimentalist The Spacewürm) have all released increasingly diverse Gravity records.

Label Roster Highlights: Heroin, Antioch Arrow, Angel Hair, Clickatat Ikatowi, The VSS, Mohinder.

Five Essential Releases:
Heroin- Discography
Antioch Arrow- In Love With Jetts
Angel Hair- Insect Mortality
Clickatat Ikatowi- River of Souls
The VSS- The VSS 7"