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Kill Shaman is a growing, independently-funded label run by Paul Kneejie, Bryan Levine, Ben Aigbobo, and Paul's wife, Nicole. Various friends collaborate on packaging and artwork including the very talented Anna Acosta, Christopher Curtis Smith, Justin Wright, Michael Britain, David Yun and Luke Witlatch.
Paul and Bryan co-financed the first album, Manifolds III CD and later the Manifolds/Day‘s End split. This was back in 2003 when Bryan was living in Paul's parents back house, a garden bungalow shack if you will, sans bathroom. Times were tough back then; Paul was finishing his Master’s, substitute teaching and playing in a multiple bands. You know, “living life” as we like to say over here at KS. Anywhoo, Paul and Bryan championed the first release The Manifolds/Days End Split featured Paul and Jeff Byron (the Mae-Shi, Boom Bip) on guitars Guitar, Nicole on Bass, Drew Eastman (Battleship) on Drums and recruited a few more drummers for that trashy-garage vibe. The reviews were in. And they were horrible. But we say "fuck reviews" and have penned our share of unabashed music reviews too. Karma works in strange ways.
2004 brought the release of the Manifolds/Die Princess Die split 7“, a SXBRS split CD and later saw releases from the neu-goth antic’s of Baby’s Breath, San Francisco-based 24K Gold, Los Angeles’ own math-prog combo Bad Dudes, and Paul's loud bass project The Pope. Later in the year, Blue Silk Sutures, featuring Erika of the Gowns and Tara Tavi of Amps for Christ and Auto De Fe put a kink in the traditionally loud roster.
More than 15 albums were released in 2005 and in 2006, including the activist saxo-punk outfit Silver Daggers and the psych/art talents of Expo-70, drawing acclaim from even the staunchest rags including U.K.‘s Wire Magazine, Skyscraper, and Aquarius records.
Paul began teaching full time and playing in The Pope and Bipolar Bear with Bryan. Nicole began a financially unsound, yet rewarding career in nonprofit development and Bryan began a career as a technical writer and instructional designer. We then grabbed law-school student Ben Aigbobo, ex-Bad Dudes drummer to help us out with everyday PR stuff and general label practices. Ben rounds out the group with his awesome drumming, making what could be a really amazing band with guitarists Paul and Bryan and Nicole the bass player. Unfortunately, we live in different cities with Bryan and Ben in the NorCal and Nicole and Paul in the SoCal.
Fast forward to now. We are still the same people with the same jobs and the same ethics we had from the get-go. None of us will host a DJ night, bake cupcakes for Hilary Clinton or ride the coattails of our political views via this label. We choose to do that through our day jobs, not to sell our records. Our goal is to put out our friend's bands and bands we have played live with that have blown us away. Plain and simple. Our careers afford us the luxury to offer great sound recordings by extremely talented bands at a decent price, as cliche as that sounds.
About our bands: We at KS all have varied tastes in music- Paul tends to like loud obscure noise or droney weird shit (currently Japan Overseas and Flying Nun stuff). Bryan likes more aesthetically complex music a la Casino vs. Japan, Pupils, Golden, and Faust. Nicole has been listening to Vetiver, Rachel’s and Men’s Recovery Project. Ben likes black-metal, prog rock, and hip-hop. So as you can see, we are all over the fence here. Although we can pretty much guarantee that we won’t like the following:
*Screamo
*Dance Punk (any "punk" with a boots and pants drum beat and shitty synthesizers)
*Cutesy girl singer songwriter bullshit
*Alt. Folk/ Alt. Country (as heard in Hell)
*Talentless, unoriginal noise bands
*Anything else lacking artistic integrity or originality
In 2007, Kill Shaman made the switch from 7"s to CD's and 12" vinyl, but will most likely offer limited vinyl and cassette in the future, depending on what the artists are looking for. Our goal has always been to offer bands an arena to work with ethical, honest, non-pretentious people who just love music.
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