Last week, we launched our record label with a totally sweet comp of local dudes and ladies. This Christmas week, we’re proud to give to you, gentle reader and downloader, our second release, Aaron Zorgel and Friends Present: 808s and Fruitcake!. It’s easily the best collection of festive music you’re going to hear all year. Deal with it.

I think the first time I recorded music was in 1999. I had one of those double-deck tape players with a mic input, and I was rapping along with Limp Bizkit’s “Nookie.” I probably tossed the tape aside and forgot about it, eventually using it to tape my favourite songs from Edge 102. One of my best friends and I were listening to one of these radio compilations, when suddenly the radio rock ended, and a voice that was clearly mine came screaming over the speakers, “like a chump, HEYYY!”

My friend’s jaw dropped, and I immediately threw up my best defense: “How else am I supposed to learn how to rap?!”

Since then, I’ve been totally comfortable with home recording, and the really stupid and hilarious moments that can be immortalized in a song.

Over the past 5 years, I’ve recorded 4 albums worth of Christmas music with whomever I could convince it was a good idea. Using it as an excuse to hang out over the holidays, I get together with my friends, apply liberal eggnog, and record something silly and festive. Sometimes I get submissions from friends who record stuff themselves in their own home studios. In the end, I throw all the tracks on a CD-R with some DIY packaging, distribute it at local shows for free or PWYC, and toss the whole thing online for free download.

This year just might be the strongest effort yet, with 17 songs spanning nearly as many genres. Luckily I’ve got a sweet outlet for this super indulgent creative output, as the Juicebox Recording Co. has kindly agreed to make this Holiday record its second official release.

So head on over to the Juicebox Recording Co., and check out this year’s Christmas Album:

Aaron Zorgel and Friends Present: 808’s and Fruitcake!

If you’d like to dig deeper, check out my other blog-mistress www.funtimeinternet.com to download the previous three albums in their entirety.

In an attempt to get the music we love in this city heard by more people, we have started a record label. Except we are cheap and poor, which, coupled with our youthful technological resourcefulness, means it’s an online-only, donation-based record label. It’s called Juicebox Recording Co. What’s up.

Our first release is a compilation of bands we like from Toronto. Some of the big-money shit on it includes unreleased songs from the Flatliners, Saint Alvia, This is Picture (ex-Mare), the Little Millionaires (ex-Bombs Over Providence), and the Wooden Sky. It’s really great. And is kind of all over the map genre-wise. Which we think is cool.

As for all the online/donation babble, we basically think that awesome music should be readily available to awesome people, who can then make up their own mind as to what that music is worth (monetarily) to them. We stole the whole idea from Quote Unquote Records, who rule and are so punk it kills me. Thanks, dudes.

We hope you enjoy these twenty songs and you tell all your friends all about how much fun you had downloading and listening to them. Music is so fucking great.

Enter the Recording Co. to download your own spectacular, personalized copy now.