Let the Reader help with your Bandcamp shopping listLeor Galilon April 29, 2020 at 11:00 pm

On Friday, March 20, music site Bandcamp waived its revenue share for all sales through its website. When Bandcamp announced that it would take this step, COVID-19 had only begun to upend the music industry’s fragile economic ecosystem–the first wave of Chicago concert cancellations, for instance, had arrived in mid-March. Bandcamp’s gesture was hardly enough to make everyone solvent, but it did help many independent artists and labels who use its services–not least because the surrounding surge of publicity encouraged fans to target that Friday with their purchases. Bandcamp rang up $4.3 million in sales for digital music and physical merchandise, 15 times its ordinary Friday numbers.

This past Monday, Bandcamp announced that it would waive its take again on Friday, May 1–as well as on the first Fridays in June and July. Because live music has come to a halt, the Reader has converted its usual weekly collection of concert previews into a bunch of reviews of new records, and lots of those records are available on Bandcamp. If you want to support independent artists and labels on Friday and don’t already have a shopping list too long to get through, then this batch of Reader-recommended Bandcamp releases might help. Album names below link to the accompanying Reader reviews, and each review includes a Bandcamp embed that will take you to the page for the release:

Blacks’ Myths, Blacks’ Myths II

Gerald Cleaver, Signs

Deeper, Auto-Pain

DJ Hank, Traffic Control

Dool, Summerland

Drama, Dance Without Me

Facs, Void Moments

Feminazgul, No Dawn for Men

Friend/Enemy, HIH NO/ON

(Sandy) Alex G, House of Sugar

Helen Money, Atomic

Human Impact, Human Impact

Igorrr, Spirituality and Distortion

Irreversible Entanglements, Who Sent You?

Jackie Lynn, Jacqueline

Like Rats, Death Monolith

Lord Dying, Mysterium Tremendum

Melkbelly, Pith

Midnight, Rebirth by Blasphemy

Midwife, Forever

Bill Nace, Both

Ono, Red Summer

Oranssi Pazuzu, Mestarin Kynsi

Orkesta Mendoza, Curandero

Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, Viscerals

Lido Pimienta, Miss Colombia

Charles Rumback with Jim Baker and John Tate, June Holiday

RXM Reality, Blood Blood Blood Blood

Serengeti, Ajai

Sharkula, BBQ Fingaprints

Stuck, Change Is Bad

Various artists, Machine

Various artists, Whispers: Lounge Originals

V.V. Lightbody, Make a Shrine or Burn It

Waxahatchee, Saint Cloud

Wrekmeister Harmonies, We Love to Look at the Carnage v