This year marks the 15th anniversary of the birth of Bella Union Records, and to celebrate they have teamed up with Rough Trade Shops to compile 145 minutes and 52 seconds minutes of music, old and new, that reflects fondly on the beginnings of the label and looks towards the prospects of the future. As well as old favourites like Midlake, Lift To Experience and Dirty Three, there are  6 new and unreleased tracks from Jonathan Wilson, The Walkmen, The Low Anthem, Lanterns On The Lake, Zun Zun Egui and Father John Misty.

Rough Trade Shops Bella Union 15 will be available on special edition CD at the Rough Trade Stall at this years End Of The Road Festival, and widely available from all good retailers on Monday 17th September. This retrospective was compiled by Bella Union founder Simon Raymonde…

“Looking back, as one must do when compiling any form of retrospective, is not something I had planned until I was to be 65, still a few good years away yet. So maybe that gives you a hint that I didn’t exactly salivate at the idea of picking a small number of tracks from the last 15 years as some kind of complete representation of the label’s output. For every artist and track I pick, there will be several more I cannot, and that is an uncomfortable feeling. Certainly before the time I took control of the label properly, around 2001, some of the artists signed were not wholly my choice and therefore not wholly my taste, so I decided that the only way for me to imbue this collection with the love and care it deserves was to make it as much of a personal one as I could, and most importantly to make it musically edifying to listen to. I hope I have managed to achieve this. There are so many notable absentees, bands that made great records for us, like Art of Fighting, The Autumns, Mazarin, Fionn Regan, Jetscreamer, Dustin O’Halloran, etc. who all would have a legitimate claim to be included on such a compilation but frankly, this is not a full retrospective release, it is basically a little over 2 hours of music and as such can only touch on the diversity of the roster, the back catalogue and thereby give a small flavour of what we do. So, once I had decided thatpersonal reflection was the only way to make this set feel authentic, the track-listing flowed pretty easily and with the exclusive tracks several artists were able to record especially for this, I feel this is a lot more than just a dip into a catalogue. It looks to the future, which is where I tend to live.”

Various – Rough Trade Shops Bella Union 15:

 

CD One

1. M Ward – Primitive Girl

2. Veronica Falls – Stephen

3. Wild Nothing – Shadow

4. Beach House – Lover Of Mine

5. Andrew Bird – Effigy

6. Laura Veirs – July Flame

7. Fleet Foxes – Montezuma

8. The Acorn – Crooked Legs

9. John Grant – TC & Honeybear

10. Stephanie Dosen – Vinalhaven Harbor

11. Explosions In The Sky – Your Hand in Mine

12. Hannah Cohen – Don’t Say

13. Poor Moon – Holiday

14. Treefight For Sunlight – Time Stretcher

15. Vetiver – More Of This

16. Lawrence Arabia – I’ve Smoked Too Much

17. Cashier no. 9 – Oh Pity

18. Marques Toliver – Magic Look

 

CD Two

1. Van Dyke Parks – Be Careful

2. Mountain Man – Buffalo

3. Peter Broderick – Colin

4. Midlake – The Jungler

5. I Break Horses – Hearts (RAR mix)

6. Dirty Three – Everything’s Fucked

7. My Latest Novel – Wrongfully, I Rested

8. The Czars – Goodbye

9. Our Broken Garden – The Departure

10. Lift To Experience – To Guard & To Guide You

 

Exclusive Bonus Tracks

11. The Walkmen – The House You Made*

12. The Low Anthem – Down There By The Train*

13. Jonathan Wilson – Journey from Eden*

14. Zun Zun Egui – Battlefield*