Presenting Street Rat
Street Rat is the next Malawian artist to grace Spare Dog Records with his vibes. With a one-of-a-kind style, rock solid reggae tunes and backed up by the best live band in Mzuzu – Body Mind & Soul – you know it’s going to be something special! Here’s a taster of what’s to come – filmed in Edinburgh during the final mixing of the album.
If you have ever been to Mayoka Village in Nkhata Bay, Malawi, and seen Michael Mountain perform
– you will know what I’m talking about:
HOW BIG IS THE LAKE???
IT’S SO BIG, SO BIG!!!
Here’s a special soundcloud streaming just for you! We will keep the link alive for another week or so, so tell all your friends! And if you like Michael’s stuff, you might want to go to iTunes and get his brand new album!
The song ‘How Big Is The Lake’ has been a long standing Nkhata Bay favourite tune, and anyone who’s been around Mayoka Village on a Wednesday night and seen Michael perform will remember this super catchy sing-along (often accompanied by Gift’s voice all the way from the kitchen!) Michael plays at Mayoka to this day.
Malawi’s own Michael Mountain! In this world premier of his newest music video Michael sings about the hardships of poverty. It is filmed on location on the long walk from his remote mountain village down to Nkhata Bay, in Northern Malawi.
If you like Michael’s music, why not support it!
Introducing one of the coolest guys on earth: Michael Mountain! His international debut album ‘Nowhere Else To Go’ is a fantastic old-school style, low-key but heavy-hitting reggae. Michael is a small-scale tobacco and maize farmer, a community organiser, a reflective thinker, a prolific songwriter and a charismatic artist from the mountains of the Nkhata Bay region in Northern Malawi.
Spare Dog Records know of no-one who sounds like Mountain Mike, and today we are incredibly proud to be able to release an album of this calibre!
Available now on iTunes, Amazon or your favourite platform.
Spare Dog Records are very happy to announce that we will be releasing the international debut album of Michael Mountain, called ‘Nowhere Else To Go’ on the 26th of January!
Here is a short interview with the man himself!
A while back our buddy Ben Evolent stayed in Nkhata Bay for a few months and he was part of our little crew of musicians and such folks. Together we recorded seven songs of his in Moto Wambili Studios, and this is one of them – now accompanied by some nice images from Australia (I think). Find him on Facebook through this link.
Spare Dog Records thinks this is great!
http://youtu.be/Y7m1e-dF8ik
Neighbouring kids putting on a little show in front of our house in Nkhata Bay, Malawi. July 2014
Goodbye 2014 – Hello 2015. The end of last year was hectic for me. Starting the record company and releasing the first album meant I had to learn a lot of new skills; Tech, web, PR, social media and so on. But I think we did good – I like the looks of the web site, Danny’s album was released on time on all the platforms and and got good response, and both social and some normal media gave us attention – especially the nice interview by the BBC.
Next year will bring us new things from the Warm Heart of Africa! In January we will release the one and only Michael Mountain, and his debut album Nowhere Else To Go. Michael – a small scale farmer with a big voice will blow people away all over the world, I’m sure. The following month will see the release of the fantastically powerful reggae of Street Rat, and on top of that – more releases will be announced in time, but for now those names are all a big secret! (shhhh).
In March, Spare Dog Records will again return to Malawi for more recordings and video shoots – there is just so much to be done, so many more great artists that we would like to introduce to you, and to the world!
So thank you all for the year passed, we’ve loved every second of it. And to the year ahead: I hope it’ll be as good as the last one! And I hope it will see you all having a great year too.
Best wishes from us here at Spare Dog Records!
If you haven’t seen this one yet, here’s your chance! I shot this interview in Nkhata Bay, in July 2014, as a preamble to the album “The Young Shall Grow” and Danny is telling us about his music and his upbringing, what the album will be like and the city of Lilongwe – the capital of Malawi.
This is Alan. He’s the latest recruit to our team. He will mainly be responsible for monitoring and producing content for our Twitter account. He’s hasn’t been to Malawi yet, but he loves Malawi music, and he knows his social media stuff. Alan says:
“Listen, we have to do something about this Twitter Thing… Everybody loves us on Facebook, but we don’t have enough followers on Twitter! Well, with me in charge, we’ll turn this ship around! Now click here to join the fun!”
While Bristol is grey and chilly, we wish we were down in Lilongwe, Malawi, for the release party of Danny Kalima’s album ‘The Young Shall Grow’ @ The Chameleon Bar, tonight 8 pm local time! All we can do from here is to listen to the record on iTunes!
