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JORDAN BERLANT BIO . DISCOGRAPHY . PRESS KIT |
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Jordan Berlant's album Born To Be Revealed was the first Engine Company record. It's the album our label began with, and was founded on. I had already worked with Jordan's band Puzzleball, and on their EP Giant In Japan, and had known Jordan for years. We were friends, musical comrades, and roommates in the same shared rehearsal space in midtown Manhattan. In the spring of 2001, Jordan called me and asked if he could come record some solo material of his. He had been diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma the previous summer, which had put the Puzzleball release on hold. He had written some new songs in the interim, while in and out of chemotherapy. This was before I had started the record label, and before I had any designs on ever doing such a thing. This would be just for us—and for him—to both express artistically what he was experiencing, and to do so before another round of chemo robbed him of his voice temporarily. We began working right away. It became clear during the recording that Jordan's illness was, in fact, life threatening. It also became clear that time was becoming a factor. Over that summer, my own musical life began to demand a different vision, focus, and future. The "idea" that would later become Engine Company Records was sharpening. The idea for a home where the music I was making—and believed in—could thrive. It was over that summer that I mixed Born To Be Revealed, and told Jordan about what I was going to build. I told him that however uncertain his future might be, I could promise one, small thing. He was going to have a record deal, and a record label behind him and his music. And, that his album would be our first release. I remember telling him, and later, I remember when the records came in. I remember sitting in the hospital with him as we examined them, both of us so happy that they were real. We launched the record label the following January, and lost Jordan only two weeks later. I'm very proud to have known him, and to listen to his music now. I'm very proud that everything we've accomplished, and everything we will ever accomplish at Engine Company Records, began with him. —Blake Morgan, ECR President and Founder |
