PITTSBURGH — If you grew up listening to college radio in the early '80s, you tuned into bands like Gang of Four, The Fall, Joy Division and Siouxsie and the Banshees.
For every one of those marquee attractions, there were dozens that never reached that level of notoriety.
Those are the ones that Floating Mill is seeking out.
The new Pittsburgh label — the project of high school/college friends Cullen Wells, Nick Honkala, Ian Rosenberg, Sarina Stein and Fred Buse — debuted in September with a reissue by The Stick Figures, a short-lived post-punk band from Tampa, Florida.
"I love all genres of music almost equally, especially if it's in the rock category or like soul, funk, disco," Wells says. "But post-punk seemed particularly ripe to us. We think that there's an abundance of post-punk music that deserves a deeper listen by a wider audience. We feel like we have the pick of some of the best bands ever."
The 26-year-old Wells, who studied creative writing and ethics, history and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, says these bands are plentiful when you delve into YouTube and various music blogs.
In their two-year span, The Stick Figures — who formed in 1979 as two groups of siblings and one friend — released one four-song EP, opened for The Fall and The Lounge Lizards, and got played by legendary British DJ John Peel.
"Archeology," the Floating Mill release, features that 1981 EP along with six previously unreleased studio takes, two live songs and a reimagining of an experimental track from the EP. Out on CD and cassette, with the vinyl in the works, "Archeology" made the list of Bandcamp's Best Reissues on Bandcamp: September/October 2021.
Floating Mill caught them at a good time, Stick Figures guitarist Bill Carey told post-punk.com: "I hadn't listened to [the songs] in a long time, and had recently been working on compiling the best versions of everything I had (on 40-year-old cassettes!) when Cullen from Floating Mill reached out. I did the best I could to clean up the recordings, most of which were only 'demo' mixes."
On Friday, Floating Mill — named as an homage to two of their favorite indie labels, Flying Nun and Factory — released a split record by The Antelopes, a British band from 1980 that did a 2010 reunion, and Class of 76.
They have plans to reissue a recent album by a current band soon, Wells says, but he notes, "We really like to document history. A lot of the songs we plan to release can't be found anywhere besides like band members' attics on old cassette tapes."
Like Carey, there are lots of musicians now looking back to that era.
"A lot of the bands we're working with are around the age of retirement," Wells says, "so they have a little bit more free time than they would have had a few years ago, so they can help organize the release and stuff a bit more and they're happy to have someone there to put the stuff out. They don't care if it's the biggest release in the world or if it makes a ton of money — they're happy that we're happy to put it out."
For more information, go to https://floatingmillrecords.bandcamp.com/artists.
