Double J Host Tim Shiel Revives Indie Label Co-founded With Gotye

Musician, radio host and man-about-town Tim Shiel is blowing the dust off Spirit Level, the independent record label he founded with Wally 'Gotye' De Backer, with the Double J/triple j mainstay reviving the company to welcome a brand new signing in Melbourne musician Braille Face.

Founded in late 2014, Spirit Level released an album, Anchor, and put on a tour for first act Zammuto before being put "on the shelf", Shiel says, but now he's ready to make Spirit Level his primary focus — alongside his ongoing commitments with triple j/Double J and his work as a composer for video games —  spotlighting local artists with support coming from De Backer at his base in New York City.

The label operates out of a converted meat locker — the same one in which Melburnian export hero Chet Faker laid down his acclaimed 2014 full-length Built On Glass — and shares building space with the recently announced Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio (M.E.S.S.) project.

Spirit Level isn't dragging its heels when it comes to re-entering the game, though; as mentioned, the revived label has already secured the first new artist and first Australian signing in Braille Face, just in time to release Glow, one of an astonishing 100 songs the artist wrote during the 365 days of 2015.

According to a statement from Spirit Level, "We discovered the music of Braille Face last year, while he was deeply immersed in a very ambitious private project — writing an album for every month of the year in 2015. We watched in awe as he wrote 100 songs in 365 days. Glow is one of them."

Give it a spin below.

Spirit Level will release the debut full-length from Braille Face in conjunction with Inertia later this year.

For more information about the artist, see his Facebook page.

To brush up on all things Spirit Level, head to their relaunched Facebook or Bandcamp pages.