Mixer: Ken Shipley

Mix Title: Apartments

Recent statements you may have heard:

Anything but another record label. Please, we don't need another one of those clogging up the bins. Accountants with coke habits, lawyers using Pitchfork as a tip sheet, 60 year-old executives awkwardly trying to converse with 17 year-old groupies. Marketing meetings. Junior VP's.

Enter the Numero Group. Founded by Tom Lunt, Rob Sevier, and Ken Shipley in 2003, the three self-proclaimed "record obsessives" decided to approach the record business backwards. No corporate hierarchy; no company stationary. Just a big pile of music that no one had ever heard of.

The mission was simple: to dig deep into the recesses of our record collections with the goal of finding the dustiest gems begging to be released from their exile on geek street. No longer would $500 singles sit in a temperature-controlled room dying for a chance to be played. No more would the artists, writers, and entrepreneurs who made these records happen go unknown and unappreciated.

Numero releases are sound with substance, living at the nexus of song and story. Scrupulously researched, painstakingly re-mastered, and with an attention to detail that is unmatched in the reissue field, the end result is a top-of-the-line compact disc.

There is no "Numero" sound; instead, Numero offers an aesthetic. A shelf of Numero discs feels less like a "record collection" and more like a library. The library to date is a mix of thrift shop soul, skinny tie pop, Belizean funk, and hillbilly gospel. Numero makes records for people who may have everything from indigenous Central American drumming to Canadian chanteuses stacked next to their CD players.

This is it. Welcome home.

THERE ARE NO ADVANCE TICKET SALES FOR THE MUSIC MIXER. $5 Suggested donation at the door.

Call 312.255.9454 if you can not attend the party and wish to fax in a bid on a mix. All faxed bids must be received by midnight CST on Tuesday, September 20th, 2005.