via grimmertown:

an interview with Warren Hill by W.J. Grimmer

(originally appeared Color Magazine, sometime in early 2009)

One of the very first things I did upon moving to Montreal in 2006 was visit fellow ex-Vancouverite Warren Hill’s Backroom Records (so-named as it operates out a tiny shed in the back of Hill’s Mile-End apartment). My main reason for visiting was to purchase a copy of the, at the time, recently released compendium of Washington Phillips’ ghostly gospel work titled What Are They Doing In Heaven Today? on the Mississippi label that Warren co-runs (with Eric Isaacson and Alex Yusimov). While there, another record caught my eye on the same label, Last Kind Words, and I bought it sight unheard. 

Since then, the label has released somewhere in the environs of twenty seven other vinyl-only gems (though they also offer a series of cassette-only releases available solely at the Portland, Oregon Mississippi Records store, where Warren spends half his year avoiding the bitter Quebec winters) , all limited to small runs, all affordable, all featuring music that is both out of time and almost forgotten, and all absolutely amazing. African Highlife, Psychedelic Thai music, spectral folk blues and gospel, U.K. post punk, Greek rebetica, and soul jazz all find space in the grooves of Mississippi releases. 

Keep reading. Worthwhile.