Library-science student by day, independent label honcho by night, 27-year-old Rainbow Body Records founder Chris Sloan works at a high-end home audio store to finance the music. Having written his last rent check a year ago, he crashes mostly with his girlfriend. All in all, he says, he’s been “between places for a little while.”
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In 2006, deep in the throes of a heavy Brian Eno phase, Sloan and his roommate at the time were trolling MySpace for new bands, as they often did. They found Golden Birthday, then the solo project of Ryan Sullivan, and instantly locked in on his rhythms, which were programmed like new wave but loose like punk rock. “It was exactly where I was musically at the time,” says Sloan. “I could tell he wrote pop songs in a very weird way.”
Of course, at that point Sloan had a “label” like Sullivan had a “band.”
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