Bembis Bembio Motina - über eclectic record label
Bembis Bembio Motina Records is an uber eclectic record label that I started back in a day. It started as a joke and the literal translation of the name is Bamby Bamby’s mother if you must know. I also made the funny logo with two headed Bamby blasting the sounds from his ears.
The label has quite a few releases under it’s belt including my own music, mixes by famous Lithuanian Dj’s and even an illustrated musical fairytale about a toad, a cow and the meaning of life. You can find more information about the releases, Spotify and download links in a official website of Bembis Bembio Motina at https://bembisbembiomotina.lt .
Latest news
Bembis Bembio Motina has it’s first release of 2024! It’s a baltic folk infused electronic track called “Laumės Vaiką” by a band called Beaverstale. As ChatGPT accurately puts it: “Laumės Vaiką by Beaverstale is a mesmerizing blend of electronic music infused with delicate folk elements, weaving an ethereal soundscape that feels both modern and timeless. Inspired by the mystical lore of fairies, the track tells the enchanting story of woodland spirits—known as Laumės in Baltic mythology—nurturing a child in a magical forest. Broken beats pulse beneath gentle, organic melodies, evoking the serene yet mysterious atmosphere of nature’s hidden realms.”
The band Beaverstale consists of Milda Juknevičienė on vocals, melodies and guitars plus Giedrius Tamulaitis and Rokas Domereckas on electronics, synths, Abletons and turntables. It all started in the basement of Green Carpet Studios 10+ years ago when Milda came in with her guitar and sang 10 most beautiful songs I have ever heard in my life. Simple, naive, and just plain beautiful. We spent many sessions adding weird electronic stuff to these innocent songs, but there was so much good stuff that we jumped from one idea to another and ended up not finishing any one song till the end. Then all sorts of other projects took priority and this beautiful music was left gaining dust in our hard drives. But now we decided to finish them one by one and release, so the world can hear it. Laumės Vaiką is the first, but more will be coming soon!
History
Back in a day we had a hip-hop crew called Fresh Rice Crew that consisted of around seven members. We were engaged in lots of activities like recording music, writing articles about artists and Djs, organizing events and rehearsing for shows. But we spent most of the time arguing what we should do and how exactly should we do it. Sometimes we would gather to rehearse, but wouldn’t even touch the equipment, because all the time was spent discussing and contemplating about the future.
It was one of these rehearsals during which the name and the idea for Bembis Bembio Motina was born. Tired of hours of discussions we were already fooling around and somehow somebody just spit out the phrase “Bembis Bembio Motina Records”, which was immediately followed by ten minute long laughing session. Coming up with these nonsensical creative ideas wasn’t anything out of the ordinary for us and this was one of the thousand that were meant to be forgotten half an hour after they were born. But for some reason it got stuck in my head and after coming home that evening I opened Photoshop and made a funny logo for this imaginary record label, just for a fun of it. However after showing it to some friends everybody said it was hilarious and that I should actually start a record label.
First release
First release of Bembis Bembio Motina was as serious as the label itself: not serious at all. We made a few recordings with my good friend Def One who was the best beat-boxer in the Baltic states at the time. They mostly consisted of him beat-boxing around the phrase “Striuki Kriuki” which we used extensively to annoy the shop attendant at all night liquor store we were frequent visitors of at the time. It was released in a form of CD with color covers and everything. Of course it’s worth mentioning that it was a very limited run of just 3 CDs. One we gifted to the shop attendant we used to annoy, other two are owned by me and Def One.
Mixtapes by Dj Quazar & 2 Fresh
Funny as it was the first release bought Bembis Bembio Motina name into the scope of quite a few of my musician friends. Many of them were starting out as Djs and were recording their mixtapes from vinyl records. To my surprise they started asking if their mixes are something that Bembis Bembio Motina would like to release.
This is how the first proper releases of Bembis Bembio Motina came to life. The first was a blend of funk, soul and hip-hop grooves served by Tadas Quazar who went on to become a well known name in Lithuania’s night life scene shaping the musical taste of the whole generation of clubbers and festival goers and is now running an amazing venue called “Baras Darbas” in Lisbon . The mixtape was titled “Močiutės Popkornai”, a name that has a dubious meaning in Lithuanian language and can be translated to either “grandmother’s popcorns” or “grandmothers who themselves are popcorns”. You can listen to Močiutės Popkornai by Quazar on YouTube .
Second was a collaboration between the same Tadas Quazar and 2Fresh, member of the legendary Boogaloo crew who started making underground parties back in 1994 playing acid jazz, funk, soul and rap music, western sounds that you couldn’t hear anywhere else in Lithuania at that time. The mix was titled “In > True > Mentals” and blended instrumentals from alternative hip-hop artists like RJD2, Camp Lo and Danny Breaks with acapellas from hip-hop grands like Public Enemy, Beastie Boys and Lords Of The Underground. The audio files for the release were lost for quite some time, but were re-discovered and you can now listen to In > True > Mentals by 2 Fresh & Quazar on YouTube
Garo music
At the time when first releases of Bembis Bembio Motina came out I already had recording studio and was focusing on producing and releasing my own music under the name Garo. That turned out to be disastrous stage name for a musician as apparently that is a common name given to people in Armenia as well as name of very popular TV series in Japan. In addition there is also a fish called Garo as well as Japaneese band with the same name. Actually there is even a tribe in India named Garo and they have their own language called Garo language, and there was an ancient Kingdom of Garo somewhere in south Ethiopia. You can find full list of Garos in Wikipedia . Given all that, if you search for Garo in Google my music will be the last thing you will find.
Kamchatka EP was my first solo release and featured 5 tracks mostly made by sampling old vinyl records and fusing them together with synth sounds and live recordings of different instruments. Highlight was the track called “Freddy” which was inspired by “Nightmare on the Elm Street” movies featuring Freddy Krueger as a villain. Dark and bass-heavy it was a favorite of many of my listeners. You can listen to Garo - Kamchatka EP on Spotify .
A year later came three track EP called “Sewers” that was focused around the theme song from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a cartoon that I was obsessed with while growing up. Twisting the main theme into the directions of broken hip-hop and intelligent dubstep all three tracks offered a unique take on this iconic piece of 80’s drama and technology. It was also released on the legendary pirate console format known as “Zhiliton”, if you are interested in that story there is a full article about Sewers EP . You can as well just listen to Garo - Sewers EP on Spotify .
Musical fairytale
One weirder project that Bembis Bembio Motina released was a musical fairytale about a toad, a cow and the meaning of life. Author of the idea was Matas Labašauskas, who was back then one of the MCs of Fresh Rice Crew and went on to become a prominent figure in Lithuania’s culture scene, running his own music venues, organizing music festivals for very niche and unique music (check out Braille Satellite festival here), releasing music and playing weird stuff as a Dj.
Matas wrote a psychedelic story how a toad fell in love with a cow and then some weird shit happened. He then found a very talented illustrator Lina Gavėnaitė who agreed to draw the illustrations reflecting the story. After seeing her drawings I immediately agreed to join in and create the soundtrack for this weird piece of art. I don’t think I fully understood the story in any meaningful way myself, but the illustrations were amazing, and when all three elements came together it formed a really deep and hypnotic atmosphere.
Captain Badass soundtrack
At one point of time I was also co-running a small game development studio called OSM Games and we were releasing a mobile game called Captain Badass. While working on the soundtrack for the game I ended up with few spin off tracks that were based on the main theme from the game but grew to be full length tracks. I decided that they are worth their own release and released this mini soundtrack for the game as a separate release.
The game ended up to be a complete disaster effectively killing our company, but soundtrack turned out to be decent. In one of the very few reviews of the game that we managed to get they basically stated that the game is shit, but the soundtrack looks like professional release therefore they concluded that the game is just some sort of cheap attempt at promoting the release. And if you are wondering what the stylized illustration of an ass is doing above this paragraph, that is actually the cover of the release as well as icon for the game and there is a full article about the story of creating Captain Badass and ruining the company .
Kamchatka vinyl
Latest release that came out in 2021 was the vinyl re-release of my Kamchatka EP. More than ten years after initial release I decided that it would be nice to symbolically press it onto vinyl. It features refreshed and remastered versions of five original tracks and one bonus scratch skit. Vinyl also comes with full color digitally remastered version of original artwork by Asta Ostrovskaja.
Vinyl is available in record shops across Vilnius, Kaunas, Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Lisbon, also many digital stores like Juno Records and Discogs or you can buy your copy directly from Bembis Bembio Motina website . There is also a full article about Kamchatka vinyl if you are interested in more details about the release.
Bootlegs
The most recent unofficial bootleg release of Bembis Bembio Motina is a mash-up of the song by popular lithuanian rapper Remis Retro, a legendary lithuanian early 90s dance track by the band called Ekspresas and Laurent Garnier’s “Man With The Red Face” that I had thrown together back in 2023.
Even thou the track is quite funny, I really enjoyed working on it and it actually pushed me toward going back to making some more music, activity that I had abandoned for quite a while. I thought Bembis Bembio Motina is over, but now I have the feeling that there will be more things coming, so stay tuned!