From the moment it opened its doors in 1995 to its closing in 2016, Other Music was one of the most influential record stores in the early aughts, and certainly a vital force in New York’s indie music scene. An upcoming documentary on the shop, titled Other Music, will hit theaters in April during Record Store Day weekend.
Directed by Puloma Basu and Rob Hatch-Miller, the trailer features Jason Schwartzman, Janeane Garofalo, Regina Spektor, Depeche Mode’s Martin Gore, the National’s Matt Berninger and TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe discussing what the store meant to them and what it was like being there. “If I am completely honest, I was never just chill in there,” Spektor admits. “I always got that first day of school feeling, like ‘OK, don’t fuck up.’”
Also included are vintage in-store clips of Vampire Weekend, the National and Neutral Milk Hotel, who in 1996 performed their first-ever live performance of “Two-Headed Boy” from 1998’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. “There shouldn’t have been an intimidation factor, but there was,” Schwartzman tells the camera. “I mean, I’m not the first person to say that, right?”
Factory 25, a Brooklyn-based film and music label, acquired the rights to the documentary. It will open at the IFC in Manhattan on April 15th and will screen at select theaters on April 18th — the weekend of Record Store Day 2020.
“Our documentary is about the importance of people getting together in a physical space to share and celebrate music and all other types of art,” the directors said in a statement. “We’re thrilled to have our documentary be part of the Factory 25 catalog in the company of great filmmakers like Alex Ross Perry. And to have the movie open theatrically at IFC Center just a few blocks from where Other Music existed for two decades is a dream come true.”
