It was ten years ago this month that we here at Mutable put out our first product, a green vinyl record called, A Journey to Happiness Island. It was just a little joke of an album we wrote and recorded over the course of a weekend with a roomful of friends in a loft in Greenpoint, New York. We had no idea we would still be putting out records and books ten years later.
Mutable began in a diner in Brooklyn Heights over a conversation between myself and Zach Katz. It began in a projectionist’s booth when a local filmmaker gave us the name. It began when we put out a run of books called Seven Short Plays for the Bedroom using Kinko’s and our own efforts at binding. It began when we put out our first album in conjunction with Mr. Records and began when we put out our first professionally bound book, Manifesto I, a collection of manifestoes. It began when I spent a summer performing plays in bedrooms across America and placing Mutable products in bookstores and record shops.
Mutable Sound, which was Mutable Press, and will always be Mutable. Which has become as much a part of me as I am. Which has been a source of uncertainty and rage and adoration and affection, which has brought people together and given me hope when I was otherwise hopeless, through which I have come to know so many wonderful and interesting writers and musicians, has now come to define an entire decade of my life. And so I must commemorate this moment, even if I’m alone in doing it.
Of course I’m not alone. There’s Zach my co-founder and Malcolm Felder my current partner. There are also all the people who have been involved in Mutable projects over the years, or had their projects released through Mutable and by so doing have become members of the Mutable family, artists from across the seas, and writers with a distinctive vision. We continue to experiment with sound and narrative, and continue to entertain ourselves first, and everyone else second.
To commemorate this moment, we have put out a mix of some of our favorite Mutable moments from the past ten years.
-GBoyer