A.C. Newman

The New Pornographers is a Canadian indie rock band formed in 1999 in Vancouver, British Columbia. The band's first four albums each ranked in the... top 40 on The Village Voice's Pazz & Jop year-end poll of hundreds of music reviewers. From 2000 to 2006, either a New Pornographers' album or a solo album from one of the band's members ranked in the top 40 on the list each year. In 2007, Blender magazine ranked The New Pornographers' first album, Mass Romantic, the 24th best indie album of all time. It is the second-highest Canadian album on the list, behind Arcade Fire's Funeral . In 2009, Rolling Stone magazine ranked the band's second studio album, Electric Version, #79 in the "100 Best Albums of the Decade". The name of the band was chosen by Carl Newman, who has said that he came up with it after watching a Japanese film called The Pornographers. Many writers have assumed that the name was a reference to Jimmy Swaggart's reputed claim that rock and roll was "the new pornography." The band has released five albums to date: Mass Romantic , Electric Version , Twin Cinema , Challengers , and Together .
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Matador Records is an independent record label, with a roster of indie rock artists and bands. Matador was started by Chris Lombardi in 1989 in his New York City apartment. The following year, Lombardi was joined by former Homestead Records manager Gerard Cosloy, and the two of them have run it... together since. In 1993, the label began a partnership with Atlantic Records which lasted for a couple of years. Then in 1996, Capitol Records purchased a 49 percent stake in Matador, but Lombardi and Cosloy bought it back in 1999. It has been co-owned by the Beggars Group since 2002 and now operates in both New York and London. Patrick Amory, Matador's longtime label manager, is currently label President and a partner of Lombardi and Cosloy. In the early 2000s, Matador had to sidestep unwanted involvement in the current Recording Industry Association of America dispute over Peer-to-peer file sharing networks. Matador's Patrick Amory contacted the RIAA multiple times in order to ensure that an erroneous listing on the group's website of Matador as an RIAA member was removed. After several attempts, the name of the independent label was removed from the membership list.
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