Well, hello again there friends! The Christmasasaurus has RETURNED (and I do *not* mean the one with with less syllables and a popular book. We all know who has been around longer!!)

Ordinarily at this point I write something goofy, but this year I've been struggling to come up with the correct words to include. The nature and intent of this series is something lighthearted, joyful, weird, and occasionally off-putting, but the period of time between Vol. 8 and now has been full of so much hurt. It perhaps goes without saying that that much is true of the e past year for all but the privileged, but for the purposes of this compilation something hangs much heavier.
In 2019, my friend and the co-founder of this series, known affectionately as "Dingle", passed away.

Despite having known him since we were teenagers and despite all of my tours of the United States, I never had the opportunity to meet him in person. Even when we finally had a date to play a show together, life got in the way. Somehow, that ended up being the last opportunity we had. In the mid-to-late 00s we talked on AIM for hours and hours every day, sharing new songs and drawings back and forth, talking about art and music, and about our extremely different lives. He was my top friend on all my music profiles. Heck, the Bubblegum Octopus name was an accidental play on his project name.
Throughout his life he produced an immense amount of work as a musician/sound artist and visual artist, and released on basically every netlabel in the 00s that was worth a damn, including his own (Flaccid Plastic) and Brokecore Records, which he went on to co-manage. To this day I still don't even know all of the music he released just with the Peppermint Pony moniker.

His affiliation with Brokecore (a label I was absolutely enamored with) actually lead to my first label release and first release to ever get put into the physical world: the c@ vs. Peppermint Pony split. It helped my confidence as an artist immensely to see people I admired enjoy anything I did and set the groundwork for our future collaborations.

Christmasasaurus was always a shared project between the two of us. It began with the concept of doing a holiday album but subverting the tropes by calling upon the fellow freaks in our music scene. We sent each other artist lists for approval, talked about what the rules should be, what kinds of music we wanted on, etc. We both agreed on the core principles, but our slightly different perspectives kept it much more sonically varied than if either of us had worked alone. In more recent years it has become primarily or exclusively me in charge of organization, but it still required his blessings. At the present time, I hope to continue the series with the goal of meeting what he may have approved of. I think if I continue following the optimistic vision of two teenage friends, the help and incredible talents of the individuals involved this series will keep it shining bright and worth the amount of effort and passion that this requires to make happen.

That all said, the purpose of this compilation remains the same as it did 15 years ago: To subvert the expectations of holiday music, to create enjoyable alternatives for your season's playlists, to challenge the artists invited to reinvent incredibly familiar pieces of public consciousness, to give people something to look forward to (most) every year, and above all to spread joy regardless of how dark the world becomes.

*All donations toward this compilation will be forwarded to Trystereo, a volunteer run organization in our late co-founder's home of New Orleans, that works of pragmatic harm reduction for those suffering addiction. You may also donate to them directly:
Venmo@Trystereo

Dingle, you are missed by so many, but you're also missed by me. I hope next time around we can both get to the show.
- Matthew