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Matt Lajoie

Sometimes when you love making music so much, you just have to find a way to put it out.

Matt Lajoie created L'Animaux Tryst (Field) Recordings, a local record label that thinks small and personal, for that purpose.

A library assistant by day at the University of Southern Maine in Portland, Lajoie started recording as Cursillistas and released his first effort on Time-Lag Records.

Looking around Portland, he saw similar artists trying to self-release and get their music out.

What also makes the label stand out is the limited run of albums, sometimes only 50 at a time on cassette or CD-R, with each in a handcrafted package.

"We record ourselves in our bedrooms, our basements, our cars, and oftentimes make the packaging in the same place where the music was created and recorded," he said.

L'Animaux Tryst has become the home to artists such as Tempura, Bird Microphone and Bad Bus, among others.

The label has the feel of a family, and they often get together to make music as well as the goodies that come with it. Lajoie says don't expect that to change.

"With all our packaging -- as much as possible -- we get the bands involved in the artwork, so that it's their hands sewing up the record sleeves or handpainting the covers," he said. "And I think people appreciate getting that direct route from artist to consumer that is so rare these days."

Some of Lajoie's favorite Web sites:

Pitchfork Media: "I find myself checking Pitchfork every day because if I'm not mentioned, I know my day will continue on as usual. With the huge influence this music review site has on hundreds of thousands of indie music fans, a good review can seem to pluck a band from total obscurity to 'next big thing' status pretty immediately. The reviews are decent, but most of the time I find myself just peeking at the number score for the albums of the day and then moving on with my life."

Animal Psi: "This site is the absolute best way (for me) to keep up with my peers in the micro-record-label scene. It scatters a few thoughtful reviews of obscure tapes and CD-Rs that no one else will touch, amongst laundry lists (updated a few times a day) of the most recent releases by some truly strange and inspiring labels. They routinely feature updates from my favorite Portland underground labels Mangdisc, Time-Lag, and Donttrusttheruin."

Songza, Songerize and IMEEM: These all sort of serve the same purpose, but depending on what you're looking for it's good to try them all out. Basically this comes in handy when you need to hear a specific song or artist right away and your record collection is too far away to be of any help. I don't pretend to understand search algorithms, but I assume what Songza and Songerize do is scan all posted streaming audio files throughout the Internet, and if the song you're looking for is available to stream online it will just start playing. It doesn't work in all cases, so I just opened an IMEEM account which is a little more predictable/reliable."

Awesome Tapes From Africa: "The gist is that an ethnomusicology student returned from a five-month stay in Ghana with hundreds of cassette tapes he bought from shops and stands around West Africa, and is now digitizing them and posting them online if they are not available for purchase from an online retailer. Depending on where you stand on the issue, it could be the best example of the Internet's role in the globalization of music or the height of the Internet's exploitation of unwitting musicians. If the artists could be adequately compensated for their work it would be a perfect situation, obviously, but I think of it as this incredible library archive of sounds that would have never been heard by these ears otherwise."