Matt Sharp and The Rentals Launch New Album 'Q36'

Two years ago Matt Sharp pleaded with Elon Musk to send him to outer space... yesterday that dream became a reality, as The Rentals launched Q36 with the single "Spaceships" and shared a lyric-video shortly after their departure. Q36's voyage will include 16 individual releases and over seven months to complete, culminating in the release of their double album on translucent gold vinyl.

Discussing the projects 1st release Sharp stated, Spaceships is a science fiction fable that imagines an overpopulated future where the spacefaring nations of the world decide to shoot their citizen's dealing with mental health conditions into deep outer space for experimental purposes; essentially using them as laboratory specimens, testing their tolerance of extreme levels of radiation. But a funny thing happened on the way to Europa... the inmates commandeered this intergalactic psychiatric ward, taking control of the ships and ultimately, their lives. They flipped their mobile home, converting it into a Parliament Funkadelic-style flying party saucer and went looking to start a more tolerant new world.

For me, Sharp mused, beyond the music itself, Q36 is my excuse to start experimenting with a diverse group of independent artists and creative communities that I have only recently come to admire. In this moment, I am looking at each of the album's 16 individual songs as a kind of launch point for all of us to dig a little deeper into the music, go under the surface, to see what may or may not resonate, search for little meaningful connections between us; then blow on whatever spark we find, as we begin to discover and create entirely new things, together.

Today, both Matt Sharp & The Rentals have taken one giant leap towards that Utopian World of idealistic creative desires, as they announce a partnership between Q36 and Joseph Gordon Levitt's egalitarian online creative platform HITRECORD. HITRECORD is a worldwide community of wildly talented, artistically minded strangers that have come together, because they are united by the idea that we are stronger together than we are apart.

Sharp directly addressed the active members of Mr. Levitt's HR community, It looks like we are going to make things, it looks like we are going to make a lot of things and even though it may not be necessary and even if it is presumptuous of me, I am asking you to use these words and this music as an excuse for us to get started, I want you to tear it all apart and resist the inclination to try and neatly put it all back together again, we going to make some beautiful things, we are going to make some ugly things, we will make cheap things and possibly elegant things too, some of us will be clumsy, some of us accidentally suave and occasionally we may swap places and stand in each other's shoes, we will talk about serious things and meaningful things, but I'm certain we will talk about silly things too, at times we will take those silly little things a little too seriously; without a doubt, we will almost certainly embarrass ourselves and hopefully, occasionally fail in spectacular fashion and then give ourselves permission to forgive each other a long the way; in the midst of the fun stuff and the dumb stuff we will fall down together and pick each other back up, dust ourselves off and then see what else we can do. This is my sincere invitation that I am sending to you.

This somewhat rambling stream of consciousness, makeshift manifesto could easily speak for an overview of Sharp's creative ambitions for the future of Q36, as The Rentals set sail to collaborate with a whole host of visual artists, musicians, podcasters, filmmakers, art galleries, comedians, graphic designers, storytellers and other creative types. But, we will have to save that conversation, and share the news of those collaborations, for another day.

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