Los Angeles, CA - Songwriter/singer Sam Phillips has opened the virtual doors to Long Play, a unique and ambitious web-based art and music installation featuring new music, short films, original essays, candid footage of her at work in the studio, photographs by and of her and other exclusive material. Phillips explains, "In creating Long Play I thought about how I would love to be able to get a glimpse into the creative process of people I admire, be it musicians, filmmakers, authors, etc." The Long Play will provide just that kind of access to this artist’s creative process now through October 2010.

A key part of the Long Play experience will be the creation of a wealth of new music. Sam will record and release 5 EPs, one issued every two months starting October 1, 2009, and finally a full-length album scheduled for release in the fall of 2010. All these will be available as digital exclusives through www.samphillips.com. Along the way there will be generous bonus tracks given away. "There is no record company involved — this is just between us," says Sam. The EPs are intended as opportunities for experimentation, searching for fresh inspiration, taking risks and having "selfish fun." They’re a chance to explore artistic possibilities that wouldn’t have been supported by music industry framework conventions of "album cycle" marketing and promotion. Since they’re digital releases Phillips can continue crafting them right to the point of release.

"Before the music business locks down a standardized new system of making and distributing records, digitally or otherwise, it seemed like a perfect time to do something intensely personal and experimental," Sam declares.

The other features of Long Play are also crucial as they’re the means by which Phillips can expose what inspires her: the events, people, environments as well as other arts and artists – be they filmmakers, painters, authors or other musicians. Long Play functions as a magazine, diary, radio program and museum all edited, written, hosted and curated by Phillips, documenting the rich matrix of resources that fuels her creative life.

For those joining the Long Play community as paying members it’s like taking out an art-museum membership: they’re able to visit the installation at their convenience, download music, read Sam’s journaling, see and hear her recording, view the short films. In other words they’ll share her creative odyssey. Moreover community members can enroll in an exclusive social network comprising others who follow Phillips’ career.

The funds accumulated during the making of each EP determine the production budget available for it. The finances thus become an artistic variable influencing aesthetic decisions: whether arrangements can be extensive or stripped down; if there’ll be multiple takes and overdubbing or live, warts-and-all performances, et cetera. Sam has often found inspiration in constraint, forced to innovative, unorthodox artistic solutions by limits of finance, equipment and time.