In a letter to fans today Robert Turner of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (B.R.M.C.) announced that the band has been in a contract dispute with Virgin Records for the past 6 months. As of a few days ago B.R.M.C. is free from the confines of the Virgin world and label free. They are currently on an extensive US tour with The Rapture. Read More for the text of the letter...

Dear Friends,

This is Robert from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club...
As of 5 days ago it's official, we are free free free from Virgin Records. We've been fighting to get out of our record contract for the last 6 months and are sorry we couldn't tell anyone about this but it was a very delicate thing that we didn't ever want to become ugly. There are many reasons we wanted to leave Virgin but instead of going into that, and digging up the past, we'd rather just look forward. We're going back to basics, when things felt right and we did things more ourselves. This is actually the greatest day in our bands somewhat short history. We have many plans for what we're going to do next and how and who with we're gonna release our records.

The only thing that there is not to celebrate right now is that our 3rd single "In Like The Rose" could possibly fall between the cracks in all of this. We're trying to get help from outside promoters to get the single out there but it's hard.

The support you give us now though is what we really need. Just calling up your radio station or whatever in the city you live in and asking to play the song is a big deal. I know it sounds like a pitch or whatever but the song means more to us than anything and we want it to be heard.

I guess I don't know what else to say right now. We're almost half way through this U.S. tour with The Rapture and it's going really well. Oh, and as a lot of people know being off a major record label can be crippling to tours and band's can lose all tour support and funding. But we never had tour support anyway and we've always found ways to get by, so we'll see you soon.

From
Robert