#WTDTW (WHAT TO DO THIS WEEKEND)

September 11th, 2009 , by

Via our Twitter account (please, do follow us!): Fri: @HeladoNegro @ Bottletree #Birmingham Sat: Sujfan Stevens @ATPfestival – #NYC, HeladoNegro @ William’s House #Nashville, Fol Chen @ Proud Galleries #London, Sun: Rafter @ Casbah #SanDiego, Helado Negro at Bobo @Asheville. What a full weekend!

Details are here. A special note: playing through entire albums is often the custom at ATP, and so on Saturday Sufjan will do just that with Seven Swans.

THE BQE NOW AVAILABLE FOR PREORDER

September 9th, 2009 , by

CD/DVD: double-disc format includes the original 16mm/8mm film (in widescreen "triptych" display), the original motion picture soundtrack, a 40-page booklet (with extensive liner notes and photographs), and the stereoscopic image reel (playable in all View-Master® viewers). Preorder for $15 (+S&H) by clicking here.

LP: The limited edition vinyl is available as a double gatefold and includes the soundtrack on 180-gram vinyl, a large-scale 32-page booklet with liner notes and photographs, and a black-and-white version of the 40-page Hooper Heroes comic book. Preorder for $25 (+S&H) by clicking here.

Read more about The BQE here.

CASTANETS COVER HANK WILLIAMS, TOUR EUROPE, FEEL KINSHIP WITH BOCEPHUS

September 4th, 2009 , by

Photo by Mia Ferm

We are very close to letting Texas Rose, The Thaw, and The Beasts, the latest work from Castanets, out of the door. Shortly after we do, Castanets will embark on a tour of Europe that weaves through Germany, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, and end in the UK. You can see those dates here.

For us unlucky enough to not be in Europe, everyone endowed with an internet connection can hear Castanets cover Hank Williams in multiple places. On Stereogum, Castanets cover  "Rambling Man." Hank’s yodel scared frontman Ray Raposa as a kid, and Ray is just paying it forward. You can hear it here. And then on My Old Kentucky Blog, Castanets cover "Weary Blues from Waiting" with kind of fancy guitar footwork. That one is here.

(MS) PAINT OUR ALBUMS

September 3rd, 2009 , by


MS Painted by Alex Bristow

Ok, sometimes we’re a bit slow to intriguing things on the Internet. In fact, we are just now discovering, with great joy, "Paint My Album." Last year a couple guys from Manchester, UK decided to redo classic album art with the prolific Microsoft Paint (aka MS Paint – wikipedia article here). As things like this on the internet are prone to do, the idea snowballed. There are now over 1300 submitted album covers. You can see them on the project’s webpage right here.

Unfortunately, we feel like AK is under-represented. And hopefully, that’s where you come in. We’d like to compile an index, even if just for our own benefit, of our entire catalog redone in MS Paint. Alex Bristow of Bristol knocked out Enjoy Your Rabbit, and Alex Grantham of Manchester took care of Illinois (note lack of spandex-donned Superhero). But we would love to see more!

If you’re up to the challenge, we’ll give you something in return. For each decentish attempt at recreating an AK album cover in MS Paint, we’ll thank you by giving you digital downloads of DM Stith’s BMB EP, and our as-of-yet unreleased brand new AK sampler.

Our favorite submissions will get a choice from digital downloads of Shannon Stephens’ The Breadwinner, Castanets Texas Rose, The Thaw, and The Beasts, and Royal City’s self-titled retrospect.

We’ll post all the redone album art on our Flickr account, and highlight our favorites in a news item here on asthmatickitty.com. For details, click on more.

Email the image, which must have been created exclusively in MS Paint, to [email protected]. Include the following:

Your Full Name
Your hometown, state, and country
The image at 350pixels x 350 as an attachment
Your website (if applicable).

Album art is available on each release page here on asthmatickitty.com.

We reserve the right to end this contest at any time.

NEW VIDEO, TOUR, BLOG FROM HELADO NEGRO

September 2nd, 2009 , by


Allmusic gave Awe Owe, the debut album from Helado Negro, four stars out of five, saying it "holds together wonderfully, offering an immediately engaging listening experience that only gets richer with each listen." am New York filed the album under "intriguing equatorial melange of fluttering computer loops, dusty field samples and live instrumentation."

But while Awe Owe has embedded itself into the sweaty subconsciousness of the summer of 2009, Roberto C. Lange, the man behind the vision of Helado Negro, is not content to let it all sit and swelter. Now that fall looms, it’s time to move to stay warm. He  is going on tour this Thursday, with a journey that starts in Pittsburgh, weaves through the South, and then ends in Balitmore. He’ll be touring with avant garde composer Jason Ajemian, making for a not-to-be-missed pairing. Details on the tour are here.

Follow Helado Negro on tour via his shiny new tumblr blog here. You can see a new video directed by Ojera above, or on YouTube right here.

HALF-HANDED CLOUD RELEASES NEW COLLECTION ON CD

August 31st, 2009 , by

We’ve all been hankering for some more Half-handed Cloud-ness, and boy are we in luck. Come this November 3rd, we here at Asthmatic Kitty will have the great pleasure of releasing Cut Me Down & Count My Rings.  It’s a collection of songs from previously-released EP’s, vinyl singles, CD-R’s, compilation appearances, original versions, download-only tracks, unreleased tunes, a cassingle, and a trio of Christmas songs from the past nine years.  Many of these songs are making their very first appearance on compact disc, and none of them are on Half-handed Cloud’s four full-length albums.

Collected by leadman John Ringhofer as a portable library of tunes on a single disc, Cut Me Down is a curation of forty-six songs (46!), previously only available in nearly as many places. Listened consecutively, the 46 songs track the career of one of our favorite performer/songwriters in the world.  Concepts and instruments fade in and out of Ringhofer’s repertoire as the album progresses.
The Cut Me Down CD includes packaging and a poster with paintings by Ringhofer himself, and a descriptive writeup on the background of each original release, perfect for those nights when the conversation turns to HHC trivia (which happens often around here). Read about the release here.

LIZ JANES, MY BRIGHTEST DIAMOND, JOOKABOX AT PYGMALION IN SEPTEMBER

August 31st, 2009 , by

On September 16-19, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois will host the fifth annual Pygmalion Music Festival, and wow, what a lineup. Wavves, The Antlers, YACHT, BLK JKS, Denison Witmer, The Books, RJD2…the list is comprehensive, while yet remaining true to the festivals midwestern roots. And of course, some of our very own Liz Janes, My Brightest Diamond, and Jookabox will all grace the stages of the Pygmalion. For a complete schedule, list of bands, and tickets, head over here.

#WTDTW (WHAT TO DO THIS WEEKEND)

August 28th, 2009 , by

Via our Twitter account:

#WTDTW Fri: @HeladoNegro @ Littlefield in Brooklyn, Jookabox @ Zanzabar in Louisville :: Sat: Shannon Stephens @ Shadowland in Seattle.

Details here.

SUFJAN RECORDS BEN+VESPER EP, WELCOME WAGON PLAYS SHOW

August 26th, 2009 , by

Did ya’ll know that Sufjan’s very first show was at a small barn house show in West Orange, NJ, at the unexpected invitation of Ben and Vesper Stamper? Yes, about ten years ago, they called him at his office cubicle at Penguin Putnam (where Sufjan designed promotional materials for Tom Clancy novels) and they said: Hey, take the NJ transit bus to Newark! Bring your banjo! We’ll make you dinner. Well, it’s been many years since, and to pay back the favor, Sufjan recently offered to record Ben + Vesper’s latest pop anthem 5-song EP called "LuvInIdleness," a reference to the famed Love-In-Idleness flower from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The EP is a glorious, punchy collection of pop poetic riffs that make reference to marital passion, boat stealing, Olivia Newton John, and farfetched dreams of owning a farm.

To celebrate, Ben + Vesper are doing a series of shows every Friday for the next month at Brooklyn’s Sycamore bar and flower shop (in idyllic Ditmas Park). Each show will start off with various outstanding artists and friends opening with a set of music (including two big hits from the Sounds Familyre label: 1) the gothic folk prophet Dan Zimmerman, and 2) the gorgeous family pop girl band Ortolan). Also, Asthmatic Kitty’s Welcome Wagon will play the last night, on September 25. (We like to think of Ben + Vesper as the Welcome Wagon of Sounds Familyre Records! Maybe we can convince them all to have a husband/wife sing-off!). Click on more (or here) to see full schedule.

Limited edition home-made copies of the EP will be available at the shows. Details here.
8/28 w/Dan Zimmerman
9/4 w/Sebastien Schuller
9/11 w/Ortolan
9/18 w/Kurt Weisman
9/25 w/The Welcome Wagon

Sycamore
1118 Cortelyou Road
Brooklyn, New York 11231
347-240-5850
sycamorebrooklyn.com

HELADO NEGRO EMBARKS ON FIVE BOROUGHS TOUR ARMED WITH NEW VIDEO

August 22nd, 2009 , by

On Saturday the 22nd of August, Helado Negro (aka Roberto C. Lange) will leave his home in Brooklyn and take some kind of extended transportation device to Queens. There, he and his comrades will begin on a great micro-journey across the five boroughs of America’s City. If you live in NYC, you should definitely catch at least one of these in your homeborough. Details are here.

And if you were amazed by the striking, stark simplicity of Helado Negro’s last video (view here), then you’ll love this new video directed by Falcon Hawksome. View it above, or here.

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