UNUSUAL ANIMALS EVENT IN TACOMA TONIGHT

November 15th, 2008 , by

If you’re reading this and you live in or near Tacoma, Washington, please consider seeing the Unusual Animals event this evening, hosted by The Helm. Art starts at 5pm, and the music at 6:30pm. Art includes dear friends of the label the Bents, and music headlines Grampall Jookabox.

Click more to see the wonderful poster for this Unusual Animals.

CRYPTACIZE DEEJAYS

November 13th, 2008 , by

Not only do they play music, utilize robotics, and read books, but Cryptacize also deejays! Friday, November 14th, at 3pm, Cryptacize will be guest dj-ing at San Francisco’s KUSF 90.3 FM. (Now, what they’ll play is anyone’s guess.)

You can listen to them on the FM dial if you’re in range, or you can utilize the amazing power of the Internet and listen to them without using a dial right here.

Oh wait…no radio? No Internet? See them in person, touring with Danielson, at one of the cities listed here.

RAFTER: SWEATS, TOURS, AND DEEJAYS

November 12th, 2008 , by

Rafter’s Sweaty Magic EP has been piquing a lot of ears lately (read about it here).

Now you can involve your visual sense as well. Rafter is embarking on something of a super-concentrated-ultimate-tour. He’ll be passing through Miami (*), Orlando, Tallahassee (*), Atlanta (*), Durham (*), Greensboro (*), and topping off in NYC. And if you can’t get enough Rafter with one performance, he’ll also be deejaying in cities (which we conveniently denoted above with a star). See exact venues here.

Don’t live in those cities? Win $1000 instead by submitting a video to our YouTube contest. Details here. Hurray! Time is running out!

FOL CHEN

November 11th, 2008 , by

Notice: Fol Chen has joined the Asthmatic Kitty roster. We are pleased. We will release the band’s debut album, Part 1: John Shade, Your Fortune’s Made, on February 3rd, 2009. We predict that you will dance.

In the meantime, the band will be taking part in a takeover of LACMA (Los Angeles County Musueum of Art) on November 15th, by Machine Project. The takeover includes ten hours of performances, workshops, and events which experiment with LACMA’s collection and expansive grounds. For their part, Fol Chen created a sound piece inspired by a textile pattern by the early twentieth century Austrian design collective Wiener Werkstatte.  A limited run of 100 CDs containing the music will be for sale at the LACMA event, and each CD will include a watercolor replica of a selection of the original hand-blocked design.

Read the artist biography of Fol Chen here, their corresponding release page here, or view details about the takeover of LACMA here. Click more to see the fabric.

UNUSUAL ANIMALS DEHIBERNATE IN TACOMA

November 8th, 2008 , by

Photograph by Chris Schlarb

It’s been a while since the last Unusual Animals party. But dormancy does not equal extinction, and we expect the event series to reemerge, freshly rested, in Tacoma, Washington on November 15th at Helm Gallery Space.

The idea behind the Unusual Animals parties is pretty simple. We wanted to create a way to celebrate the local culture and commerce of various cities and towns. We have celebrated Austin, Brooklyn, Indianapolis, Portland, and Louisville. The Helm gallery space will host The Tacoma Edition. Art on display will include works from Zack Bent and Gala Bent, Nicholas Nyland, and Ellen Ito. The show will be open from 5pm to 10pm and will run until December 11.

On opening night, November 15th, Grampall Jookabox will play with Allan Boothe and Alexander and the Optimistics. Suggested donation $5. The show will start at 7pm and he will be on by 8pm.

Listen to a few tracks from the bands below, or load up AK Radio (see above).

Owl & Booth, "Merry" Afraid of Flying (Download)
Sean Alexander, "the rats" Broken Free (Download)

NEW MY BRIGHTEST DIAMOND VIDEO, REMIX ALBUM, TOUR

November 2nd, 2008 , by

Illustrator and animator Rafa Toro set his pencil to "Inside a Boy," the lead track from My Brightest Diamond’s latest full length, A Thousand Shark’s Teeth. The result is a Halloween-esque love story, replete with tentacle monsters, daring rescues, and a touching love story. You can view the video right here on Stereogum.

In other meta MBD news, iTunes just started selling the first volume in a series of remixes of Shark’s Teeth. Alfred Brown takes to Shark’s Teeth in volume one, his quirk managing not only to playfully tweak the music like a toy, but also reveal the album’s sublime, expansive nature.

Read more about the album here, or you can go ahead buy it on iTunes for just $5.99 by clicking here.

MBD is on a very wide tour right now, stopping just about, well, everywhere. And you may not even have to pay to get in, if you manage to win the contest they’re running over at mybrightestdiamond.com! Read about it right here.

GRAMPALL AIRS ON THE TUBE OF YOU

October 30th, 2008 , by

Day 3 of week of Grampall Jookabox, thanks to the impending release of Ropechain.

If it were 1988 instead of 2008, and Grampall Jookabox had been born 20 years earlier, you might have been able to catch Jookabox’s Moose Adamson on your cable access channel around 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning.

Times have changed though, and while you can now watch his eclectic antics anytime and anywhere, his YouTube channel is tucked away in the obscure corners of its wide search tentacles. Well, no longer. World, meet the YouTubed Moose Adamson. View his videos here.

You can pick up the new album here.  On tour now!  See dates here.

GRAMPALL IS NOW INTERACTIVATED

October 29th, 2008 , by

The new Ropechain from Grampall Jookabox is as interactive an album as one can get. As you listen, you will dance. You will think. You will feel.

But in this day and age, sometimes you need a video game to earn the adjective, "Interactive." So, with the help of Internet Game Genius Tom Deslongchamp, we made one. We call it "Preggers." It’s easy enough: hurdle over babies to get money, then feed them bottles of milk, all set to the folk-stomp-beat of Grampall’s "Girl Ain’t Preggers" (note: this is not the first time "Girl Ain’t Preggers" has starred in a video game, cf. AudioSurf). Play "Preggers" here.

And enjoy! If you enjoy it a lot, you can use this not-so-interactive-but-animated gif, available here, to share the game with your Interactive friends. You can also preorder the CD here for $10 (+S&H), and/or the vinyl here for $12 (+S&H).

ANNOUNCING HABITAT

October 28th, 2008 , by

Asthmatic Kitty is pleased to announce Habitat, a two disc compilation covering the various manifestations of "electronic music" as a benefit for Habitat for Humanity. This collection has been a long time coming. Label directors Lowell Brams, Sufjan Stevens, and Michael Kaufmann are all fans of electronic music and have wanted to release a compilation of this nature for some time. Here, electronic music is represented in its many forms: electro-acoustic experimentation, hip-hop, glitch, field recordings, ambient, electro-pop, etc. The artwork includes photographs by architect and photographer Craig McCormick, with layout by DM Stith.

You can buy the CD here for $10 (+S&H).

A VIDEO OF GRAMPALL BEATING A DRUM

October 27th, 2008 , by


Ropechain, the second album from Grampall Jookabox is out next week. We love this album so much, we wish we could just send it to everyone. Unfortunately, that is prohibitively expensive.

Instead, we’re presenting a week of mutli-media, multi-format Grampall Jookabox. It starts today with this video of "The Girl Ain’t Preggers," and a new, free, MP3 from the album: "The One Thing." View the video above (or here at Vimeo), and download the MP3 here.

Enjoy this week of All Grampall Jookabox, all the time. For now, you can preorder the CD here for $10 (+S&H), and/or the vinyl here for $12 (+S&H).

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