CRYPTACIZE: CD, LP, AKRADIO
February 20th, 2008 , by Asthmatic Kitty
Cryptacize’s first album is now available, either here on the website or at your favorite independent record store. We’ve had the pleasure of listening to it for some time, and we think you’ll enjoy it’s swirling simplicity.
In case you need something to listen to until your album arrives via mail, or the bus arrives to take you to the record store, Michael, Chris, and Nedelle of Cryptacize have carefully created a playlist of some of their friends’ music. You can listen to it right on AKradio by clicking here.
Click here to order the album from website, or on more to view Cryptacize’s "Cosmic Sing-a-Long" in video form.
Cryptacize – Cosmic Sing-a-long from Asthmatic Kitty on Vimeo.
AK AND FRIENDS IN AUSTIN FOR SXSW
February 18th, 2008 , by Asthmatic Kitty
We have some grand plans for South By Southwest 2008. Last year we organized a showcase as well as a day party at Okay Mountain Gallery that featured local bands and businesses, including some phenomenal performances and equally delicious chocolate. Well, we’ve upgraded this year! The day party was so successful that in addition to […]
Read the Rest...OSSO VIA AIRWAVE
February 15th, 2008 , by Asthmatic Kitty
If you’re reading this you’ve probably heard Osso, even if you haven’t heard of them. They recorded on Sufjan Stevens’s Illinois and Songs for Christmas, as well as My Brightest Diamond’s Bring Me the Workhorse. They have toured with both. The luckiest amongst us have even heard Osso play live with both Sufjan and My Brightest Diamond from time to time – perhaps at Cincinnati’s Music Now Festival 2007, when they converted Sufjan’s electronic 2001 ode, Enjoy Your Rabbit, into string form.
Since the festival, the quartet’s repertoire has grown to include four more of these electronic pieces. After their debut show at Barbes in Brooklyn, Osso was approached by WNYC radio host, David Garland. He entreated the group to record some material for "Spinning on Air" and on Super Bowl Sunday this small feat was accomplished. The show, featuring performances of eight arrangements from Enjoy Your Rabbit as well as an interview with the group, will air at 7pm on Sunday, February 17th. New Yorkers can listen on the radio at FM 93.9 or AM 820 and anyone can stream the show live at WNYC’s website, here. A streaming version of the show will be subsequently available at Osso’s new
website.
DIG THAT TREASURE UNCOVERED
February 13th, 2008 , by Asthmatic Kitty
It has been a while since Chris Cohen and Nedelle Torrisi brushed their teeth and happened upon Cryptacize, along with the help of Michael Carreira. Since then the trio has toured, made a video, and even recorded an album!
This miniature journey, free fantasia, dreamy habitat they called Dig That Treasure is now available for purchase from our store, in both CD and LP formats. Click here to buy the CD ($10), here for the LP ($12), or here to read more about the album. The album will be available in your favorite independent store on Tuesday the 19th.
40 BANDS 80 MINUTES!
February 12th, 2008 , by Asthmatic Kitty
If you haven’t noticed, all the money is in ringtones these days. The major record labels love charging their fans $3 for 30 seconds of music. And, apparently, some fans love paying for them. Welcome to the future.
So take the concept of the ringtone, and add in a little Mad Max/Waterworld/Planet of the Apes and multiply. What you get is 40 Bands 80 Minutes!, the visual record of a night in which forty L.A. bands emerged from their underground shelters to perform in 2-minute bursts; shared equipment, no second chances. Among the those Beyond Thunderdome: No Age (in their final performance as Wives), HEALTH, Abe Vigoda, Bizzart and Rob Williams, who breaks his own Guinness World Record by making a sandwich with his feet.
RAPOSA IN LE MARAIS
February 7th, 2008 , by Asthmatic Kitty
The superb online music video site, La Blogothèque, has covered a few of our artists before (namely Sufjan and My Brightest Diamond). But they’ve never taped anyone like Ray Raposa of Castanets. In these cuts, the rough of Raposa meets the refine of Le Marais; he even plays "First Lights Freeze" for three French gentlemen in berets who yelled at Ray as he passed by, wanting only a birthday song. They don’t stick around. In another video, a mysteriously-shaven Raposa holds company with strangers and empty glasses, and in a third, a couple kids carelessly massacre some hedges while he dons guitar and amp to play "Cathedral 4."
These videos are only available for download in a variety of formats for a limited time, so do so with haste here.
STRAIGHT FROM THE LIBRARY TO YOU: OUR FIRST DVD
February 5th, 2008 , by Asthmatic Kitty
We are proud to present our first visual compilation: Encyclopedia Asthmatica Volume 1, a collection of distinctively Asthmatic Kitty visuals; the odd, the sublime, and the delectable. Gala and Zack Bent, have meticulously designed the box art and transferred their imaginative perceptions of our roster into the DVD’s stop-animation menus, all set to characteristic music arrangements by jingle-virtuoso Rafter.
Everyone’s here somewhere among these 30-some videos, from the playful choreography of the Think Dance Collective frolicking in shoes made of bread to the music of Half-handed Cloud, to the lovely abstraction of Sufjan Stevens’ music by video artist Deborah Johnson; from the haunting and raw post-apocalypse video fuzz of live Castanets, to the crisp color footage of My Brightest Diamond at Northsix, there are visual pieces that hopscotch the chasm between the professionalism of a music-visual DVD to the rabid eccentricity of a five-copy, underground video-zine. Our patent homemade aesthetic is here too, with Bunky’s bizarre yet appropriate space alien video, and a selection from Liz Janes that employs found footage. The Shapes and Sizes videos turn the incidental and accidental into a hidden design, while a video from the Curtains subverts the banality of surveillance video by rendering it magical.
Click on more to see a trailer for the DVD.
We are releasing Encyclopedia Asthmatica on March 4, but you can preorder it for a limited and slightly discounted price of $12.50 (+S&H) at Secretly Canadian Distribution’s website here.
Track List
BUNKY
Hippopotamus (Live, SXSW 2005)
Baba
Space Alien
CASTANETS
A Song is not the Song of the World
Smallest Bones
Good Friend, Yr Hunger (Live, SXSW 2007)
HALF-HANDED CLOUD
You Wouldn’t Embarass Me Would You?
Tongues Possess the Earth Instead
Think/Dance Collective performance
LIZ JANES
Jesus is a Dying Bed Maker
All the Pretty Horses
MY BRIGHTEST DIAMOND
Freak Out!
Live @ Northsix
Dragonfly
Gone Away
Magic Rabbit
RAFTER
Adventurers
ZZZPenchant
Gentlemen
Hope
Monsters
Encouragement
SHAPES AND SIZES
Teller/Seller
Jinker/That Fat Hand
Can’t Stop that (Sinking) Feeling
SUFJAN STEVENS
Jacksonville (Live, Calvin College 2007)
Palm Sunday Tornado Hits Crystal Lake
The Undivided Self (for Eppie & Popo)
The Vivian Girls…
Put the Lights on the Tree
THE CURTAINS
Go Lucky
Spinning Top
CASTANETS IN SECRET (STEREO)
January 29th, 2008 , by Asthmatic Kitty
Somewhere out there in an undisclosed location is a tiny studio that captures and collects exclusive music from touring musicians. It’s a secret, but luckily for us this "secret stereo" also has a not-so-secretive website.
They’ve managed to snag three special tracks from Castanets, and boy are they gems: The Castanets manage to somehow make Waylon Jennings’ "Mental Revenge" even darker, (see a YouTube video of the original here), a track from a future Castanets release makes an appearance, and they play through In the Vines‘ "Sway" with uncalculated self-deconstruction.
One of Secret Stereo’s writers, Dylan Metrano, also wrangled an interview from Castanets members Ray Raposa and Jesse Ainslie. Raposa talks about not going back and playing to aging Goths. Jesse takes the high road with a discourse on sonic communication. It’s a good read.
You can access the mp3s and the interview on The Secret Studio here. Castanets are playing in San Diego on Wednesday (30th), Long Beach on Thursday, and Friday in LA. See here for specifics.
RAFTER OUT
January 23rd, 2008 , by Asthmatic Kitty
This is it. Sex Death Cassette is flying hot out of the Rafter oven, and landing toasty and delicious on the shelves of your local independent record store and our own online store. Rafter has certainly proliferated his share of music lately, not the least of which includes two albums (10 Songs and Music for Total Chickens), a Song a Week for the last 16 weeks (click here to listen), and more recently, a deliciously talkboxed tune for Pepper Mill Records (here for page, here for MP3).
But here’s the weird thing: this sheer volume has just made Rafter sound better and better, and Sex Death Cassette is the culmination. Paper Thin Walls is hosting a full, free stream of the album alongside Rafter’s commentary if you’d like to hear it for yourself. Click here, and be sure to comment! You can buy it from us for $10 (+S&H) by clicking here.
PROMISE OF SPRING INSPIRES CRYPTACIZE TO TOUR
January 23rd, 2008 , by Asthmatic Kitty
Yes, it is cold. This is the worst part of winter, what with the holidays done and gone and the sun all but hidden by the clouds.
Yet, the fair Cryptacize is never one to sit in and mope. Instead, they are looking to the sunny future, when green abounds, baby rabbits start nibbling on that same green, and flowers begin to push their way through the dirt. It is then when Cryptacize, too, will emerge from their snowy hibernation and tour the United States wide. By then, their mysterious and mystical Dig That Treasure will have found its way into the hands of the general and not-so-general public. How coincidental!
And who better to tour with than Anticon Record’s pitter-pattering why? who, coincidentally (!), also have an album due soon! Along the tour, expect visits from Son Lux, Brother Danielson, and Doofgoblin. For a sample of Cryptacize’s future tourmates, why?, click here to download why?’s cover of The Cure’s "Close to Me."
For details of the tour, click here.
Until you catch them live, you can catch them YouTubed, with their first official video: "Cosmic Singalong." Click on more to view!