Instruments of Science & Technology’s Richard Swift (born Ricardo Sigilfredo Olivarez Swift-Ochoa, 1977) is an artist who lives in the Northwest region on the United States of America. He’s made lots of different music.  He normally sings, but doesn’t at all on this recording. Music for Paradise Armor was made on varying recording mediums, such as a Tascam 4-track cassette player/recorder, an Otari 50/50 – 8-track half-inch recorder, a 16-track 2-inch machine constructed by Studer, and a computer made by Macintosh. There are a lot of what Swift calls “modern clickity-clacks” and “zzzoops s s s”, as well as the occasional “bleep bleep blaaaaap” found on this disc. These sounds apparently reflect our tech-centric lifestyle in the West.  We have magnet trains, remote control car door locks, and affordable robotic limbs, yet we still flush our toilets with drinking water. Guard yourself.

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Kristin Miltner is a composer, video and installation artist, and sound designer living in Oakland, California. She most often performs music live with versions of her custom software. She has designed this to scan sound files and live input, allowing her to instantly restructure the sounds into sequenced arrays of units of varying lengths. This scanning idea is like imagining a giant octopus in a long thin hallway with continuous windows on each side. One can touch both sides of the hallway with one’s fingertips (if one is an octopus). The length of the hallway is infinite. So the octopus runs up and down the hallway opening and closing windows, letting a little bit of water in here and there, but never stops moving back and forth, and some windows stay open for longer than others. But there’s a rhythm to it; it’s an efficient octopus. The ocean is the sound source, the hallway and octopus are the scanners, the windows determine what gets in, and the octopus’s rhythm is the sequencing mechanism.

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Kristin has performed at Noise Pancakes, 964 Natoma, the San Francisco Tape Music Festival (SFTMF), 21 Grand, and the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival (SFEMF). She is the sound designer for many well-known games and toys, including Leapfrog’s Leapster and Didj, Electronic Arts’ Sims 3 and Sim Animals, Mattel’s Xtractaurs, and a number of Facebook and iPhone games. She is the production manager of the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, and an active member of the festival’s steering committee. Her debut solo recording, Grains, can be found at www.praemedia.com.

Dear Donna Donna,
I hope you are well. I’m still getting used to writing in plain English after so long. (I still dream in Code, though.)

As you may have heard, they gave me a spot on the Memorial Committee, which means endless meetings where only the most ridiculous compromises have any hope of getting approval. And compromises don’t get much more ridiculous than what we’ve come up with for the Federal Memorial, which is to add 91 days to the calendar. For now we’re calling it The New December, which I will admit has a nice ring to it.

On the civic level, there are more modest plans. Actually, I’m thinking of you now because I’m parked on the hill above the part of town you always said was ugly. The buildings are gone and a circular road cuts through the center, doubled by a larger oval path, so it looks like an eye from here. That will be Highland Park’s humble memorial to the Great Struggle.

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The big news is that we’re still at a loss as to what to do about the Mixionary Mutations. All that the Genius Kids can tell us is that the WLIR Code has infected the “regular” language, scrambling words, reversing sentences, and generally making a verbal mess. Some people are claiming that it’s affecting their memories, but I have a very hard time believing that. Anyway, today I bought a newspaper and spread it out on my kitchen floor, just to see if I could watch it mutate. An interesting, if terrifying, way to spend an hour.  That’s all for now. I know Intercity Mail is still spotty, but if you get this, please send my regards to the crew, and drop a line when you have a chance.

Yours,
Samuel Bing
Fol Chen

1) The Holograms – 3:48
2) In Ruins – 3:01
3) Your Curtain Call – 3:50
4) This is Where the Road Belongs – 3:50
5) Men, Beasts or Houses – 4:11
6) C/U – 3:20
7) Adeline (You Always Look So Bored) – 3:27
8) The Holes – 2:42
9) They Came to Me – 3:14
10) The New December – 4:23

Heavy Ghost, the debut album from DM Stith, cast an almost supernatural effect on reviewers and fans when it was released in March of 2009. Both groups acclaimed it as a stunning debut unlike anything else they’d heard. Stith’s peers received it well too: Ed Droste of Grizzly Bear twittered about it calling it a “lovely album,” and Bat for Lashes picked Heavy Ghost for her New York Times playlist, saying “It traverses all these magical landscapes… almost like Alice through the looking glass. Like you’re being sucked into a secret world.”

Heavy Ghost Appendices revisits this secret world and adds to its cartography a series of hidden coves, unexplored forests, and new landscapes. Heavy Ghost was also mystifying and intertwined to David when he wrote it; the Appendices were a means to sort the thing out in his mind. They physically collect the digital trilogy of EPs released over the course of the summer and fall of 2009 into a beautifully packaged limited edition double disc set. The EPs were an exercise in exploring the boundaries of the music contained on Heavy Ghost, revisiting songs, reinterpreting, and displaying some inspiration and influences through covers of other artists. The Remixes helped provide new context and deconstruction of his songs in a way that unearthed the songs’ roles and relationships to one another.

The two discs are divided between the covers/reworkings and the remixes. The first disc includes an astonishing rendition of Randy Newman’s “Suzanne” and a David Lynch-esque version of the The Ronettes “Be My Baby.” There is a serene tenderness in Stith’s cover of David Byrne’s “A Soft Seduction” while he turns Diane Cluck’s “Easy To Be Around” into a menacing overture. Included are also new renditions of his own songs including “Around the Lion Legs”, the marching band gut punch of a re-envisioned “Pigs”, as well as a collaboration with labelmates I Heart Lung turning “Wig” into an ambient free jazz swirling haze.

The remix disc offers up myriad interpretations from some of electronic music’s most distinct voices as well as a a smokey jazz version of “Thanksgiving Moon” by Dayna Kurtz. Michna provides a tropical dance remix, Rafter turns “Thanksgiving Moon” into a doombeat terror, Roberto Carlos Lange (Savath & Savalas, Helado Negro, Prefuse 73) infuses “BMB” with latin experimentation, while Son Lux interprets the same song with a unique sort of polka glitch. Bibio’s remix of “Abraham’s Song” takes Stith’s voice into the realm of saturated electro-acoustics while FatCat glitch artist and Bjork collaborator, Ensemble, and Warp recording artist Clark offer their own unique approach to Stith’s music both reworking “Braid of Voices”. The Appendices also includes the expansive 11 minute shoegaze electronics of Actuel.

For such a strange young voice, 2009 has been a wild and beautiful year and this new collection provides a reflective compendium to Stith’s debut album.

[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/13393363[/vimeo]

“I’m always restless, always rebelling against whatever seemed to work last time, so when I turned in Animal Feelings and let that enormous process leave my hands, I immediately started deconstructing it. I did a bunch of reimaginings myself and got some friends and strangers to make some as well. When I tallied up what we had after a few weeks of weird work, it felt like an album, so now that’s what it is! from Dominique Leone’s epic Peruvian trance state take on “beauty beauty” to Baths’ slow-jamming romantic vision of “fruit”, the whole album is like looking at the songs of Animal Feelings through a legitimately rad kaleidoscope. I know I’m too close to the trees to see the forest, but I think I like this album every bit as much as the one it’s derived from. I think you will too! I promise it is really good.” – Rafter

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Animal Feelings is about livin’ it out and looking for love while your days move forward; because your days will move forward and they’ll move forward fast. It’s how you fill up the in-between time that counts

They say you can’t keep a good man down and here at the Asthmatic Kitty Department of Super Sweet Songwriter Support we believe the same goes for good music. Up until now, Roberto Carlos Lange’s albums under the Epstein banner weren’t available outside of Japan–but all that’s about to change! Celebrating 10 years of Epstein music, Asthmatic Kitty is proud to be releasing the entire Epstein back catalog along with two brand-new full-lengths!

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The first album of new material, out March 9th and billed under the name Epstein y El Conjunto, is When Man is Full He Falls Asleep, a hazy dreamscape of bass, beats, and gloriously washed-out electronics. Like Lange’s work in Asthmatic Kitty act Helado Negro, there’s an organic playfulness to these songs, each looping, synth-pulsing, head-noddin’, tape-collage evocative of things like drowsy afternoons DJing vinyl records for yourself, sleepy mornings with coffee and Wu-Tang on the Walkman, and sweaty summer block parties in Lange’s current homebase of Brooklyn.

Equally influenced by weirdo out-pioneer Moondog, Parliament, DJ culture, and Argentine folk-singer Facundo Cabral, this 14-track danceparty kicks off with “Arrival to New York,” an upbeat jam built from samplers and Lange’s woozed-out vocals. A warm, billowing electronic visionquest, the track is a solid set-up for what’s to come.

So, meet Epstein. We’re very proud to bring this album, along with its sisters and brothers of the back catalog, to the rest of the world!

Credits:
All songs by Roberto Lange (Pebble Toss Music ASCAP) 2010 (THE FUTURE)
Track 12: Lyrics by A. Deheza and C. Deheza, Additional Instrumentation B. Curtis (SVIIB) (BMI)
Track 12: Additional Drumming Jason Trammell aka old man hat
Thanks to Space Chancleta and the Whipcream Eyepatch Expedition. Steven La Mano Fria Castro, Toka-RL66, My Family and My Lady, lil lazer, AK, LoKay and M.Crum.

Originally released on Botanica Del Jibaro in 2005.

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Design & Layout – La Mano Fria
Face Illustrations – Roberto Carlos Lange
Producer – Roberto Carlos Lange

Originally released on Botanica Del Jibaro in 2004.

This is the first Epstein record made from 2000-2001. Dusty records and a sampler are what was used. This music was made during the time Roberto Lange lived in Savannah, Georgia.

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Design – La Mano Fria
Additional Instrumentation – Matt Crum, Ryan Batch
Photography – Verena Geisselmann
Producer – Roberto Carlos Lange

Originally released on Arepaz in 2008.

Otros is about the others in all sense’s. This album was made in Atlanta 2006 and New York 2007.

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Artwork By [Design] – La Mano Fria
Additional Design Assistance, Photos – Iris
Producer – Roberto Carlos Lange