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

When the time came to talk remixes for A Thousand Shark’s Teeth, Asthmatic Kitty and My Brightest Diamond realized a need for a more cohesive and conceptual project. They brought on four remixers (Alfred Brown, DM Stith, Son Lux and Roberto Carlos Lange (Epstein, Savath and Savalas, ROM) and commissioned them to each create a separate EP of remixed material.

Roberto Carlos Lange (Helado Negro, Savath & Savalas) offers up his contribution to the Library Catalog Music Series. Music for Memory is like one giant crossfade going from one idea to the next in long rhythmic patterns. Its broken tape delays and found reel to reel tapes comprise the beats and the long drone music made from orchestrations that became re-assembled from short ideas to long ones.

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Side A:
Roberto Carlos Lange on Stuffed Tomato, Nonsense Drum, Electrocutions, Bacteria Keyboards, False Teeth.
Connor Bell Various themes on Oranj con You
Jessica Larabee Tarot Tea and Backspin Effect.
Matt Crum Procussions
Jason Trammell Inverted Jit.

Side B:
Roberto Carlos Lange Crocodile Effect
Eduardo Alonso Crocodile Provider

Lowell Brams was raised in West Alexandria and Dayton, Ohio. He met Sufjan Stevens in Detroit, Michigan, in 1976, but Sufjan was eleven months old and doesn’t remember it. After Lowell and Sufjan’s mother married, they re-met in 1980 in Eugene, Oregon, have been friends since then, and started Asthmatic Kitty together in 1998. They are both insomniacs, the theme Sufjan suggested for this album. Bryce Dessner is originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, and a founding member of The National.

Music for Insomnia was written and performed by Lowell Brams and Sufjan Stevens on Harmonium, Little Casio, Little Korg, Big Prophet, Prepared Piano, Unprepared Piano, Acoustic and Electric Guitars, Autoharp, Drums, Bass, Reedless Woodwinds, Bells, Shakers, Tambourine, Hair, Duct Tape and Keys.Track 8 written and performed by Lowell Brams, Harmonium and Korg, Bryce Dessner, Electric and Acoustic guitar, and Sufjan Stevens, Piano, Casio and Percussion. Many thanks to Bryce and Sufjan, and, Ed N., The Lone Ranger, and the dudes of Con Los Dudes, who may be heard riding into the sunset on “Alpha to Theta.”

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For Sara, the Asthmatic Kitty, 1993-2008.

Asthmatic Kitty’s Library Catalog Music is a series of instrumental albums designed for possible use in films and television, background sounds for home or office, or personal needs, such as relaxation, stimulation, meditation, concentration, or elevation. For your listening pleasure, we asked a select group of talented artists to create a unique recording for this collection. Specific uses for the music is this series may include accompaniment to cooking, eating, sculpting, exercising, high stakes poker, soaking, panoramic landscapes, cuddling, car chases, drawing, knitting, bandaging, romance, playing chess, or planning the rest of your life, of which this is the first day.

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Yuuki Matthews is a Seattle-based freelance musician and owner of 2 cats.  Originally from Hollywood (Burbank), California, Yuuki moved to the Northwest with his mother and brother in the mid-nineties.  He recorded the songs that make up Music for Savage Tropical Imagery at home between tours, odd jobs, and major milestone events.  With this record, Yuuki sought to expand upon the nostalgia of subtle sound degradation.

Cut Me Down & Count My Rings is a collection of rarities, singles, and b-sides by indefatigable DIY pop musician John Ringhofer, AKA Half-handed Cloud, the first artist after Sufjan Stevens to release an album on Asthmatic Kitty Records. The title is a lyric from the yet-unreleased fifth Half-handed Cloud album, due out in 2010.

This disk collects 46 songs that don’t appear on Half-handed Cloud’s four Asthmatic Kitty Records/Sounds Familyre albums. They’re taken from seventeen different releases that came out between 2000 and 2009. Until now, these songs were only available on vinyl, as a cassingle, with a zine, as a couple limited-edition CDEPs, or among the tracks of a few compilation albums. The themes are accordingly diverse: they include sheep, Psalms, werewolves, list-making, bees, stories from scripture and Christmas. Some of the songs served as transitions between previous Half-handed Cloud releases or built upon themes from the full-lengths. Lending a helping hand on assorted tracks are Brandon Buckner, from Ringhofer’s former band Wookieback, Sufjan Stevens, Yoni from WHY?, and Nedelle and Chris from Cryptacize.

Ringhofer began his singing and recording career at two, collaborating on cassette tape with his parents while in the bathtub. Early favorites included The United States Pledge of Allegiance, songs from Sgt. Pepper’s, Sunday school tunes, holiday melodies, nursery rhymes, and the themes from Star Wars, The Lone Ranger, and The Greatest American Hero. In fourth grade he began playing the trombone in a North Carolina elementary school band, and at 16, while recovering from toe surgery, learned to play guitar on a Korean-made acoustic from a company better known for its brass instruments. Writing and recording his own songs soon followed. From the start, Ringhofer’s songwriting philosophy included the idea of brevity as a virtue, or “If I can say it in ninety seconds, why take five minutes?”, thereby excluding drum and guitar solos and thirty-verse epics. He was encouraged in his short-song writing by the tiny chapters in Kurt Vonnegut’s The Cat’s Cradle and Guided by Voices’ Alien Lanes.

Through his albums and unpredictable multi-media performances, Ringhofer has found his way into the hearts of multitudes with spirited humor, an anything-goes 1960s musical sensibility, and murmurs of divine redemption accompanied by stringed instruments, an air organ, trombone, or a variable-speed cassette player. Cut me Down gathers the scattered—and in some cases lost—chapters of the Half-handed Cloud canon into one efficient package, a small monument to genuine creativity and independence in pop music.

The bone-on-bone drumbeat that opens Dead Zone Boys pounds the sound of living death, creeping forward, maw open wide. The beat is serving notice: you are about to be consumed.

Dead Zone Boys, the third album from Jookabox (Indianapolis-born David “Moose” Adamson and Co.), is love story meets psychedelic zombie-musical. The zombie part came easy: Moose grew up on the east side of Indianapolis in the 90s, an area plagued by constant recession, pandemic homicide, and racial tension. A few strong tribes chose to stay in the area despite constant warnings from fleeing acquaintances. It was this frantic energy and violence that infused itself into the Jookabox experience. Since then, the area struggles to revitalize and Adamson’s musical interests and excursions have crystallized into a startlingly singular and eclectic songwriting strategy. One thing is certain here: if vacant strip malls occupied only by shitdragged liquor stores and fluorescent check cashing joints are foreign to you, then Dead Zone Boys will be your guidebook, Jookabox your tour guide. This is more evident now than ever on what is sure to become a cult classic.

Jookabox’s debut record, Scientific Cricket, sampled a kind of primordial blues sound, children’s sidewalk-chalk rhymes and Appalachian folk. Sophomore follow-up Ropechain pinwheeled like a kaleidoscope through old-time spirituals, punk, and club music hip-hop, blending these disparate elements into a cohesive and unique synthesis. Thematically both albums have dealt extensively with the paranormal, race, and madness. Last year after wrapping up Ropechain, the genre-warping Jookabox lost a Grampall (after a haunting vision), and regrouped, gaining a second member/drummer, Ostry Okerson. This year Jookabox absorbed two-fifths of Indianapolis’ psych-pop ringleaders, Everthus the Deadbeats. Led by the stalwart Moose, this new band delivers a tightly realized live show and album replete with nods to early Ween, Black Sabbath, and fellow Indiana native, the King of Pop.

Dead Zone Boys is an infectious soundtrack to humanity’s last stand against decay and the dead. One hand with mic and the other a shotgun, Jookabox pushes through as troubador and protagonist to free the decayed city and its few outposed survivors of the fear of death. He is our protector, no need to lose hope.

Sufjan Stevens is proud to present The BQE, a cinematic suite inspired by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and the Hula-Hoop.

In 2006 Sufjan’s peer, friend and neighbor Bryce Dessner (Clogs, The National), introduced an unlikely notion: to re-arrange the entirety of Enjoy Your Rabbit for the string quartet Osso. The result was Run Rabbit Run.

Texas Rose, Castanets’ fifth for Asthmatic Kitty, clocks in just under 39 minutes. It neither drags nor flies by. It is, in essence, a substantial, unpretentious, bullshit-free listening experience.