The debut album by The Welcome Wagon unveils a ramshackle sing-a-long enterprise of a Presbyterian pastor (the Rev. Vito Aiuto) and his wife (Monique) wrestling out the influences of folk music, religion, popular culture, and church tradition in a collection of songs that is as soulful as it is good-humored.

Asthmatic Kitty is pleased to announce Habitat, a two disc set including 29 artists, covering the various manifestations of “electronic music,” and produced as a benefit for Habitat for Humanity. Each participant was asked to provide an exclusive track that dealt with the notion of architectural space. Here, electronic music is represented in many forms: […]

Ropechainbraids holy fear, schizophrenic inspiration, baroque pop-references, and deep, mystical love into a formidable work likely to leave aficionados of rock-n-roll trapped in an obsessive cycle of listening and re-listening. Get your tickets here.

“If the Dub Refuge album works, it’s probably because Ray and I are both preoccupied with ghostly, ephemeral and messy sounds. There’s a haunted and haunting quality to a lot of the music he makes, and I’ve always tried to seek out a similar quality in my own music. I respect his unique dedication to risk and share his reverence for accident in folk music.(Stray string squeaks, cracking voices and odd echoes can be more rewarding than intentional harmonies or suavely competent riffs.)

So I wanted to make sounds from his music that respected the realism and naturalism of the source material (hums, buzz, the acoustic signature of motel and cheap microphone) while adding in additional depth of reference and providing some clouds of unknowability, in order to emphasize the more spiritual and aggressively ‘out’ aspects of the music.

I also love the driving warmth of certain classic dub sources: King Tubby, Scientist, Burning Spear, Sly and Robbie. I felt that trying my best to turn a minimalist folk record into dub would be a worthwhile course– I wouldn’t accomplish it, but trying was worthwhile. Decaying tape echo, slowly dissolving blasts of noise, rimshots and filtered snare drums wobbling off the edge of syncopation, and richly resonant bass notes: I did not make these sounds integrate perfectly with the source material. In fact, I didn’t come even remotely close to making an album that sounds like classic dub. But that sound never for a moment left my mind as a goal.

Lastly, the City of Refuge album has emotional power (the songwriting is magnificent, and Ray’s gift for finding unusual and effective sonic combinations is superb) and I hope that Dub Refuge does too. I’ve done my best to leave the loneliness, paranoia, and meditative qualities intact; I’ve tried to enhance some of the underlying beauty of the songs.

It’s been a pleasure and a delight to work on this album.”

—Ero Gray

With an uneasy, asymmetric weave of sung songs, chants, electronic noise solos and spaghetti-western guitar interludes, City suggests a film soundtrack, with overture, mood-setting and plot-development songs, intermission (please remain seated, and ignore the guards at the exits), character studies, and themes of resolution and reconciliation.

Improvisation captures the here and the now. Jazz producers like Bob Thiele at the legendary Impulse Records encouraged John Coltrane and others to record in one take, preserving the excitement generated in the moment. Working in this fashion, I Heart Lung (comprised of guitarist Chris Schlarb and drummer Tom Steck) went into the studio and recorded two days full of improvisations that, over the course of three years time, would be revised in the anti-jazz tradition of overdubs, remixing and post-production composition.

On Interoceans, I Heart Lung blends first-take methods with Oblique Strategies: carefully composed, meticulously recorded pieces rooted in improvisation, revised and augmented over time. The results are a compelling vision of chaos and beauty as Chris Schlarb’s electric guitar drones and Tom Steck’s free-jazz drumming hold and flutter with shimmering acoustic guitars, soaring pedal steel and beautifully captured field recordings. When Kris Tiner‘s trumpet follows Nels Cline‘s electric sitar three minutes into “Interoceans II,” it’s like Don Cherry‘s loving spirit doting on universal music drones.

Presented as a set of four long-form drone-based compositions, Interoceans hints both at the sonic palette and renegade spirit of ECM Records alumnus Steve Tibbetts and Ralph Towner and the measured studio edge of Talk Talk‘s Laughing Stock. While influenced by Fripp & Eno, Miles Davis, and Terry Riley, I Heart Lung possesses a healthy balance between tradition and the respectful corruption thereof. This can, in part, be seen by I Heart Lung’s active involvement in the L.A. art noise scene. In 2006 the group was featured in the documentary 40 BANDS/80 MINUTES! alongside HEALTH, No Age and Abe Vigoda and they continue to pursue a tangential connection with L.A. underground hip-hop, many participants of which are mutual fans of the group. Interoceans remixes are currently in the works by several prominent hip-hop artists including Jel (Subtle, Themselves), Awol One, Serengeti, Omid (Freestyle Fellowship) and Radioinactive. A second set of electronic/ambient remixers include Strategy, Greg Davis and Danish artists Badun and Sugarghost. In addition to CD and digital formats, Interoceans also sees a limited vinyl release on the outer-limits label, Thor’s Rubber Hammer Productions. It features alternate artwork by I Heart Lung drummer and visual artist Tom Steck, beautifully screenprinted on heavy Raw Kraft stock by VGKids.

As Interoceans neared completion, producer Chris Schlarb put together two lists. One contained names of his favorite hip-hop producers and M.C.’s. The other was an index of his top experimental electronic and ambient artists. The concept was simple; each list would reimagine Interoceans’ four tracks, with Schlarb serving as executive producer.

Portland, Oregon based Strategy (aka Paul Dickow) worked the pedal steel guitar of “Interoceans II” into an ambient lather while evoking the textures of both Pink Floyd and Seefeel. Vermont based composer and Akron/Family collaborator Greg Davis goes heavy on the drone and outdoes the original length of album closer “Interoceans IV”.

Two remixes came from Denmark’s active underground scene with electro/jazz trio Badun cutting, pasting and overdubbing their own instruments on “Interoceans III.” The result is a gorgeous extension of both Badun’s unique style and the original track. After collaborating with I Heart Lung during a festival performance in California, Sugarghost (aka Joakim Frøystein) cleverly inverted the upright bass groove of “Interoceans I” and set Tom Steck’s drums awash in cavernous reverb.

Los Angeles underground hip-hop is well represented with Awol One, Radioinactive, Bizzart, Express Fresh and Acid Reign’s Gajah each adding vocals to various tracks and Beneath The Surface producer Omid contributing a remix. Anticon producer Jel masterfully loops the 12-string guitars of “Interoceans II” as Awol and Chicago rapper Serengeti trade verses over Nels Cline’s soaring guitar feedback. Omid goes up tempo on his remix of “Interoceans IV” and joins Gajah’s clean and contemplative verse with a manic rumination on small struggles and big city life from Bizzart.

Producer Self Says wraps the acoustic guitar of “Interoceans I” in synth bass and crisp hi-hats as Express Fresh stalks past lesser tongues for a much deserved solo spotlight. Busdriver and Daedelus collaborator Radioinactive combines with ellul for a spirited take on “Interoceans III” wherein lyrical non-sequitors and dueling monomes reign supreme.

Shara Worden sings of things lost in a fire, literally and figuratively, exploring both beauty and danger in a shark’s kiss.

Also known as water witching, dowsing is the ancient practice of finding water, buried mineral deposits, gems, lost pets or possessions, and people. Dowsers tap into movements or vibrations using forked twigs, L-shaped rods, pendulums, or sometimes nothing at all. The accuracy of dowsing is widely debated, and often the relationship between cause and effect is misunderstood or imagined.

Cryptacize began across the street from the C&H Sugar Factory in Crockett, CA, where Nedelle Torrisi and Chris Cohen lived in an apartment slightly tilted. There, constant dizziness and the smell of burning sugar became a permanent part of their psyches. One morning while brushing their teeth, toothpaste running sideways out of their mouths, Nedelle pronounced the word ‘Cryptacize’ and things were never the same. Seemingly, the house now inclined in the opposite direction! Soon after this, they discovered something even stranger – a video of a drummer named Michael Carreira playing his cowbell. Having only this video, they sought him out and convinced him to join their band and shortly there after began working on their first album.

Every song on Dig That Treasure is a miniature journey, a free fantasia, a dreamy habitat built out of the minimum of material. Sudden rhythmic gestures and frequent key changes will leave you feeling pleasantly disorientated in a song. But trust your tour-guides! You might feel as if you’ve come across a small tribe that speaks an unstudied language, and miraculously, find that you can speak it too! Performing live, Nedelle, Mike and Chris watch each other intently, moving in an intuitive way to an unheard pulse, bringing their delicately constructed songs to new life.

Dig That Treasure is humbly inspired by the larger-than-life emotions of West Side Story, the joyfully percussive guitar gospel of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, The Wizard of Oz’s bittersweet escapism, the other-world sentimentality of Sun Ra’s Spaceship Lullaby, and Henry Cowell’s ethereal piano string strumming.