Available through digital download services and web store only.  Packaged in slim cardboard sleeves beautifully designed by Jonathan Dueck.

This pop gem has been buried in the rough since 1998, when Rafter put the finishing touches on his garage-built masterpiece and called it “10 Songs.” At the time he was living in the infamous (and little-known) Go-Homes in downtown San Diego, an experimental living space inhabited at the time by a number of SD music luminaries. Pinback was busy recording their debut album in the same building, Rafter was recording a bunch of excellent bands in his garage, and all sorts of talented folk were within reach for a horn or string part when they were needed. Some simmering impulse in Rafter’s soul told him it was time to create an album of beauty, and so he went to work on ten luscious, wistful, sad and beautiful songs (after it was finished he suspected it was all to get the ladies to like him… ahh, the subconcious motivations of the human animal!).

This is long before Rafter had access to any sort of respectable recording set-up, having to make due with the crappy-budget deal, which is just more proof of how much you can do with so little when you’ve got the burning desire. A first computer provided, for the first time, the ability to experiment with looping and extensive sampling – long drum tracks could be reviewed and snipped for the essential feel desired. All sorts of instruments with myriad effects are employed with the end-result of songs like “Whiskey for Water,” with it’s driving distorto-bass and breakbeat drums overlayed with at least three distinct guitar parts, incongruent cheerful string-wash accents, and delicate and desperate (and again incongruent) vocals (not to mention the bird calls and other minutae springing up like a Max Fleischer cartoon epic).

There can be a feeling of these songs belonging to a different time, as you might expect from an eight-year lapse ‘tween creation and final fruition, yet these songs are so fleshed out and worked through that once stepped into, they tend to overflow contemporary technological and cultural streams. You can float along on top contemplating the slowed-up folk crunk of “My Friend the Crow,” improbably perched soundwise between Neil Young and M.I.A. (with a bit of Pascal Comelade thrown in for good measure), and thus forget that impulse to define and measure and relate everything down to it’s perceived place in the history of time. This is an album to lose your way in, headphones pumping and toes tapping and mind swimming in the rich environs authored by a persevering love-seeking dude.
(description by Dan Bryant)

Bring Me The Workhorse courageously gathers all the essential elements of classical and pop to create an album that breaks down the barriers of both worlds. These songs are simultaneously gentle and urgent, evoking moments of tremendous joy and sorrow with the magnitude of Italian opera and the modesty of a Japanese haiku.

Under Shara’s gaze, ordinary objects begin to have supernatural meanings. A robin’s nest, a grocery list, a glass bottle come to represent love, mortality, and the overwhelming need to “freak out” every once in a while. Shara is not afraid to use superlatives. But she also considers the benefits of self-control. This is most evident in the carefulness of her arrangements. Earthy drums and bass guitar are augmented by Celeste, music boxes, prepared piano, and a string quartet; each song is scrupulously composed and arranged by Shara herself.

[bandcamp album=4022093413 bgcol=FFFFFF linkcol=4285BB size=grande]

Shara’s songwriting reconciles the high art of opera with the low-brow of the folk song by compounding them into a form that is both as sublime as it is pragmatic. The music is set in transcendent landscapes familiar to Wagner’s operas, but it is also planted firmly in the materials of everyday life: dirt, tree branches, bird feathers and thrown away charms. Strings and chimes beckon mysterious apparitions, but Shara’s tone of voice is dead serious.

Almost every song pivots around a moment of crisis, distilling stories to their most distressing points of contact: a phone call, an injured horse, a dragonfly caught in a spider’s web. Shara doesn’t share all the information — just the stuff that matters. The effect is a sensational compression of time, in which an entire event is summarized in a single note. This, of course, is the essence of opera. But My Brightest Diamond is much more than musical theater.

Shapes and Sizes new self-titled debut album brings together an unlikely assortment of sounds.  Placing smart, catchy pop hooks beside chaotic experimentation, beside slower, more melancholy songs, and even flirting with straight up rock, the quartet juggles affects with ease.

Thompson-Hannant commands vocal range and control uncommon in the world of indie-rock, a purity perfectly balanced by Rory Seydel’s raw, emotional voice. The quartet is rounded off by the drums and bass of Crellin and Gage, long time professional musicians whose experience brings elements of textural complexity to a band that can build castles in the air, then reduce them to atoms. For their self-titled release, Shapes and Sizes teamed up with long time Frog Eyes engineer, Tolan McNeil, and enlisted an army of saxophones, trumpets, vibraphones, and violas to further their cause.

The little secret behind the Illinois record is that it was originally conceived as a double album, culminating in a musical collage of nearly 50 songs. But as the project began to develop into an unwieldy epic, common sense weighed in—as did the opinions of others—and the project was cut in half. But as 2005 came to a close, Sufjan returned to the old, forsaken songs on his 8-track like a grandfather remembering his youth, indulging in old journals and newspaper clippings. What he uncovered went beyond the merits of nostalgia; it was more like an ensemble of capricious friends and old acquaintances wearing party outfits, waiting to be let in at the front door, for warm drinks and interesting conversation. Among them were Saul Bellow, Ann Landers, Adlai Stevenson, and a brief cameo from Henry Darger’s Vivian Girls. The gathering that followed would become the setting for the songs on The Avalanche: Outtakes and Extras from the Illinois Album.

[bandcamp album=2566673686 bgcol=FFFFFF linkcol=4285BB size=grande]

Sufjan gleaned 21 useable tracks from the abandoned material, including three alternate versions of Chicago. Some songs were in finished form, others were merely outlines, gesture drawings, or musical scribbles mumbled on a hand-held tape recorder. Most of the material required substantial editing, new arrangements or vocals. Much of the work was done at the end of 2005 or in January the following year. Sufjan invited many of the original Illinoisemakers to fill in the edges: drums, trumpet, a choir of singers. The centerpiece, of course, was the title track—The Avalanche—a song intended for the leading role on the Illinois album but eventually cut and placed as a bonus track on the vinyl release. In his rummaging through old musical memorabilia, Sufjan began to use this song as a meditation on the editorial process, returning to old forms, knee-deep in debris, sifting rocks and river water for an occasional glint of gold. “I call ye cabin neighbors,” the song bemuses, “I call you once my friends.” And like an avid social organizer, Sufjan took in all the odd musical misfits and gathered them together for a party of their own, like good friends.

A careful listener may uncover the obvious trend on this record: almost every song on the Illinois album has a counterpart on the outtakes. Carl Sandburg arm-wrestles Saul Bellow. The aliens landing near Highland salute Clyde Tombaugh, the man who discovered Pluto. The loneliness of “Casimir Pulaski Day” deepens even further in the foreboding soundtrack to “Pittsfield.” At its best, The Avalanche is an exercise in form, revealing the working habits of one of the most productive songwriters today. As an illustration, the avalanche refers to the snow and rubble that falls off the side of a mountain, or, in this case, the musical debris generously chucked from an abundant epic.  It’s unlikely you’ll find a mountain in the Prairie State so the metaphor will have to do.

Armed with the psalms of David, an acoustic guitar, and an electronic Omnichord, Half-handed Cloud assails nineteen new pop songs outside Eden’s gates on Halos & Lassos, the latest full-length album on Asthmatic Kitty Records. With hints of fitness music and video game soundtracks, Halos & Lassos festively tromps through 19 songs like a mostly-sunny afternoon in Berkeley, California home of main singer and songwriter John Ringhofer. With the modal purity of Moondog, symphonic elements of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, and the ancient art of punning, the album boasts pleasant acoustic melodies arranged around the ambidextrous Omnichord, a kidney-shaped electronic auto-harp/drum machine/synthesizer from the 1980’s. This odd instrument accounts for much of the unique coloring on the album: accordion-like chords, scrupulous drum beats, pre-set bass-lines, and a rectangular pressure pad strummed for gurgle “effects.”

Recorded/mixed by Brandon Buckner in May 2005 at Ears of Corn Studio in Iowa City, Halos & Lassos is Half-handed Cloud’s fourth full-length album for Asthmatic Kitty; 2001’s acclaimed, Learning About Your Scale (also mixed by Buckner) was his first, followed by, We Haven’t Just Been Told, We have been Loved (2002), and 2005’s Thy is a Word & Feet Need Lamps. Halos & Lassos showcases John Ringhofer on piano, banjo, marimba, melodian, guitar, bass, bell-kit, trombone, Omnichord, and vocals, joined by Brandon Buckner on drums, and percussion and Wendy Buckner on Bass Clarinet.

At less than 30 minutes, the album’s brevity is trumped by its generosity of material. Biblical allusions, sophisticated theology, and lyrical displays of affection are measured by Ringhofer’s indelible sense of humor, littered with double meanings and symbolic gestures. A wordsmith taking field notes would be a helpful companion. The prophet Isaiah rubs shoulders with picnic tablecloths and public transportation, as calibrated by Ringhofer’s clever vocal somersaulting and proficient rhyme schemes. Choruses stack tightly against one another like medieval building blocks painted with scenes from daily life and devotion. Each song unwraps itself like a present for a lover with multiple references to kisses, hugs, and a divine Beloved. This album risks everything to pose the question: What’s more romantic than an unending crush on God?

So how to reconcile the poetics of “Every lost dream you restore with the childish “You’ll wake up each morning and jump rope”?  One wonders about this child-like belief, or these unearthly visions that must haunt Ringhofer in his dreams. But, like the late visionary artists Henry Darger and Howard Finster, Half-handed Cloud isn’t meant to be perfectly understood, but rather, spiritually and sensually experienced, with laughing and clapping. Buttressed by banjos, trombones, jingle bells, and a line about sacrificing children to demons, Half-handed Cloud’s Halos & Lassos is perfect for a soapy bath, preparation for deep prayer, decorating the Christmas tree, or meditating on your death. In any circumstance, it will certainly lift your spirits.

Asthmatic Kitty is proud to announce the reappearance of a long-lost album by our good friend singer/songwriter Shannon Stephens. Produced by Shannon and her former Marzuki band-mates Sufjan Stevens and Matt Haseltine in 2000, this superb collection of Shannon’s own songs includes contributions by Marzuki cellist Jamie Kempkers, Kenny Hutson (Vigilantes of Love) on pedal steel guitar, “Mews” and “Mews Too” contributors Roman Bolks and Jason Brouwer, and folk mainstay Jason Harrod. Copies of the self-released original pressing will be available from Asthmatic Kitty as long as they last.

Shannon Stephens resides in Seattle, Washington with her family. In addition to her self-titled LP she has also released an EP, “How I Got Away”(1999), now out of print. Shannon lived in Holland, Michigan, where she led the folk-rock group Marzuki, a college band that also included Matthew Haseltine, Jamie Kempkers, and Sufjan Stevens. They released two EPs, now out of print. After taking a six-year break from music, she is beginning to work on a new album. It might take a while, though, ­there’s a baby in the family now.

This new compilation from Asthmatic Kitty Records acts as a social mix-tape tracing the particular relationships that make up the extended Asthmatic Kitty family and friends. The compilation gathers musicians, friends, colleagues, and collaborators from the label’s seven-year history, presenting an odd, exciting, and idiosyncratic family tree in which kinship and musicianship are thankfully confused. […]

With First Light’s Freeze, Castanets return with a dark mutant-country sound infused with strands of free-jazz, new wave and a late-seventies Nashville big-radio strut hijacked by post-punk unravelers. The result is a beautiful mix of somber reflection, destination-unknown travelogue, and subversive anti-war boogie. Castanets’ unrelenting creative pioneering delightfully befuddles, as they simultaneously flirt and dismantle “New Americana” venture capitalism.

Freeze confronts the mythology of war and friendship. Morphed from a strictly literal and chronological song-cycle to a more broadly sketched reading, the wraith of narrative structure still lurks in the shadows, creating an eerie tale with shifting perspectives and evading resolution. The story ends up resembling an ancient documentary on relationships (others loved, feared, distrusted yet needed), the close proximity of things painful and pleasurable, and the complications of this as a paradigm for the world.