New EP, LP Coming Soon From My Brightest Diamond
June 3rd, 2014 , by Asthmatic Kitty
As the singer-songwriter and multi-intrumentalist behind My Brightest Diamond, Shara Worden has earned her reputation as a composer of popular songs with a chamber-music intimacy. The emotional intimacy of This Is My Hand, the new My Brightest Diamond LP, and None More than You, a companion EP coming out this summer, are unmistakable, but this latest iteration of the My Brightest Diamond project has opened the project up to vast new sonic possibilities.
My Brightest Diamond’s musical metamorphosis comes straight out of recent, radical transformations in Worden’s life as an artist. The songwriting on these records draw as much on top-40 pop as by Worden’s experiences in the cast of an experimental Matthew Barney film, in surprisingly direct and literal ways: the Walt Whitman poem that provides the words to None More than You’s “Whoever You Are” and the marching band–style arrangement of This Is My Hand’s “Pressure” were both inspired by elements in Barney’s The River of Fundament, but their dance-floor friendly tempo and singalong structure are borne out of Worden’s analytical thinking as a composer, mathematically breaking down her favorite radio hits.
But My Brightest Diamond still sounds like nothing else so much as My Brightest Diamond, refracting all of these influences through Worden’s inimitable, shamanic sense of artistry, and her equally inimitable singing voice.
Hear “Pressure” right now on NPR’s All Songs Considered here, or below.
None More than You, out July 15th, can be preordered from a strictly limited edition of 1000 records on lavender vinyl here, and preorders of the limited, translucent red vinyl edition of This Is My Hand come with “Pressure” as an instant download. Buy it here.
iTunes offers a preorder of the Prismatic Edition, including the LP, the EP, and an immediate download of “Pressure,” all for $11.99. Get that one here.
Out Now: Chris Schlarb’s Making The Saint
May 27th, 2014 , by Asthmatic Kitty
If Chris Schlarb’s new solo album feels like a moment’s rest—a brief retreat, a meditation in solitude—that might be because this is exactly how the album was recorded.
The story of the making of Making the Saint, out today on Asthmatic Kitty Records, is ultimately simple: Chris Schlarb needed a break. As the composer and bandleader of the Psychic Temple project, Schlarb has lately been demonstrating his auteur-like ability to put into place all the details of an intricate musical tableau. Last year’s Psychic Temple II LP set idiosyncratic pop tunes and more abstract musical explorations in highly complex arrangements, and accordingly the ensembles Schlarb brought out to support it were some of the biggest he’d ever wrangled.
After all of that, he felt the need to do something a little more intimate. He gathered up his instruments and headed by himself to a 19th-century cabin in the dusty San Bernardino Mountains, where he proceeded to lay down the tracks that would become Making the Saint.
A four-track, full-length album, Making the Saint is in its own way as ambitious as Schlarb’s recent Psychic Temple work. But this time, the grandeur is less in the layers of musical detail than in the expansive explorations of deep, interior spaces. The album’s two short, bona fide “songs,” the mystical ballad “The Great Receiver” and the jazz standard “My Foolish Heart,” are generous in their own, quiet way—”My Foolish Heart” looks for the sophistication in simplicity, and the negative space of “The Great Receiver” hum with cosmic ambience.
But these tracks alternate with yet more probing meditations, seemingly free-floating improvisations anchored deep down by musical stasis: the overtone-rich, iridescent drone of the opening title track, or the slowly looping, ruminating harmonies of “The Fear of Death Is the Birth of God.” Making the Saint finds freedom in simplicity and, in the emotional and spiritual resonances it evokes, turns out to be not quite so simple after all.
Making the Saint is now available to own as a digital download, on CD, or on an LP record, pressed to white vinyl.
Buy it here.
LA-based Imma Almourzaeva illustrates “The Great Receiver” from Chris Schlarb’s LP Making the Saint. Watch below.
Announcing Mozart’s Sister; album due in August.
May 26th, 2014 , by Asthmatic Kitty
Since attracting a ton of buzz for her entrancing live shows and for first EP Hello (released on Merok Records), Mozart’s Sister (aka Caila Thompson-Hannant) has been head-down in her bedroom writing her debut album.
Inspired by Discovery-era Daft Punk, Post-era Bjork, and Betty Davis, Caila produced, recorded and wrote Being using a cheap sound card and Ableton software, approaching it with a do-it-all-by-my-self ideology. “I was into production more than I ever had been,” she remembers, “Listening to sounds I liked and wondering how they achieved it. There was a lot of observing and trying things out.”
“Being is a fracture,” says Caila. “A note between thought and expression. When I wrote this record I was riding a wave of light and dark; I still am. It’s not a twisted path but one that aspires to harmony. In all the little bits that make up the bulk of the ‘songs’ of this album is a jump. Every step in the process of this record felt like, and continues to feel like a jump. From the bass line to the album ‘description.’ So here I am jumping into your mercy, a leap I will never forget. I feel the future can only bring better or worse and definitely not the same. So this record is a thing that will never happen again. I hope you enjoy it.”
Asthmatic Kitty Records will release the record on August 5. Like Caila, we also hope you enjoy it. You can preorder Being CD, vinyl, or digital here.
Hear the first single, “Enjoy,” on FADER.
Half-Handed Cloud Album Release Show; New Single and Video
May 23rd, 2014 , by Asthmatic Kitty
The new Half-Handed Cloud full-length, Flying Scroll Flight Control, is dropping next month, and the fanfare heralding its arrival is already underway.
In especially good news for fans of cryptic symbolism as well as complex, outsider-esque sacred pop, the official celebration begins on June 1 at 1, when Half-Handed Cloud’s afternoon release show begins at Ohmega Salvage. Not just a venue, Ohmega is also a working antique salvage yard in Berkeley, CA where beautiful old things that have been rediscovered amongst the detritus of the modern world can reclaimed and restored. Those Lavender Whales of Columbia, SC will be opening for a three-person Half-Handed Cloud lineup on the Ohmega stage.
But first, PopMatters is offering a quick preview of the album this week, praising the “sun-kissed melodies” and “quirky instrumentation” of the new track “Festus, I Am Not Out of My Mind” and making it available to stream in full at PopMatters.com.
And Half-Handed Cloud mastermind John Ringhofer has posted his own, high-concept teaser for Flying Scroll Flight Control. A short video conceived and sound-designed by Ringhofer himself, and relying heavily on an important contribution from one Dr. Ralph Kuri, this preview, like the album, is made up of equal parts ingenuity, metaphysics, magic, absurdity, and wit, and features just a few seconds of music from the new album’s “Titus Three.”
Out June 10 on Asthmatic Kitty Records, Flying Scroll Flight Control is already available for preorder on CD, mp3, clear vinyl, and a special LP release with custom slipmat.
Making The Saint: New Chris Schlarb Out Now
May 20th, 2014 , by Asthmatic Kitty
Making the Saint, the new LP from Chris Schlarb, comes out Tuesday May 27th, but you can hear it – and watch some of it – now.
LA-based Imma Almourzaeva illustrates “The Great Receiver” from Chris Schlarb’s forthcoming LP Making the Saint. Imma, whose forte is more often animated gifs, captures the distinct pacing of the song by showing the flight of a bird from birth to departure.
NPR debuted the video last week. You can also watch it below.
SPIN is streaming the entire album on their website as of today. Writer Christ Martin calls it a “wide-armed hug.” Listen here.
The album, out on Tuesday May 27th, is available for preorder here.
Get Into the Woods with Fol Chen’s New Video
May 19th, 2014 , by Asthmatic Kitty
Fol Chen‘s new video for “Boy in the Woods” captures the flight of a kidnapped anthropogenic rabbit rescued by a host of forest friends. After his escape, he must flee through the woods to escape prowling lions–who actually turn out to be rabbits themselves? It makes sense once you watch.
Nancy Jean Tucker directed and animated of this venture into The False Alarms, which is available now. Says The Line Best Fit, who premiered the video: “Everything is meticulous, deliberately ingenious. It all flows excellently; there’s no disjointed genre-hopping here.”
Check it out over at The Line Best Fit here.
New Video From Rafter for “Convertible Jeep”
May 9th, 2014 , by Asthmatic Kitty
Debuting exclusively on Jamaicans Music, Rafter’s new video for “Convertible Jeep” will cause your brain to melt into a pool of reggae-ified gel. The good kind (of brain gel).
Directed by Lizeth Santos, the video features Rafter in an amazing Reggae Robot suit, an army of extras donned with gold future-microphones wearing multi-colored body suits, and pretty much every color possible.
Watch it on Jamaicans Music here, or below.
The album is available now. Allmusic reviewed it, saying “Everyone from Lee Perry to King Tubby, and even more modern producers like Steely & Clevie, would be impressed by the sounds [Rafter] conjures up on the record.” Buy it here.
https://vimeo.com/93404982
Another Island Arrives From Helado Negro
May 6th, 2014 , by Asthmatic Kitty
Another transmission has just been received from the Island Universe: Helado Negro’s cryptic, nocturnal Island Universe Story series of EPs has given rise to two new music videos.
Gus Gavino directed “Pressed,” a track from the first Island Universe Story.
“Pressed” is a dark and abstract instrumental drawn from the first tape in the sequence, Island Universe Story One, and Gavino’s footage is dark and abstract to match: chilly, gray and distorted, like a sci-fi dystopia. It matches, in fact, in a one-to-one correspondence between sound and vision: every blip on the screen corresponds to a blip from the speakers.
But something unexpected happens when Gavino’s graphics meet the beats of Helado Negro. By playing out the interaction of the layered sonic elements in “Pressed” as the interaction of minimalistic visual elements, not only does Gavino illuminate the inner working’s of the original track, but the ghostly harmonies lend Gavino’s spare, geometrical visuals an uncanny pathos.
The Zircon Prince takes on “Suntan Overcoat” and “The Elephants Foot” with a jarring collage of images set on a striking visual placemat.
Island Universe Story One and Island Universe Story Two, the first two installments in the freestanding series of EPs from Helado Negro are already out on tape and MP3 from Asthmatic Kitty Records.
Island Universe Story Three is now available digitally on Bandcamp or on limited edition cassette in cherry-red shell with gold lettering. Buy it here.
https://vimeo.com/89344393
Get My Brightest Diamond’s “Until Now” On Noisetrade
April 10th, 2014 , by Asthmatic Kitty
For the price of an email address (and an optional tip), you can download Until Now, a concise compilation of the music of My Brightest Diamond since her debut album in 2006.
My Brightest Diamond will be playing in South Bend, Indiana, in Grand Rapids, and Indianapolis over the next few days. In May she’ll be touring a few select cities in Europe. See those tourdates on her website.
Expect more from MBD later this year. But for now, you can download Until Now on Noisetrade here.
Making The Saint: New Album From Chris Schlarb in May
April 8th, 2014 , by
Praised across the board for his sophisticated approach to merging eccentric pop, jazz, soul, and avant-garde experimentation on his 2013 Psychic Temple II, Chris Schlarb returns in May, 2014 with a new, more laid-back LP entitled Making The Saint.
Recorded in a cabin in the San Bernardino mountains of California, Making The Saint is Chris’ attempt at making a “small” record. Read more about that here. You can preorder the record in CD or LP here.
Trailer, with some visuals of the cabin and recording, below.