We are proud to present our first visual compilation: Encyclopedia Asthmatica Volume 1, a collection of distinctively Asthmatic Kitty visuals; the odd, the sublime, and the delectable. Gala and Zack Bent, have meticulously designed the box art and transferred their imaginative perceptions of our roster into the DVD’s stop-animation menus, all set to characteristic music arrangements by jingle-virtuoso Rafter.

Everyone’s here somewhere among these 30-some videos, from the playful choreography of the Think Dance Collective frolicking in shoes made of bread to the music of Half-handed Cloud, to the lovely abstraction of Sufjan Stevens’ music by video artist Deborah Johnson; from the haunting and raw post-apocalypse video fuzz of live Castanets, to the crisp color footage of My Brightest Diamond at Northsix, there are visual pieces that hopscotch the chasm between the professionalism of a music-visual DVD to the rabid eccentricity of a five-copy, underground video-zine. Our patent homemade aesthetic is here too, with Bunky’s bizarre yet appropriate space alien video, and a selection from Liz Janes that employs found footage. The Shapes and Sizes videos turn the incidental and accidental into a hidden design, while a video from the Curtains subverts the banality of surveillance video by rendering it magical.

Click on more to see a trailer for the DVD.

We are releasing Encyclopedia Asthmatica on March 4, but you can preorder it for a limited and slightly discounted price of $12.50 (+S&H) at Secretly Canadian Distribution’s website here.

 
Track List
BUNKY
           Hippopotamus (Live, SXSW 2005)
           Baba
           Space Alien
CASTANETS
           A Song is not the Song of the World
           Smallest Bones
           Good Friend, Yr Hunger (Live, SXSW 2007)
HALF-HANDED CLOUD
           You Wouldn’t Embarass Me Would You?
           Tongues Possess the Earth Instead
           Think/Dance Collective performance
LIZ JANES
           Jesus is a Dying Bed Maker
           All the Pretty Horses
MY BRIGHTEST DIAMOND
           Freak Out!
           Live @ Northsix
           Dragonfly
           Gone Away
           Magic Rabbit
RAFTER
           Adventurers
           ZZZPenchant
           Gentlemen
           Hope
           Monsters
           Encouragement
SHAPES AND SIZES
           Teller/Seller
           Jinker/That Fat Hand
           Can’t Stop that (Sinking) Feeling
SUFJAN STEVENS
           Jacksonville (Live, Calvin College 2007)
           Palm Sunday Tornado Hits Crystal Lake
           The Undivided Self (for Eppie & Popo)
           The Vivian Girls…
           Put the Lights on the Tree
THE CURTAINS
           Go Lucky
           Spinning Top