SUFJAN STEVENS TO PLAY PROSPECT PARK IN AUGUST

April 4th, 2011 , by

Summer in Brooklyn: friends, fireflies, stoop sales, racial tension, black-outs, car theft, homicide, real estate busts, and…Celebrate Brooklyn! Where the World's Greatest Borough puts on the World's Greatest Summer Festival in the World's Greatest Urban Park. That's what we call Prospect Park!

Our Very Own Megalomaniac Master of Musical Disguises Sufjan Stevens will be making a rare outdoor appearance at the infamous bandshell on Tuesday August 2, 2011 for the annual Celebrate Brooklyn! festival. He'll be performing with his 10-piece intergalactic ensemble of musical muppets from the Age of Adz tour. What does that mean for you? Do the math: Prog-pop space jams + extra-terrestrial dancers + excessive neon gaff tape + cosmic eurhythmy + hot booty moves + a frenetic video display + hometown advantage = Life Affirming Summer Spectacular Event of a Lifetime (and other superlatives).
 
Did we already say it's outdoors? Under the Brooklyn sky, surrounded by sycamores and flickering fireflies, and city smog…This is a rare treat! Sufjan does not typically play outdoor stages. Nor does he have any festival appearances scheduled for 2011. This is your last chance to see Adz in all its glory! And we promise it will be a total blow-out!
 
Tickets for the show are will go on sale for general public on Friday, but you can get special preorder tickets for $35 (+fees) from Etix on Wednesday April 6th. Those tickets will be at this link at 10AM EST April 6th: http://bit.ly/gauVaq. The password is (whisper): Heirloom.

SUFJAN STEVENS TO TOUR EUROPE

February 23rd, 2011 , by

Sufjan Stevens at The Tivoli – Brisbane Australia 30th Jan 2011 – Photo by StephenBooth

Do you remember 2006? That was the year we lost contact with Pioneer 10, Italy won their fourth FIFA World Cup, and No 5, 1948 by Jackson Pollock became the most expensive painting ever sold. Good times!

It was also the last time Sufjan set foot in Europe as a touring musician. And this year  (is it already 2011?) he will do so again, landing first in Norway, moving to Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Germany, France, Belgium, the UK, Ireland, Holland, Italy, and finishing in Spain and Portugal. 
 
Sufjan has toured the US, Australia, and New Zealand and the shows involved gratuitous amounts of dancing, neon gaffe tape, balloons, and DM Stith (in the US anyway). We imagine this tour will be more of the same, in a very, very good way. And yes, our own DM Stith will open!
 
We hope you can go. Tour dates and buy links are here.

HAPPY YEAR OF THE RABBIT

February 3rd, 2011 , by

Today, February 3rd, 2011, is the first day of the Year of the Rabbit. People born this year will be articulate, talented, and ambitious. They will be most compatible with those born in the years of of the Sheep, Pig, and Dog.

To commermate the Year of the Rabbit, we are offering Sufjan Stevens' Enjoy Your Rabbit for $5 in MP3 form for a limited time. You can buy it here. We hope you enjoy it.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS FROM AK

December 23rd, 2010 , by

Well folks, this is it. We are officially knee-deep in the holiday season. So, from everyone here at Asthmatic Kitty Records Headquarters, we wish you well and hope you spend the next bit of time happily and with loved ones. 

Because it's Christmas, there is, of course, plenty of music to go around. NY Mag has two songs from Sufjan Stevens and the Dessner Brothers (of The National). Those songs are here. Also, Sufjan, along with our own Helado Negro and Half-handed Cloud, contributed to this year's volume A Familyre Christmas. You can stream and download for free here. Sufjan's own Christmas collection is here. You can stream it for free or download it for $12.
 
If the Ghost of Christmas Past were here, he'd remind us of the Great Sufjan Song Xmas Xchange from a couple years back. You'll recall that Sufjan picked Alec Duffy's phenomenal "Every Day is Christmas" as the winner. You can hear it here. We also created a mighty fine AKradio playlist of the runners-up, culled from over 600 original Christmas song submissions. Kick that into Christmas cheer gear by clicking  here. And finally, there's a sled-full of AK/Sufjan Christmas goodness including a tinseltastic flash game by Tom DesLongChamp, right…over…..HERE. There kids, that should keep you busy for a while.
 
Once again, Happy Christmas and thanks to all of you out there for making our Christmas bright. 

PEOPLE; ALL OF THEM, DELIGHTED FOR SUFJAN VINYL, CD [FREE MP3]

December 10th, 2010 , by

Do you break for tangible? Do you have a landline phone? Do you like writing letters – ones  that do not require an "@" symbol or fit on paper, not 140 character limits? (We answered yes to all of the above.) Then you will be mightily interested to know that Sufjan Stevens' All Delighted People EP is now officially in the real world, on Compact Disc and LP. Buy the CD here $8+S&H and the LP – we're talking gatefold here people – for $20+S&H here. And of course you can travel on a real bike or car or bus or sidewalk to your local neighborhood record store. They have real shelves with which to stock real goods. 

Speaking of Sufjan. An up and coming producer going by InfinitRock and coming out of Red Hook, NY – working from Base Trip Records – remixed "All For Myself" from The Age of Adz. The remix is a sleek and stylish piece of work. We hope you enjoy it. If you do, you can download InfinitiRock's most recent album for free here.

“All For Myself” (Remixed by InfinitiRock) (Download)

SUFJAN TO PERFORM ON JIMMY FALLON [TOP SECRET CODE]

November 15th, 2010 , by


 

As you can see above in a very expensive and time-consuming simulation generated by our Official Asthmatic Kitty Department of Photoshopical Reality Generation, Jimmy Fallon has been thinking about Sufjan Stevens. Or maybe he hasn't and his people just booked Sufjan to perform, in which case we'll be canning the entire department for an inaccurate representation. Either way, Jimmy Fallon will be watching Sufjan Stevens perform on his show on November 19th. 
 
You can watch along with Jimmy if you tune into NBC's Late Night with Jimmy Fallon that Friday night at 12:35am (technically Saturday morning we guess). Or, if you're in the vicinity of 30 Rockefeller Plaza NYC that night, you could sit on the show's super special exclusive "Band Bench." We think that means you get good seats somewhere near Sufjan's band. Go here, and use the code "SUF" (generated by our Official Asthmatic Kitty Department of Poor Code Generation) for your chance to warm your buns on the said band bench.
 
UPDATE: Our own DM Stith will also be performing in Sufjan's band!

TOO MUCH FROM SUFJAN STEVENS [FREE MP3]

September 9th, 2010 , by

The internet is an amazing place, yes? We are able to transmit music quickly and efficiently in ways previously unheard of.

Here, for example, is "Too Much," the second track from Sufjan Stevens' The Age of Adz. 

If you preorder the album now, you can get the entire album similarly transmitted in digital form two weeks early. Do that right here.

THE AGE OF ADZ, A NEW ALBUM FROM SUFJAN STEVENS

August 26th, 2010 , by

Last week we had the pleasure of releasing the All Delighted People EP (available for download for $5 and free stream right here). And the week before we announced a fall tour (tickets are still for sale here, but selling quickly).

And today, we are proud to announce the upcoming release of The Age of Adz (pronounced Odds), the first song-based full-length from Sufjan Stevens since 2005's Illinois. The Age of Adz will drop on October 12th (CD, MP3) with a double-LP following on November 9th.

For the next three weeks you can preorder the CD and LP  and receive an MP3 download on September 28th, two weeks before the release date. 

Preorder it all right here.

It’s much too soon to cast descriptive lots, but we can say the new album sounds nothing like the All Delighted EP (although it shares similar themes of love, loss, and the apocalypse). Nor is this new album built around any conceptual underpinning (no odes to states, astrology, or urban expressways). 

We can say it shows an extensive use of electronics (banjos and acoustic guitars give way to drum machines and analog synthesizers), and an obsession with cosmic fantasies (space, heaven, aliens, love), to create an explicit pop-song extravaganza, augmented by heavy orchestration, and maybe even a few danceable moments. Enjoy Your Rabbit meets the BQE. But with songs. Verse, chorus, bridge, backbeat. Gated reverb. Space echo. Get your boogey on. 

The “Adz” of the title loosely refers to the apocalyptic paintings of outsider artist Royal Robertson (1930-1997), whose work is used for the album cover, interior design, and as general inspiration for the tone of the album. 

A NEW EP FROM SUFJAN STEVENS

August 20th, 2010 , by

Raise your hands if you’re delighted to hear the good news that Sufjan is releasing an 8-song, 60-minute EP for digital download! Available immediately right here! As in right now! For only $5! From this up-and-coming-indie-DIY website, Bandcamp! (It will be available on iTunes, Amazon, and other corporate entities on Monday.)
 
The EP, All Delighted People, is built around two different versions of Sufjan’s long-form epic ballad "All Delighted People," a dramatic homage to the Apocalypse, existential ennui, and Paul Simon’s "Sounds of Silence." Sounds delightful, yes! The song was originally workshopped (oh we hate making workshop a verb, but time is money!) on Sufjan’s previous tour in the fall of 2009. Other songs on the EP include the 17-minute guitar jam-for-single-mothers "Djohariah," and the gothic piano ballad "The Owl and the Tanager," a live-show mainstay (and Debbie Downer if you ask us; what’s it doing on a "Delighted" EP?). The full track list is available right here.
 
If you don’t have five dollars, you can stream the EP for free right on Bandcamp. Or if you're into tactile sensations, we are making All Delighted People available on single-CD and double-LP formats later in 2010 (we’re aiming for December, fingers crossed). 180-gram vinyl. With Big Pictures. Where’s Waldo? Leo?
 
OH! In case you haven't been reading along, Sufjan is also on tour in the fall. Tickets are selling furiously, so we recommend you order them soon, as in now! Seriously! Do it! Urgency! Haste! Right here!

SUFJAN STEVENS TO TOUR

August 9th, 2010 , by


Photo by Denny Renshaw

Sufjan is going on tour in October! This should be quite a tour, as he personally structured this tour around some of the most historic theaters and venues in the country. He'll start on October 12th in Montreal and move his way through the Midwest, to Texas, westerly, and then back through the Midwest and to New York. 
 
Tomorrow, Tuesday August 10th, we begin selling special pre-sale tickets especially for fans. We negotiated the fairest price we could for tickets and Where we could, we also secured exclusive seating in each of the venues.
 
We expect these to sell out very quickly, and there are only a select number of pre-sale seats available. But do not fret; if for some reason you miss out on the pre-sale through Etix, you will have the opportunity to purchase the remaining tickets through the venues. Sales for some theaters will begin on Friday, August 13th, while others will start later. Please check with your local venue for their public on-sale date. To avoid scalping, there is a 4 person ticket limit, and the first 20 rows of seats are WILL CALL ONLY.
 
There are only a select number of pre-sale seats available at each venue. Tickets for these seats go on sale starting tomorrow, Tuesday August 10th, at 1pm EST. You can see details, dates, and (as of Tuesday 1pm EST) links to purchase tickets here:
 
Again, if you miss the pre-sale tickets don't worry. These are large venues, and after the presale you'll be able to pick up general admission tickets.
 
And lots of other Asthmatic Kitty artists are touring as well, passing through your city no doubt, including Castanets, Chris Schlarb, DM Stith, Fol Chen, Jookabox, Rafter, and Shannon Stephens. See those dates here. 
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