WATCH THE BQE ON PITCHFORK.TV

March 30th, 2010 , by

Last year, we released Sufjan Stevens' The BQE, a cinematic suite inspired by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (and the Hula-hoop) and released by us two years after its initial performance. 

In what is yet another way to experience the project (you know, beside the t-shirts), you can now watch the whole thing only on Pitchfork.tv until the end of the week. You can also purchase the project in its myriad forms here.

BEN + VESPER RELEASE SUFJAN-PRODUCED EP

February 10th, 2010 , by

With LuvInIdleness, Sufjan Stevens has continued exploring his marital fetish and recorded another husband and wife duo (cf. The Welcome Wagon). The record is a lush pop EP from his old friends Ben + Vesper, the hard-scrabble, working-class artist parents from West Orange, New Jersey. Inspired by both Xanadu and A Midsummer Night's Dream, Luvinidleness is a healthy bonanza of five songs that render the woes of ordinary life (work, rent, mouths to feed! oh the mouths!) into glorious (and psychedelic) orchestrations of bubalicious pop. Sufjan described the recording process as  "high-velocity, instant chemistry, rowdy fun, tag-team multi-tracking, vocal genuflecting, drum-fill whimsy, space-station bass synth, and vocal harmony madness." B+V calls it one of the "funnest" [sic] recordings they've ever done, and that it involved peanut butter cookies. They recommend a subwoofer for best listening experience.

You can download a very good and very free MP3 from the album by clicking here. To buy the CD for $9, click here to journey across the web to Sounds Familyre, or here to buy it from iTunes for about $5. We recommend you do so – they'll be touring with Danielson shortly, and how are you going to sing along if you don't know the words?
 
B-O-N-U-S! Stereogum has a new video from B+V here!

SHARE A VERY SUFJAN XMAS!

November 24th, 2009 , by

Photo by Denny Renshaw

We’re not the kind to usually leapfrog to Christmas goose before we’ve turked our turkey. Still, what with shipping time, Friday being the first Christmas music day of the year, etc et al, we thought we’d let you know a few things about Sufjan Stevens’ wonderful Songs for Christmas.

We’ve dusted off our Christmas site for the season. It’s at xmas.asthmatickitty.com.There, you can stream the entire 5-CD boxset for free until Christmas day, play a videogame designed by up and coming animation superstar Tom DesLongchamp, download ringtones (now for iPhone!), watch videos, and download ornaments. The site is just like last year’s, but now with more tradition!

And we know some of you are thinking of giving Sufjan’s Songs for Christmas boxset to friends. We’d like to help! For the next few weeks you can buy one for just $15 (it’s normally $19), two for $25, or 3 for $30 (each additional boxset is just $10) – plus shipping & handling. Simply add the boxset to your cart by clicking here, change to appropriate quantity level, and away you go, merrily enjoying Christmas!

SUFJAN STEVENS TO INTRODUCE SELECT SCREENINGS OF THE BQE

October 28th, 2009 , by

Photo by Denny Renshaw
If you didn’t already know, The BQE cinematic suite by Sufjan Stevens is out now. You can buy it here in myriad ways. Of course, we here at AK have been feverishly listening to and watching it non-stop, like vigilant commuters on the BQE. And just like the actual Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, there’s a whole lot of stuff to this project: a comic book, a film, a soundtrack, hula-hoops (which our First Lady apparently loves), a 3-D Viewmaster reel, etc, etc, et al, etc. We just might as well add some t-shirts to the mix. (Actually, that’s not a bad idea.) It’s dizzying, as in just-being-whalloped-by-a-Hooper-Hero-dizzying.
What to do?
Well, you could go to any number of American cities in the next few days and hear Sufjan introduce the film in person. He will not be playing any music (Osso and DM Stith make fine work of that), but he will be appearing in five select cities to introduce the film. This will occur in Minneapolis on October 29th, then in Madison on the 30th, Indianapolis on November 1st, and Cincinnati on November 3rd. He may also make it to Louisville on November 2nd. If you’re looking for details, you’ll find them on Osso’s tour dates right here.

SEE MORE OF SUFJAN STEVENS BQE AND RUN RABBIT RUN

October 25th, 2009 , by

Run Rabbit Run and The BQE are hardly solitary affairs, and an art show that opened Saturday at 92YTribeca in New York City will acknowledge as much. Run Rabbit Run, which is a take on Sufjan Stevens‘ 2001 Enjoy Your Rabbit by string quartet Osso, employed the artwork of Jessica Dessner. Dessner’s original pencil drawings that adorn the Run Rabbit Run album will be on display. So too will the urban landscape photographs of Denny Renshaw that Sufjan included in the BQE CD and LP inserts. And you may have seen the projection work of Deborah Johnson at one of Sufjan’s shows (or you can watch it on Vimeo here). Her star drawings will find a temporary home on the walls of 92YTribeca for the duration of the show. 
The show is free. You can get more details on 92YTribeca’s website right here.

THE BQE AND ITS MYRIAD FORM

October 20th, 2009 , by

Sufjan Stevens The BQE is out today. Suffice it to say, the number of product options is multiplicious. To catalog them all in one place, we made a nice handy summary right here. This page lists purchase options for digital video, including the only way to get the film in QuickTime HD and iPhone/iTunes playable. Read more about The BQE right here.

#WTDTW (WHAT TO DO THIS WEEKEND)

September 11th, 2009 , by

Via our Twitter account (please, do follow us!): Fri: @HeladoNegro @ Bottletree #Birmingham Sat: Sujfan Stevens @ATPfestival – #NYC, HeladoNegro @ William’s House #Nashville, Fol Chen @ Proud Galleries #London, Sun: Rafter @ Casbah #SanDiego, Helado Negro at Bobo @Asheville. What a full weekend!

Details are here. A special note: playing through entire albums is often the custom at ATP, and so on Saturday Sufjan will do just that with Seven Swans.

THE BQE NOW AVAILABLE FOR PREORDER

September 9th, 2009 , by

CD/DVD: double-disc format includes the original 16mm/8mm film (in widescreen "triptych" display), the original motion picture soundtrack, a 40-page booklet (with extensive liner notes and photographs), and the stereoscopic image reel (playable in all View-Master® viewers). Preorder for $15 (+S&H) by clicking here.

LP: The limited edition vinyl is available as a double gatefold and includes the soundtrack on 180-gram vinyl, a large-scale 32-page booklet with liner notes and photographs, and a black-and-white version of the 40-page Hooper Heroes comic book. Preorder for $25 (+S&H) by clicking here.

Read more about The BQE here.

SUFJAN RECORDS BEN+VESPER EP, WELCOME WAGON PLAYS SHOW

August 26th, 2009 , by

Did ya’ll know that Sufjan’s very first show was at a small barn house show in West Orange, NJ, at the unexpected invitation of Ben and Vesper Stamper? Yes, about ten years ago, they called him at his office cubicle at Penguin Putnam (where Sufjan designed promotional materials for Tom Clancy novels) and they said: Hey, take the NJ transit bus to Newark! Bring your banjo! We’ll make you dinner. Well, it’s been many years since, and to pay back the favor, Sufjan recently offered to record Ben + Vesper’s latest pop anthem 5-song EP called "LuvInIdleness," a reference to the famed Love-In-Idleness flower from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The EP is a glorious, punchy collection of pop poetic riffs that make reference to marital passion, boat stealing, Olivia Newton John, and farfetched dreams of owning a farm.

To celebrate, Ben + Vesper are doing a series of shows every Friday for the next month at Brooklyn’s Sycamore bar and flower shop (in idyllic Ditmas Park). Each show will start off with various outstanding artists and friends opening with a set of music (including two big hits from the Sounds Familyre label: 1) the gothic folk prophet Dan Zimmerman, and 2) the gorgeous family pop girl band Ortolan). Also, Asthmatic Kitty’s Welcome Wagon will play the last night, on September 25. (We like to think of Ben + Vesper as the Welcome Wagon of Sounds Familyre Records! Maybe we can convince them all to have a husband/wife sing-off!). Click on more (or here) to see full schedule.

Limited edition home-made copies of the EP will be available at the shows. Details here.
8/28 w/Dan Zimmerman
9/4 w/Sebastien Schuller
9/11 w/Ortolan
9/18 w/Kurt Weisman
9/25 w/The Welcome Wagon

Sycamore
1118 Cortelyou Road
Brooklyn, New York 11231
347-240-5850
sycamorebrooklyn.com

A BRIEF NOTE ABOUT THE SUFJAN STEVENS / CRYPTACIZE TOUR

August 18th, 2009 , by

This weekend we helped launch ticket sales for the upcoming Sufjan Stevens and Cryptacize tour. We think it went very well, but with the limited venue sizes, the tickets went very quickly. You should know that Sufjan and Cryptacize wanted smaller venues for a variety of very good reasons, but one of those reasons is because of a lower ticket cost – many of you commented on that via blog or Twitter.

We should briefly address ticket reselling. As music fans ourselves, we feel very strongly that scalping violates the democratic nature of the music we are trying to create and share. We tried our very best to make it as equitable and accessible for everyone, but there is no perfect solution to make sure fans get the tickets and scalpers do not. Short of cloning Sufjan and Cryptacize (Rafter – who moonlights as a geneticist – is working on this), we could not think of a better way to handle ticket sales.

Anyone who purchased multiple tickets (as in more than 2) – even with multiple credit cards – will not be granted entry. The venues have explicit instructions not to honor any of their purchased tickets, nor will the venues give refunds. That these are smaller venues means that they are able to filter multiple buyers  more carefully, or recognize someone that has left the venue and is trying to re-enter a second time.

Plain and simple: resold tickets will not be honored. We can’t prevent this 100%, but checking for ID and preventing re-entry will help. If you purchase a ticket from a scalper you will probably have to stand in line with them to the venue. That might be kind of awkward. This will be especially true if you paid them beforehand, and then are ultimately denied entry; thus, it’s best you just don’t buy from another ticketholder.

Finally, we are sorry to the fans who did not get tickets. We, Sufjan, and Cryptacize are so honored by  the enthusiasm about this tour, but clearly there are more fans than there are seats. We will make it up to you by continuing to put out music that we love and care for, and hope that you continue to support our artists as you have.

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