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viewing 1 To 25 of 29 items
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CD
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AKR 207CD
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"Instruments of Science & Technology's Richard Swift (born Ricardo Sigilfredo Olivarez Swift-Ochoa, 1977) is an artist who lives in the Northwest region on the United States of America. He's made lots of different music. He normally sings, but doesn't at all on this recording. Music for Paradise Armor was made on varying recording mediums, such as a Tascam 4-track cassette player/recorder, an Otari 50/50 - 8-track half-inch recorder, a 16-track 2-inch machine constructed by Studer, and a computer made by Macintosh. There are a lot of what Swift calls 'modern clickity-clacks' and 'zzzoops s s s', as well as the occasional 'bleep bleep blaaaaap' found on this disc. These sounds apparently reflect our tech-centric lifestyle in the West. We have magnet trains, remote control car door locks, and affordable robotic limbs, yet we still flush our toilets with drinking water. Guard yourself."
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AKR 207LP
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AKR 208CD
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...And Playing. "Kristin Miltner is a composer, video and installation artist, and sound designer living in Oakland, California. She most often performs music live with versions of her custom software. She has designed this to scan sound files and live input, allowing her to instantly restructure the sounds into sequenced arrays of units of varying lengths. This scanning idea is like imagining a giant octopus in a long thin hallway with continuous windows on each side. One can touch both sides of the hallway with one's fingertips (if one is an octopus). The length of the hallway is infinite. So the octopus runs up and down the hallway opening and closing windows, letting a little bit of water in here and there, but never stops moving back and forth, and some windows stay open for longer than others. But there's a rhythm to it; it's an efficient octopus. The ocean is the sound source, the hallway and octopus are the scanners, the windows determine what gets in, and the octopus's rhythm is the sequencing mechanism."
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AKR 208LP
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AKR 069CD
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"Following the pop-leaning lead of his last EP, Sweaty Magic, Rafter's latest longplayer, Animal Feelings, is a Technicolor pop blow-out that recalls Nintendo composer Koji Kondo leading a fantasy camp super-jam with Cody Chesnutt, Justin Timberlake, and the Tom Tom Club. Rafter's history and influences, his dreams and ambition, and his love for love, all come together as a sweet, fun, speaker-blowin', beat-busting ride into the inner-core of pop and R&B music. Ask him to drop names for his latest work and he'll say Justin Timberlake and Sublime Frequencies' Radio Phnom Penh without batting an eye. He'll tell you Animal Feelings is 'a marriage record, a lust record, a death and sex record.' Animal Feelings, his fourth LP for Asthmatic Kitty, is an idea-packed picnic of philosophies and fears, of affirmations and questions. Like all of his work, this record is a very personal piece of music and Rafter has a lot to tell you. Whether you choose to listen or not is the difference between you getting down on the dancefloor or simply standing outside the club, listening to the beats, muffled and gutless through the walls."
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AKR 069LP
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2CD
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AKR 071CD
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"Heavy Ghost, the debut album from DM Stith, cast an almost supernatural effect on reviewers and fans when it was released in March of 2009. Both groups acclaimed it as a stunning debut unlike anything else they'd heard. Stith's peers received it well too: Ed Droste of Grizzly Bear twittered about it calling it a 'lovely album,' and Bat for Lashes picked Heavy Ghost for her New York Times playlist, saying 'It traverses all these magical landscapes...almost like Alice through the looking glass. Like you're being sucked into a secret world.' Heavy Ghost Appendices revisits this secret world and adds to its cartography a series of hidden coves, unexplored forests, and new landscapes. Heavy Ghost was also mystifying and intertwined to David when he wrote it; the Appendices were a means to sort the thing out in his mind. They physically collect the digital trilogy of EPs released over the course of the summer and fall of 2009 into a beautifully packaged limited edition double disc set. The EPs were an exercise in exploring the boundaries of the music contained on Heavy Ghost, revisiting songs, reinterpreting, and displaying some inspiration and influences through covers of other artists. The remixes (remixes by Bibio, Son Lux, Ensemble, Clark and more) helped provide new context and deconstruction of his songs in a way that unearthed the songs' roles and relationships to one another."
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2LP
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AKR 049LP
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Deluxe gatefold 2LP version with a dazzling, full-color 12-page glossy booklet of peculiar animal illustrations. "In 2001, Sufjan Stevens followed up his debut album, A Sun Came, with Enjoy Your Rabbit, a series of fourteen instrumentals programmatically inspired by the animals of the Chinese Zodiac. Much later, in 2006, Bryce Dessner (The National, Dark Was the Night compilation, Clogs) suggested that Sufjan re-arrange the entirety of Enjoy Your Rabbit for Osso, a string quartet that had previously contributed strings to Sufjan's Illinois and My Brightest Diamond's Bring Me The Workhorse. The result is Run Rabbit Run."
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AKR 065CD
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"Drawing from a rich variety of influences from the cradle to his crate digging years, Lange cites influences such as Funkadelic, DJ Premier, South American '60s pop, Arthur Russell, Ecuadorean ballad singer Julio Jaramillo, and Adrian Sherwoods's production style in the early ON-U Sound releases. But when asked about his contemporaries, Roberto references all the players on the album, adding the names of visual artists David Ellis and Christian Marclay, two artists who use elements of DJ culture in their work. This is apropos when listening to the record, which it seems as if the songs have been sculpted or painted."
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AKR 065LP
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AKR 201LP
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"900X is the moniker for James Mcalister. James has released the first 900X record, titled Lubbock, 1980 as the first in an instrumental Music Library series for the Lander, WY based record label Asthmatic Kitty. Lubbock, 1980 is a collection of songs recorded both at home and on the road, in numerous environments and non-environments from 2004-2008. James continues to do remix work and original film music under the 900X umbrella with such artists as My Brightest Diamond, Slavic Soul Party, and Sufjan Stevens. 900X can also be heard on the Asthmatic Kitty-curated Habitat compilation."
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AKR 202LP
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"Law Of The Least Effort is the name under which Casey Foubert records and performs his instrumental compositions. This collection of songs, Music for Measurements, is an homage to '60s and '70s session bands like The Meters, Booker T and the MG's, The Funk Brothers, the JB's, and guitar players like Clarence White, Link Wray, JJ Cale and John McLaughlin. Casey Foubert is a freelance producer/engineer/sideman living in the Seattle area."
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AKR 203LP
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"Music For Drums is the first in a series of records conceived by Casey Foubert and James Mcalister using drums, percussion, and user designed software effects as the sole sound source. Foubert and McAlister drew from both improvised drumming and pattern-based sequencing with samplers to create themes molded into songs. While the concept excludes harmonic and melodic conventions, atonal 'melodies' present themselves alongside the groove centered songs."
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2CD
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AKR 052CD
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"Hermas Zopoula is many things. He is the youngest of 36 children. Born in a small village named Yoro, he is Burkinabe, a citizen and resident of Burkina Faso, West Africa. He is a moped enthusiast, orphanage volunteer and internet cafe proprietor. Hermas is also a psalmist, and Espoir is his first international recording. Hermas sings in four different languages on the album: French, English, Dioula and Sissali (Hermas' mother tongue). The only way to introduce Hermas' sound was to release Espoir as a two disc set. The first disc, recorded in a government studio in Burkina Faso, presents a refined and practiced Hermas. But the Hermas on the second disc is the one most Burkinabes know, just him and his guitar in his backyard. Comparisons to singer/song-writer Seu Jorge are inevitable, but listeners will find Hermas' voice sweeter and warmer. Other audible influences in Hermas' music are Afro-pop pioneer Thomas Mapfumo and Toumani Diabate's Symmetric Orchestra."
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AKR 408CD
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"On Interoceans, I Heart Lung blends first-take methods with Oblique Strategies: carefully composed, meticulously recorded pieces rooted in improvisation, revised and augmented over time. The results are a compelling vision of chaos and beauty as Chris Schlarb's electric guitar drones and Tom Steck's free-jazz drumming hold and flutter with shimmering acoustic guitars, soaring pedal steel and beautifully captured field recordings. When Kris Tiner's trumpet follows Nels Cline's electric sitar three minutes into 'Interoceans II,' it's like Don Cherry's loving spirit doting on universal music drones."
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AKR 404CD
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"A work of personal identity and deep catharsis, Twilight & Ghost Stories is a dense 40-minute modern composition featuring a disparate cross-section of musicians from the avant-garde, independent folk, jazz and electronic communities (including Dirty Projectors, Sufjan Stevens, Walter Kitindu, Castanets, Parker Paul, Bhob Rainey, and Mick Rossi). A creative and accomplished jazz guitarist, Chris Schlarb cut his teeth producing hip-hop tracks, teaching music workshops and co-founding the free music collective, Create (!). Chris Schlarb is also one-half of I Heart Lung, which Tiny Mix Tapes called 'some of the most energetic free-jazz to spit out of America.' Spanning all of these endeavors, Twilight & Ghost Stories finds Schlarb playing acoustic piano, organ, electric and acoustic guitar, as well as tapes and percussion."
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AKR 030CD
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"My Brightest Diamond's Shara Worden has decided to set loose her bobby pins and let her hair fly on the ambient dance floor. Her latest semi-collaboration with 13 different remixers, entitled Tear It Down, reworks songs from the highly acclaimed album, Bring Me The Workhorse featuring tracks by Alias, Lusine, Murcof, Stakka and Gold Chains. Oh, it's international too! With diplomatic representatives from Belgium, France, Mexico, The UK and America, the remixes range from drum-n-bass, to glitchy ambient, minimalism, and get-your-booty-on-the-dance-floor club music."
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5CD
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AKR 028CD
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"In December 2001, Sufjan Stevens set out to create a Christmas gift for his friends and family. The result was a 7-song recording that he called, Noel, Vol. 1. Over each of the next few Christmas seasons Sufjan would create a new EP to add to the collection. As he was recording Peace : Volume V (in the summer of 2006), he considered how best to 'officially' release this music. He said he was, 'determined to present the EPs in their original form -- flaws, blemishes, mistakes and all. A compilation would have been a cumbersome compromise. A 'Greatest Hits' would have been heartbreaking (how to choose?).' In addition to the music he wanted to add a 'lavish display of ornamentation' to coincide with the spirit of excess and overindulgence that is the hallmark of Christmas."
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2LP
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AKR 014LP
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Double LP version, available again.
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AKR 023CD
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"My Brightest Diamond is Shara Worden, a trained opera singer turned pop songwriter. Her debut album, Bring Me The Workhorse courageously gathers all the essential elements of classical and pop music to fashion an album that reflects upon the sublime elements 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. The songwriting blurs the lines between rock show and recital, incorporating the contrapuntal elements of a baroque love song alongside love ballads and rock anthems. Her vocal lines reached for Puccini, while her guitar style is more akin to Blonde Redhead or PJ Harvey. The center of gravity here is the workmanship of a woman whose imagination has no limits."
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AKR 024CD
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"Shapes and Sizes self-titled debut album brings together an unlikely assortment of sounds. Placing smart, catchy pop hooks beside chaotic experimentation, slower, more melancholy songs, and even flirting with straight up rock, the quartet juggles contrasting moods with ease. Caila 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."
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AKR 022CD
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"The little secret behind Sufjan Stevens' acclaimed Illinois 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 remaining songs on his 8-track. What he uncovered went beyond the merits of nostalgia. Sufjan gleaned 21 tracks from remaining material; some songs were in finished form, while others were merely outlines. Most of the material required substantial editing, new arrangements or vocals, and much of the work was done at the end of 2005 or in January the following year. As the title song 'The Avalanche' bemuses, 'I call you once my friends,' Sufjan took in the odd musical misfits and gathered them together like a party of good friends."
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AKR 020CD
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"Armed with the psalms of David, an acoustic guitar, and the electronic Omnichord, Half-Handed Cloud assails nineteen new pop songs outside Eden's gates on Halos & Lassos, the latest album on Asthmatic Kitty Records. With hints of fitness music and video game soundtracks, Halos & Lassos tromps through 19 songs like a mostly-sunny afternoon in Berkeley, California-home of bandleader 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 pop melodies arranged around the ambidextrous Omnichord -- a vintage '80s kidney-shaped electronic auto-harp/drum machine/synthesizer."
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AKR 016LP
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"With First Light's Freeze, Castanets return with a dark mutant-country sound infused with strands of free-jazz and a late-seventies Nashville big-radio strut hijacked by post-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 honor and dismantle 'New Americana.' While Cathedral (Castanets' debut) explored the themes of domesticity and the architecture of conflict, First Light's 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."
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AKR 014CD
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"Asthmatic Kitty announces the second installment of Sufjan Stevens' 50 State Project, Illinois, a 22-track anthemic tone poem to The Prairie State. Following the 2003 collection of songs for his home state, Michigan, Stevens presents an emphatic answer to the question: Can a songwriter express the spirit of a state he's never called home? With his most enterprising project to date -- the result of extensive research, travel, meditation, and countless days and nights in the studio -- admirers of his previous work and first time listeners will agree that the answer is yes. On this second state tour, Sufjan weaves variegated musical styles (jazz, funk, pop) and instrumental textures (from oboe to church organ) into a tapestry of persons famous, infamous, and anonymous, and places iconic, obscure, and ghostly. The musical road trip takes you through ghost towns, grain mills, hospital rooms, and the City of Broad Shoulders, with guest appearances by a poet, a president, and a serial murderer, to name a few."
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viewing 1 To 25 of 29 items
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