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viewing 1 To 16 of 16 items
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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 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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LP
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AKR 208LP
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LP
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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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LP
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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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LP
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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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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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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 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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CD
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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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LP
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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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2LP
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AKR 007LP
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"Asthmatic Kitty and Sounds Familyre announce the vinyl edition of Sufjan Stevens' Michigan. On two LPs, this special edition includes alternate versions of 'Vito's Ordination song,' 'Romulus,' and five out-takes not included on the original CD release. Also new to this edition is an essay on the songs by Sufjan Stevens. Composed as a geographical tone poem, Michigan follows a Metaphysical expedition through the idiosyncrasies of middle America. Drawing from personal anecdote, regional history, and state heritage, Stevens mixes social and political grievances with songs about snowmobiles, Henry Ford, the Detroit riots, and love."
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