THE CATS’ ORCHESTRA – NO KEYS

RIYL: Fonal Records, Kluster, early Kraftwerk + a touch of biscuit

It’s just a normal night for The Cats’ Orchestra…somewhere else. The little factories hum, tiny drunks stumble home, miniature drive-ins play wee adventure movies, a flock of robot geese flies over, and an orchestra made of pint-sized Russian cats fiddles away on prepared violas, contact-mic’d cigar boxes, and underwater wine glasses on the bandstand. The half-tunes, half-abstractions of this naively brilliant one-man orchestra are a fine demonstration of acoustic and wonky electronics tools that build scaffolding to bring us to the cosmic. This is one of the most appropriately-named groups ever, though we wouldn’t have thought cats had such good taste in music. A rare example of delightfully meandering plink-plonk that you can’t help but follow.

The Cats’ Orchestra is poet and musician Nicholay Syrov, label head of Moscow’s Dumpster Diving Lab and editor of magazine Nisha.

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REGULAR MUSIC – RUINS

RIYL: Squishy Psychedelia, Tangerine Dream scoring a nature program, Nitrous Oxide Smoothies

Somewhere deep in the CPU sleeps the mind of a poet, dreaming in binary of a particular time and place in space. How he got there is of no consequence to us, rather it is his dreams that concern us now. Sun is the square wave, the color blue, the saw wave. Trees and the merest hint of grass on the hill behind are pink noise, the sea a pulse wave. We are seeing in two dimensions but hearing in three as the code unwinds, pausing, turning and leaping towards the horizon as the wind, played here by a low E, carries us past the seagulls on the horizon and towards the beautiful digital expanse above.

Regular Music is a Portland, Oregon electronic super group consisting of E*Rock of Audio Dregs, Marius Libman of Copy and Charlie Salas-Humara of Grapefruit / The Planet The / Panther.

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Limited edition of 100 pro-dubbed & imprinted cassettes w/ download card

RIYL: BBC Radiophonic Workshop, an expedition to the afterbirth of synthesis, the compression of space and time due to a fever dream.

As you may have noticed, we in the world of synth-based cassette music are awash in a tide of baby-faced analog synthers and teen arpeggiators, but we at Field Hymns are here to tell you that not all arpeggiators are created equal.  Inception showered over our monochromatic minds like a candy factory on the blink spewing Skittles. As the burbling, sputtering synth-sequencing, gleaming but with a little wear around the edges, plopped and plooked, our minds giggled with non-thoughts. When we flipped the cute lil’ orange striped C-40, we wandered a landscape of brown, haggard synth textures that is Aftermath to the point of exhaustion. We reached the end of all ideas, the shattering of histories, and the bottom of all champagne flutes, believing our Inception-induced hangover was terminal. Soon enough, though, Nodolby took our arm and glick-glacked us out of the stately, somber void with his jangling arpeggi and it was fucking joyous!

(Nodolby is Michele Scariot of Italy & runs the Dokuro imprint)

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Limited edition of 100 pro-dubbed & imprinted cassettes w/ download card

1. Aftermath
2. Inception

Man, it has been a stellar year for Field Hymns, the best yet. We released an ass-load of great music – in fact, it’s kind of unbelievable that we released 13 albums this year, all A+ caliber :

Bastian Void – Fluorescent Bells
Boron – The Beige Album
Jonathan James Carr – Well Tempered Ignorance
Andreas Brandal – Staying Is Nowhere
Charlatan Meets The North Sea
Foton – Omega
Oxykitten – Octagonal Wax
Grapefruit
Adderall Canyonly & Oxykitten – The Cutting Room
Detainee – Vital Organs
Susurrus
Garth Steel Klippert – Korgoleum
Eyes – A Candle in the Crown of the Dawn

Pretty remarkable for a rickety, shoe-string operation like this one. Thanks to all the artists who were willing to potentially doom their music to obscurity and take a chance with us – you guys are fucking awesome. Thanks to all the fans and/or curious folk who bought tapes (what remarkable taste you have). Thanks to all the writers who listened and wrote about our albums – the world is completely saturated with music, more so than ever it seems.  To take time out of your busy schedules and listen to a Field Hymns record means a damn great deal to us. And it goes without saying, all you chumps who didn’t listen to our music – your loss. Catch us in 2013 when even MORE great stuff is going to be happening, as we have some truly mind-boggling stuff lined up.

Stay tuned to this station for more news! And Happy New Year if we don’t talk before then…

mwah,
us

New Boron video from the WOEFULLY under-appreciated “Beige Album” which apparently is (NSFSC), Not Suitable For Some Critics. Remember you can download this album for whatever amount you wish to pay (or just jukebox it ) HERE

Portland label extraordinaire Audio Dregs is having a huge vinyl sale – 10 records for $50! From the website -

“We’re having a massive vinyl blowout sale for the next couple weeks (or until things run out): everything on vinyl that’s still in print must go and I am putting as much extra goodies in the box as I can fit.
10 LPs, + 2 DVDs, +2 zines, + stickers, + free shipping! $49.99!

this includes

• Copy – Hair Guitar LP
• Copy – Hard Dream LP
• Copy – Mobius Beard LP
• E*Rock – The Clock & The Mountain LP
• ROTFLOL – LP
• Global Goon – Family Glue LP
• Strategy – Drumsolo’s Delight LP
• FS Blumm – Lichten LP
• Panther – Secret Lawns LP
• Bobby Birdman – New Moods LP

Audio Dregs has been consistently on the forefront of experimental beat shaping & has been molding the sound of modern electronica in real-time since its inception, although that bland genre classification falls woefully short of explaining anything. For a measly $50 though you can get a primer on not only a great label but get an early peek on a sound and space your grandchildren will be taking drugs to.

GET IT HERE

RIYL: cosmic surf, old BBC documentaries, heavy synth

You know that feeling when you snap back to awareness and wonder where the last 47 minutes of your life has gone? Let us introduce our instrument of that erasure: Fluorescent Bells. Born during a year punctuated with frequent hospital visits, Bastion Void mined what glimmer of hope there was for the keys to coping. Within his sterile environment, overwhelmed with the sense of uncertainty inherent in long-term suffering, this work managed to assuage that crippling miasma with wonder, reverence, and a little bit of guile. Fluorescent Bells is the sound of coming to grips with mortality and beating Death back behind the curtain, if only for a little while.

(Bastian Void is Joe Bastardo, also the founder of label Moss Archive.)

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Limited edition of 100 pro-dubbed & imprinted cassettes w/ download card

SOLD OUT – Get the Digital HERE

1. Atrium
2. Rotating Wave Display
3. Respirit
4. Visitors
5. Fluorescent Bells
6. In Common Outlets
7. Greendale Mall Overpass