Unusual Animals Vol. 5 on Asthmatic Kitty

Side A:
Jookabox - Dead Zone Boys 5:05

Side B:
Dosh - Lifestyle Insurance 4:24

Release date: May 19, 2009

Just noticed this latest release in the Unusual Animals series from Asthmatic Kitty and I haven't heard of either of the two featured and looked them up this morning.
Jookabox, aka Granpall Jukabox, is a across the era's, decade mashup-grabbag collection of influences that the next set of artists always seem to do. Just when everything is boring, the mixes...all the bands sound the same..then you stumble across someone like Jookabox. Especially at the pace that music can recycle and appropriate, and end up in the world...it's the thing that I love about music in the first place....the frantic pace that it's created and released in the wild. Nothing else...film, art...these things are so connected to giant institutions with so much money at stake...the moves are calculated, so bogged down in a thousand opinions, voices, compromises. It's an achievement when something great gets made out of that system...because it doesn't seem set up to succeed to me.
Anyway, Jookabox is kind of that example of the genius of a someone completely free from convention to work and end up with something completely new. I can at the very least get excited and appreciate this for how alien sounding it is. It's not always going to succeed....cajun influenced acoustic guitar + south bronx + ween = ? But that's where the magic happens.

And for anyone that has a tiny bit of interest in making music themselves, this is one of those musicians musician whose going to inspire you every time you hear it to get back behind that 4-track, throw everything away and start over.

Same goes for Dosh pages open at once....is this really working? Can I close one? No...it will never line up and make sense this way again. Then one stops or you close the one you thought wasn't working and that's it, it's done. Dosh is working in a more academic way. It sounds measured, weighed out and fused together, like the good days of DJ Shadow. A little in more of an assembage way. It's like accidentally having 5 bands myspacehypnotic, meditative...weird things happening over soft organ. Borrowing from out of print experiments in analog synth...have yourself a moogtastic christmas. A collection of those forgotton beauties, all collaged in an interesting way. The public service these artists do in reclaiming and recontextualizing.

Sometimes you get up really early in the morning and everything falls into place.

When David "Moose" Adamson was in grade school, his uncle took note of his developing interest in hip-hop and loaned him a four-track. They mixed tracks together and the young Adamson would write rhymes to sing over them, including a double-boombox sequel to Fu-Schnicken's "What's Up Doc (Can We Rock?)" called "Sufferin' Succotash (I Got Whiplash)" At first the beats came from instrumental sides of cassette singles, then from presets on his uncle's drum machine, and finally from his very own beat machine (a Christmas gift), the Yamaha DD-9. Since then, through various incarnations and collaborations with groups such as Archer Avenue and BIGBIGcar, Adamson’s musical interests and excursions have crystallized into a startlingly singular and eclectic songwriting strategy. Jookabox’s debut record, Scientific Cricket, samples a kind of primordial blues sound, children's sidewalk-chalk rhymes and Appalachian folk. But his latest effort finds him moving into new, unplumbed territories. Ropechain pinwheels kaleidoscopically through old-time spirituals, punk, chain-gang hymnal, deep house, and club music hip-hop, blending these disparate elements into a cohesive and unique synthesis. "Dead Zone Boys" gives us a sneak peak of what is to come on Jookabox's third release, due out early 2010.

There he was, this musically lucked child of a once-priest and a near-nun, 12 years old and piled high with a Radio Shack combo stereo, stacks of records, and pockets full of dubbed tapes. It was 1984 and Martin Dosh was orchestrating the soundtracks to his junior high school dances, playing only the choice cuts for the budding romantics and perspiring wallflowers: Run DMC, Prince, Devo, the Cars, New Order... Fast-forward to 2003 when Anticon proudly released Dosh's virtuoso debut, Dosh, a loop-building collage of shimmering Rhodes, atypical drumming grounded in groove, field recordings and spontaneous performance (much of the album was pieced together using the 100-plus hours of tape he'd recorded at his parents'). By then he'd developed his untouchable live one-man show (swiveling on his drum stool between a kit, his modified Rhodes piano, a few pots and pans, and a simple looping pedal with a 12-second recording limit), and took to the road.

This is the fifth in a series of vinyl-only releases. The series, entitled Unusual Animals, pairs Asthmatic Kitty roster artists with friends and sometimes-unlikely bedfellows. Each record includes a beautiful rendering of one of Mother Nature's stranger inhabitants by illustrator Jared Chapman. This limited-edition series expands the Asthmatic Kitty family to include some unexpected folks.

Go get it from Asthmatic Kitty. Anticon has them too, and from what I hear they are close to being out of copies of this so you have been warned.

CRYPTACIZE / WHY?

I'm pretty unfamiliar with Steely Dan except those random huge hits, but after going through a bunch of youtube stuff and finding this original song Peg that Cryptacize covers, maybe this was obvious to everyone else, but Ween has to have been hugely influenced by them. Every time I hear some horrific music at the deli I just imagine it's the new ween single and it's good all of a sudden, that's all I could think of when hearing the original. The idea of these huge epic-ly recorded complicated numbers with a million session musicians and weeks of tweeking in a thousand dollar and hour studio...just complete excess, that dream of working with anything on the planet. It's kind of perfect they get a similar feeling with next to nothing instrumentation here. The rest of their stuff sounds pretty minimal as well....I couldn't find the Dylan Why? cover anywhere and I'd pick it up just to hear that. I got an EP of his a while back and it was just plain weird, sounds, changes all over the place, but really catchy, full of insane lyrics...a cure cover on his myspace is completely unrecognizable. Good stuff.

CRYPTACIZE / WHY?-Unusual Animals Vol. 4 7" (Asthmatic Kitty/AKR406) $4.50 “On this fourth volume of the Unusual Animals split vinyl releases we find a larger-than-life classic of the Disco era shrunken down to miniature size by the Bay Area's premier paranormalists, Cryptacize. Whereas the studio magic of Steely Dan can only be attributed to millions of dollars in major corporate backing, Cryptacize pulls it off with just a couple of claves, an autoharp, and a fuzz-pedal, arranged and recorded by Cryptacize with help from up-and-comer Dominique Leone. On the B side, Cryptacize's Bay Area neighbors WHY? (Anticon) reinterpret Dylan into a bass driven mystery night train anthem for reflection and cruising. The Unusual Animals Vinyl Series pairs Asthmatic Kitty roster artists with friends and sometimes-unlikely bedfellows. Each record includes a beautiful rendering of one of Mother Nature's stranger inhabitants by illustrator Jared Chapman.”

Unusual Animals Vol3 - Ariel Pink, half handed cloud

I had no idea this was coming, I love Ariel Pink. Amazingly if you ever thought no one could breathe life into the entire low-fi crappy 4-track genre, you were wrong again. Just when you think it all sounds the same, he comes along and completely destroys all expectations. This sounds like nothing else, high falsetto vocals, chorus cheap guitar, hundreds of layers, out of time, with absolutely no song structure, he sings both duet parts in different voices, different genders. It's really the sound of like deciding you are your own glam rock, demented disco superstar. I kind of picture a silence of the lambs thing going on. An abandoned warehouse with disco balls and fog machines. There's a stage with tinsel, where he performs every night.
He's a solid experimental anti-songwriter savant, I will always be completely surprised by him... that's an accomplishment to completely wear every insane idea on your sleeve and letting your freak flag out every day, all the time....amazing. Track down every single he releases...I'm not asking.
How LA influenced this weird mess is beyond me, but it makes perfect sense to my other coast impression of the place.
Haven't loved Half handed Cloud as much but I can see they are coming from the same place...this will be another chance to try him out. Great overall release from Asthmatic Kitty records.

HALF HANDED CLOUD/ARIEL PINK-Unusual Animals Vol. 3
This is the third in a series of vinyl-only releases. The series, entitled Unusual Animals, pairs Asthmatic Kitty roster artists with friends & sometimes-unlikely bedfellows. Each record includes a beautiful rendering of one of Mother Nature's stranger inhabitants by illustrator Jared Chapman. This limited-edition series expands the Asthmatic Kitty family to include some unexpected folks.
After years of recording in relative seclusion in the hills of Los Angeles, Ariel Pink made his official Paw Tracks debut with The Doldrums. Recording at home with a guitar, bass, keyboard, & 8-track (the drum sounds are all unbelievably created with his mouth), Ariel Pink blends Lite FM & warped lo-fi pop into something beautiful & confusing, yet highly addictive. Ariel Pink's excess of ideas, alongside his determination to make music from a trance-like state of privacy, places him among characters like R Stevie Moore, Daniel Johnston, or a young Kate Bush.
Full of spirited humor, Half-handed Cloud dissolves any obstacles standing in the way of his innocent bulldozing, jam-packing a sixties sensibility, the touch of a lullaby, & murmurs of divine redemption into micro-narrative & Casio sound effects. Just as fingers begin to snap in time, the artist wraps it up & crackles to conclusion. A trombonist since the age of ten, Ringhofer picked up the guitar as a teenager while recovering from toe surgery. Watching the artist equip himself with the sounds of a 1960's era Sears particleboard guitar, air organ, chattering dolls, stomping on the kitchen floor, & various sixties-pop influences, one may begin to perceive an invisible pattern in the songster's art deco rug.
Episode 14 - Final Solutions - I don't like you, Jay Reatard, See saw, Screaming hand, Casiotone - old panda days - the agoo records picture disc. (24:13)
I ponder the criticism of seven,ten,twelve. Stop the hate. Listen or don't, buy it or don't.

shapes and sizes - weird weeds split

My friend Mike has been waaayyy into asthmatic kitty lately, and has been recommending shapes and sizes and my brightest diamond. I wasn't able to give this a proper listen but just breifly checking it out on their myspace there's a lot of things going on here, like firey furnaces, they are changing like crazy, all kinds of sounds, really clearly arranged.

Clap your hands and say yeah! played at mercury lounge last night, I am tired as hell, they played a random last minute show at 1AM, they played a lot of stuff from the new album. It was 10$ and I never thought I'd see them like that, I had given up after I missed out on arcade fire. I'm just glad I payed attention to that email I got that morning, and that Mike pointed out it was tonight and not the next day since it was at 12:30AM.
I recorded it with my ipod but the belkin microphone or the ipod, (I have to research) skips? Maybe because it's saving tracks over 30 minutes, anyway my first attempt at taping a show was almost perfect except for random skips here and there...kind of sucks.

Scroll down to find this seven inch on sc distribution. This looks like it is part of a series, so I will keep an eye out on asthmatic.

Shapes and Sizes / Weird Weeds
Unusual Animals, Vol. 1
Format: 7" Price: $4.25
(AKR401, Asthmatic Kitty)

On Unusual Animals Volume 1, Shapes and Sizes (in the process of relocating to Montreal from Vancouver) present "Jinker / that Fat Hand," an anthem of defiance and struggle that displays the ongoing maturation of this exciting young band since their self-titled debut, released on Asthmatic Kitty in July, 2006. The Weird Weeds' "Hold in the Light" highlights the genre-breaking minimalist pop songwriting that sets them apart from current trends in avant-folk and pop circles.

RELEASED: 2007-01-23

I really liked this MP3 - Island's gone bad.