Strata- A Young Person’s Guide To Experimental Music (SAA1125)

An ambitious compilation of noise, electronic, hip-hop, free jazz, prog and experimental music, Strata- A Young Person’s Guide To Experimental Music is a primer for those of any age. Featuring rare, new and unreleased tracks from: Create (!), Bizzart, Melk The G6-49, Lafcadio, Soul-Junk, MakeShift:Shelter, Manners For Husbands, Receptor Sight, Electric iLL and others. Collected from the Sounds Are Active and Joyful Noise record labels, Strata- A Young Person’s Guide To Experimental Music, presents both previously unreleased and downloadable tracks with album cuts.

Melk The G6-49- Glossolalia (SAA1119)

A miniature masterpiece of thousands of amplified crickets, Glossolalia is Melk The G6-49’s finest moment. Recorded over three days, the Bloomington, Indiana bass and drum duo have composed an album that comes off sounding like a Christian Marclay-ed Melvins 12” crossfaded with a Ruins cover of Music for Airports. Hiss, trashy cymbals and 4-string bass blasts spasm and flop with no room for other sound. Melk have pursued their heavy-noise ambient methods with only John Spencer’s electric bass and Karl Hofstetter’s drums. According to Delusions of Adequacy “Melk the G6-49 makes a wall of sound so dangerously unconventional and label bending that slapping a label on this feels like going out and stomping around in an unbroken field of snow. It’s just sacrilege.”

Sounds Are Active/Asthmatic Kitty Sampler (AS001)

Sounds Are Active and sister label Asthmatic Kitty have pooled their collective talents to put something beautiful into the world: the 2004 Sampler. Over over 74 minutes of music from these two unceasingly original record labels. The Asthmatic Kitty “Side” features songs from Sufjan Stevens’ first three albums, as well as three tracks from the unrelentingly joyous Half-Handed Cloud. Songs by Liz Janes, Castanets and Viva Voce round out the 11 tracks- 3 heretofore unreleased. The Sounds Are Active “Side” teems with spastic new work from Melk The G6-49, Bizzart and Deneir. New and unreleased tracks from Soul-Junk, Vla Hemia and Create (!). Softer pieces contributed by Xn. (featuring a slick remix from hip-hop producer supreme Omid) and the brooding “Two Planes for Elliott Smith” by the Constantine/Levin/Phillips/Schlarb/Shadduck quintet.