***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.6 rating from Pitchfork. "Strands is a song cycle that is about cosmogony and creation/destruction myths. The title alludes to the structural constitution of ropes as I wanted to approach the compositions so that they consisted of strands and fibers which form a unified whole. This was so the songs could have the appearance of being either taut or slack without being fundamentally locked to a grid. So the sounds/tones have a certain malleability to them and sound like they're bending through time. It's also grittier and more distorted than my previous albums. I wanted to try and capture that moment in nature and society where life slowly reemerges through desolation, so it has a layer of optimism looming underneath. The music represents this by seemingly decaying at times but then reforms and morphs in a fluid way back to its original state. I was also inspired by the movement of rivers, particularly their transformative aspect and how they're in a state of flux and change, in particular the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland where I live, which notoriously caught on fire thirteen times because of industrial pollution in the 1960s and before. I was very interested in the dichotomy of oil and water and the resulting, unnatural symptoms of human industry. It's a very personal record for me as it is a reflection of my hometown where I grew up and where it was mostly recorded."—Steve Hauschildt. (STREET DATE - 10/28/2016)
LP $19.00
10/28/2016
CD $14.00
10/28/2016
***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.5 rating from Pitchfork. Steve Hauschildt's new album is his first since the late 2012 release of "Sequitur." Although Where All Is Fled sonically harkens back to his earlier albums such as Rapt for Liquid Minister and Tragedy & Geometry, it slowly becomes apparent that it is also a divergence from those recordings. Both the artwork and the music on this new work were heavily inspired by surrealist landscape paintings, early alchemical emblems, and recurring visions Steve had from dreams. The result is a pristine series of cascading melodies, fantastical terrains of layered lattices, and overlapping patterns of synthesizers superimposed with orchestral instrumentation. Hidden in the crevices of the album are processed crowd sounds, re-sampled text-to-speech synthesis, piano, and animal noises which reveal themselves after repeated listens and blur together notions of artificial and natural sound. While slowly unfurling, each sound is given it's own place and space, never hurried, never cluttered. The album is a modern kosmische milepost, and the most accomplished statement of Steve Hauschildt's vision yet.
CD $14.00
09/25/2015
2XLP $24.00
10/06/2015
***From STEVE HAUSCHILDT: “This new album was recorded in both Vancouver and Cleveland. I used almost 20 different instruments, from every decade from the 60's to the present, most of them synthesizers, drum machines and effects. This gives the album a much wider palette than my last, Tragedy & Geometry, and it also gives it a more classic/new sound, yet it is still a logical follow up to that LP. I also used some techniques in the studio where I controlled older instruments with the computer and this opened up new ways for me to explore their potential as well as their innate idiosyncrasies. I was very interested in the artificiality of vocal or choir-like sounds that emulate a person or group singing, and how this has evolved with the advancement of musical technology over the years. I also sang myself, and used a vocoder, not to sound robotic, but to remove the connotations of gender. Those sounds are androgynous because they carry both masculine and feminine characteristics. I was inspired to carry this idea into music mainly because of the work of Camille Paglia and Donna Haraway. I feel that the album in a sense treads the imaginary boundary between Nature and Artifice. It is postmodern, but not necessarily a post-Freudian statement on cyborg theory or feminism. Rather it is a musically mimetic domain where these ideas freely collide and coalesce.“ Exactly one year on from his last album, Steve Hauschildt returns with his most commanding work to date....
LP $19.00
11/13/2012
CD $14.00
11/13/2012
***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.4 rating from Pitchfork. Perhaps the least prolific and quietest of the three members of Cleveland trio EMERALDS, STEVE HAUSCHILDT is usually found at their live performances playing the serious scientist as foil to the other two members more animated stage presence. As a teen, Steve bypassed the typical young music fan obsessions over punk and hardcore musics, drawn instead towards mid-late ‘90s techno/electro-revivalism and finding himself alone in an electronic universe of his own choosing. Steve has always considered himself more of an artist than a musician, and sees his work both in group and solo settings as much a visual experience as it is an aural one. The title Tragedy & Geometry is an ambiguous but subtle reference to Melpomene (Muse of Tragedy) and Polyhymnia (Muse of Geometry), or more specifically the collision/overlap of what they invoke. The opening track is also a direct reference to “Polyhymnia, Muse of Eloquence”, the painting by the French artist Charles Meynier on display at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The album is a treatise on the idea that technology is becoming more disposable as it's becoming more accessible, and how this circumstance has a more evident/direct effect on the interpersonal, i.e. relations, with others in the so-called 'Age of Information.' What results is a gorgeous, flowing, floating world of post-kosmische musik, Steve Hauschildt’s first widely available release, and his first major statement as a solo artist.
CD $14.00
11/15/2011
2XLP $17.25
11/15/2011