Von Schleicher, Katie

Von Schleicher, Katie

Consummation

Ba Da Bing!

Katie Von Schleicher doesn’t hold back. Her music, drenched in layers of warmth and fuzz, mines depression, devotion, power, and anxiety without reserve. But if channeling weighty subject matter is a constant in Von Schleicher’s music, so too is transforming that material into sonic landscapes that defy expectations. On Von Schleicher’s second record, Consummation, she blasts past the lo-fi power ballads of her debut Shitty Hits (2017) with a severe expansion of her sonic palette; its thirteen shape-shifting songs depict a deeply personal exploration of trauma. The result is both potent and listenable; strange and familiar; intense and entertaining—and, perhaps most of all, teeming with life. Consummation is, in part, inspired by an alternate interpretation of Hitchcock’s Vertigo. In 2018, Von Schleicher rewatched the seminal film and was struck by its largely unanalyzed subtext of abuse. She knew immediately that this hidden narrative, which spoke to her personal experience, would be the basis of her next album.  While writing and engineering the record, she found sanctuary in the words of other women: namely, Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties, Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy, and Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost. The latter proved particularly influential: Soon after revisiting Vertigo, Von Schleicher stumbled upon Solnit’s lacerating take on the film. Solnit describes the “wandering, stalking, haunting” of romantic pursuit that it depicts as “consummation,” while “real communion”—understanding and mutual respect between two lovers—is, to the men in the film, “unimaginable.” The consequence is a fundamental failure...

Von Schleicher, Katie

Glad To Be Here

Ba Da Bing!

Katie Von Schleicher follows up her 2017 album Shitty Hits with Glad To Be Here, available digitally and as a 7" on May 4th just in time for her upcoming US and European tours. Produced & engineered by Von Schleicher, Glad To Be Here incorporates the warmth and saturation of Bleaksploitation and Shitty Hits, while nodding towards what's next.  "On a break from touring this winter I went back to my childhood home in Maryland. I built a fire, set up my gold drum kit, saw a ton of stars and felt  smushed by silence. It was lonely, so I made these songs. 'Glad to Be Here' is where I find myself right now. 'Party Dawn' is tied to Maryland, to a dear friend and our adolescence," says Von Schleicher. Bringing the songs back to New York, she finalized them with collaborator Adam Brisbin (Sam Evian, Jolie Holland, Buck Meek) and mixed them with Julian Fader (Ava Luna, Frankie Cosmos, Nadine, Palehound). UK import. Limited to 20 US copies.

Von Schleicher, Katie

Shitty Hits

Ba Da Bing!

***CHECK STOCK!!!  Received a 7.1 rating from Pitchfork.  Katie Von Schleicher’s Bleaksploitation was an accident, years in the making. While interning at Ba Da Bing Records, owner Ben Goldberg offered to release a cassette of anything of hers, demos or a live performance, but she took it a bit more seriously than Goldberg intended. The result was her first self-produced and engineered effort, a strange, hazy, pop-laden tape. Doing her own press under a pseudonym and referring to it as an “album,” it garnered enough attention for it to be released on vinyl in Spring 2016. On her debut full-length, Von Schleicher strikes again on the magic that comes from her warped and uncompromising sound. Shitty Hits channels the bright, sunny radio burners of the 1970s, songs you drive to, carefree, and songs you can cry to. From start to finish, this album confronts isolation and powerlessness—it doesn’t tackle grandiosity, but mediocrity: the struggle of being deeply flawed and unmistakably human.

Von Schleicher, Katie

Bleaksploitation

Ba Da Bing!

Released on cassette last year, Katie Von Schleicher’s Bleaksploitation took the tape world by enough of a storm to thunder demand for more formats. Consequence of Sound described her songs as “like ghosts trying to communicate through a cassette deck”; Paste claims they “sound like a vintage girl group playing in the basement of a haunted house.” This is exciting music from someone we’ll be hearing about for a long time to come. Bleaksploitation was recorded in a dark room on a Tascam 4-track cassette machine. The result is hazy, terrifying and playful. This is what happens when well-crafted songs are made in the moment, warped, drunk on themselves. Von Schleicher’s voice sinks like anchors and rises like a phoenix, wrestling its way through its very own form of basement tapes. ’70s piano rock provides the core, sad lyrics form the shell. The LP is limited to 300 copies, with silk-screened covers made by the asshole herself! They also come with liner notes by Jay Ruttenberg.