Artist: Kristin Miltner
Title: Grains
Price: $10.00
Catalog #: praecdf01
Released: 2007

 

Tracklisting and preview MP3s:

01 grains need water and sunlight
02 the church of jorge
03 stunned night
04 bell cycle
05 the body in sleep

Inaugurating a new stage for Praemedia, and marking the first release from the label in 3 years, we present Kristin Miltner’s “Grains.” This delightful CD is limited to 300 compact discs and digital distribution.
Kristin Miltner (K*M*T*V, miba) makes music primarily with computers. A great deal of it involves her incredible voice, and she is a great keyboard player as well. So one could say Miltner’s music is completely digital (the fingers are digits) and yet very rich in an organic-ness that looks outward through the 0s and 1s to the vastness of natural coincidence.

Artist: Blevin Blectum
Title: Magic Maple
Price: $10.00
Catalog #: praecdb01
Released: 2004

 

Tracklisting and preview MP3s:

01 Duckhunted
02 Benadrilled and taking on water
03 Pelican Part One
04 Pelican Part Two
05 Pelican Part Three
06 Pelican Part Four
07 It’s all Becuzz
08 Oddly Angled Room
09 Your Wish is Taken for Granted
10 As a Bird Watches the Eyes of a Snake
11 As if Enraged
12 On the Rim of the World
13 Ease
14 Rommelpotted
15 Last Track
16 David & Justine, 47th and San Leandro

Magic Maple, the third and newest solo album by reknowned electronic musician, Blevin Blectum (formerly hailing from Blectum from Blechdom and currently a member of the Sagan multimedia extravaganza). This album launches from the remains of her previous solo release, the acclaimed Talon Slalom on Deluxe Records, into the outer cosmos. Magic Maple is a prog-rock fantasy gone horrible awry.
Sliding down a more oblique slant off the basic Blectum from Blechdom sensation of things-not-quite-right-here, Magic Maple grows crystalline structures as well as it's namesake. A concise and cohesive whole, shaped from the figmentary footsteps of Fleetwood Macintosh, paeans to Pelicans glimpsed on borderline highways, denouements taken to epic-ending proportions and a chorus of doomed budgies singing their hearts out.

Artist: Stars Like Fleas
Title: Sun Lights Down on the Fence
Price: $10.00
Catalog #: praecd003
Released: 2003

 

Tracklisting and preview MP3s:

01 let cedar rain
02 as hard as you want
03 third night, Wisconsin
04 on a generous day
05 good enough alone
06 swallows my tongue
07 Isabel of lilac
08 welterweight
09 lump. of. clay.
10 ive pumped your stomach and broken through your skin
11 cruise ships

This recording, nearly two years in the making, includes members/ex-members of OutHud, Other Dimensions in Music, TEST, No Neck Blues Band, Papa M, Gold Sparkle Band, Little Huey Orchestra, At The Drive-In, Fiery Furnaces, The Silent League, and Mercury Rev, and features original cover art by Marcel Dzama.

"This is organic sounding music with a sound and coherent logic, yet cleanly avoids sounding like either an exercise in conceptual interrogation, or mere...fusion; these are 'damaged blues for the post-everything castaways, torch songs for a newly scorched city. The songs are lyrical & romantically confused, confrontationally beautiful, syntactically fucked; they demand attention and encourage drift'. Sad bassoons, happy robots, clouds of pink noise, stuttering auctioneers promoting body-modification while playing Webern etudes on the pedal steel, hoarse little rock stars with five string banjos on the dance floor, dancing electro-nasty with Werner Herzog and a brass band, a chorus of bleeding, coked-up cicadas, humming in tune with the primordial drone."

Shannon Fields is a Brooklyn-based composer, electronic musician, multi-instrumentalist, sound-artist and creative producer. He is the producer and a founding member of NYC avant-pop ensemble, Stars Like Fleas. He is also a performing guitarist for "The Silent League" with Justin Russo (ex-Mercury Rev, Hopewell), is producing records for Matt Lavelle and Daniel Carter, and participates in a number of live electronic and noise acts around NYC. Shannon has also performed and collaborated with Gold Sparkle Band, Daniel Carter, Matthew Shipp, Randy Petersen, and Fulbright composer, Ryan Ingebritsen. He is also sound-art editor for Michigan literary and arts journal, DIAGRAM.
Ubiquitous singer and video artist, Montgomery Knott, is an Austin, Texas music veteran who has worked for many years with Stars Of The Lid (Kranky, Sub Rosa), etc. He is founder and curator of the Monkeytown space in Williamsburg, which presents evenings of simultaneous culinary, video, live sound and art installations.

Artist: Tim Perkis
Title: Motive
Price: $10.00
Catalog #: praecd002
Released: 2003

 

Tracklisting and preview MP3s:

01 wrack
02 farb
03 lude
04 prick
05 roil
06 wound
07 zig
08 code

Originally completed in 2000 and released as an exclusive MP3 album in 2002 on Artifact Recordings, Motive by Tim Perkis comes to CD as the second release for Praemedia. A meditation on modern electronica by a veteran computer musician, Motive is a pulse-driven array of electronics informed by a long history of improvisation in the electronic music field.

Artist: Various
Title: Praeface
Price: $8.00
Catalog #: praecd001
Released: 2003

 

Tracklisting and preview MP3s:

01 take a look - lance grabmiller vs. mou-lips!
02 emphasis mine - shannon fields vs. the gold sparkle band
03 twovers - HSoA
04 6’25” - nanaqui
05 wrack - tim perkis
06 i think he’s serious - wobbly and matt ingalls
07 as hard as you want - stars like fleas
08 mama - quiet american
09 damaged bedroom minimalism - shannon fields with martin nieznanski
10 solo flute c - daniel carter, matt lavelle and shannon fields
11 (untitled) - haco, lisle ellis and lance grabmiller
12 on the crown - tim perkis and tom djll
13 remixed bedroom minimalism - martin nieznanski vs. shannon fields
14 electrostatic blues - ernesto diaz-infante and lance grabmiller
15 heavy traffic - lance grabmiller
16 ocean II (for oliver) - shannon fields

Compiled from 3 years worth of recordings, from live sets to mastered tracks, our new compilation “Praeface” stands as a guide to where Praemedia has been and where, as a new label, it is going.

Tracing various intersections of genres from improvisational jazz to plunderphonic electronics to field recordings, diverse splinters and fragmented roots sprout off into calm matrixes of sound. From Japan (Haco) through New York (The Gold Sparkle Band) to Italy (Mou, Lips!), the sounds merge in San Francisco. Pioneers of networked computer music (Tim Perkis) mix with modern masters (Wobbly), alongside unheard musicians and odd collaborations. Avant-jazz damaged blues sparks drum and bass roots to forage in an electrostatic world.

For all the monstrous mutations and shattered boundaries, the effect is soothing tranquility. Music for the ears. Precious gifts of sound open up in small fragments across the landscape of the disc, referencing comfortable moments of the familiar and merging them with a childlike fascination for the new.