metabolismus “mauser o.k.” seven inch single record

• carousel
  
• do they owe us a living?
  
  
• asthma game
  
• supergenug

metal mountains “golden trees” long playing record

• structures in the sun
  
• orange/yellow
  
• the golden trees that shade us
  
  
• flickers within/without
  
• turn to the east
  
• silver sun
  
• prisms

metal mountains “golden trees” compact disc

• structures in the sun (5:47)
  
• orange/yellow (5:26)
  
• the golden trees that shade us (5:37)
  
• flickers within/without (4:28)
  
• turn to the east (5:04)
  
• silver sun (5:26)
  
• prisms (3:50)

amish press release...

ami 042 metal mountains golden trees cd golden trees is a minimalist psych-folk masterpiece. a supergroup of sorts, helen rush, pat gubler and samara lubelski have created seven songs characterized as much by quiet and restraint than by their acclaimed musicianship. the lyrical lines in these songs appear suspended between pregnant pauses of silence and subtle instrumental flourishes. on one side of the gap, samara lubelski's violin invokes the velvets and other avant string-players. on the other side, p.g. six layers effects and pointillist finger picking, while evoking outright weirdness from his guitar rig. at the center, helen rush has penned songs of delicate beauty and fragile intimacy. with matt valentine, helen and pat formed the core nucleus of tower recordings. samara also performed with later incarnations of tower, as well as hall of fame, thurston moore's band, and as a solo-artist. where the early tower catalogue was characterized by schizophrenic studies in a variety of forms (folk, noise, drone, lo-fi skronk, etc), metal mountains' songs like "structures in the sun," "the golden trees that shade us" and "turn to the east" provide us with sonic beauty in high fidelity. though helen gave us a sample of her post-tower recordings-work with "silver sun," which we released on the and to the disciples that remain compilation, she here provides us with a rearranged treatment of that song, which along with "prisms" opens the folk idiom into a new minimalist terrain. we've been waiting more than ten years to explore this sonic space, which in music industry dog years, amounts to almost two centuries. this full-length is well worth the wait.

mike shiflet / pete swanson “bedside b/w college view” long playing record

• mike shiflet - bedside (15:04)
  
  
• pete swanson - college view (12:32)

amish press release...

required wreckers volume 5 mike shiflet / pete swanson “bedside” b/w “college view” lp release date: 9/4/2012 catalog: ami035r/w format: lp * mastered by timothy stollenwerk * letter- pressed obi strip * artwork and 16-page art booklet by miranda lichtenstein and cameron martin amish is pleased to officially announce a new release featuring work from two american noise and sound artists, the ohio-based mike shiflet and the recent portland-to-new york transplant pete swanson. the fifth installment in the label’s required wreckers series (ami-035r/w) features side-long compositions that borrow as much from the worlds of noise and power electronics that swanson and shiflet were affiliated with in the early parts of their careers, as from techno and modern composition. mike shiflet’s “bedside” utilizes disparate sources - guitar, field recordings, abstract electronic textures and white noise - to create a composition that’s both warmly pastoral and defamiliar. this is one of shiflet’s most beautiful works to date. shiflet has released a number of critically acclaimed recordings over the last decade for labels like type and ecstatic peace!, as well as collaborating with c. spencer yeh in burning star core. pete swanson’s “college view” documents another example of his recent recordings’ attempt to blur the lines between techno, noise, and electronic music. “college view” drags detroit dance music into a static field of electricity, and then doubles back again. “college view” documents another great example of swanson’s mature, post-yellow swans output, as indicated on a series of releases since 2011 on labels like three-lobed and type. miranda lichtenstein and cameron martin provide the visual art for this release. the cover art and booklet included with the release feature images from a series of manipulated photographs of chinese scholar rocks that the artists have worked on since 2008. the images suggest the same kind of blasted pastoralism that shiflet and swanson invoke in each of their pieces. lichtenstein and martin have each exhibited their work internationally in shows in new york, tokyo, austria and at the 2004 whitney biennial. with equal nods to throbbing gristle’s retrograde conceptualism and recommended records unwavering musicality, amish is pleased to announce the required wreckers series. r/w will explore the work of artists operating at the intersections of sound art, improvisation, drone, outsider experimentation and modern composition. in the spirit of its name, r/w aims to disrupt the boundaries typically used to delimit genre and the sensibilities that help to inform taste. in so doing, r/w slips out from under the simple, reductive classifications so often used to discuss, and even critically engage, contemporary music. situating r/w in the gap between throbbing gristle’s celebrated a-musicality and the unrelenting craftsmanship of henry cow, these releases acknowledge their debt to historical precedent. each release is a one-time vinyl pressing and will be housed in a letterpress band (designed by bryan christopher baker) that will vary with each installment. these lps will also include artwork and assorted ephemera that invoke our deepest respect for the medium and the hand-crafted (and assembled) components we regret have disappeared with the rise of digital media. r/w terminates after ten installments.

ben vida / keith fullerton whitman “splitaggregatepulseripper (damaged iiii) b/w 080114” long playing record

• ben vida - aggregatepulseripper (damaged iiii) (11:31)
  
  
• keith fullerton whitman - 080114 (18:20)

amish press release...

ami 033 r/w ben vida / keith fullerton whitman aggregatepulseripper (damaged iiii) / 080114 the third iteration in the required wreckers series, a split lp featuring new and exclusive work from ben vida and keith fullerton whitman (ami-033 r/w). having collaborated over the last decade as a trio with greg davis, this release features new solo-work by two of america's most important emerging sound artists. the first side of this release debuts a new composition from ben vida. in keeping with his recent patchwork-based compositions, aggregatepulseripper (damaged iiii) continues to explore vida's interest in both digital and analog control sources, a compositional process that refuses to fetishize one technology over another and, more interestingly, appears (though, of course, these appearances are deceptive) to displace the musician's hand from the compositional process. in light of vida's early work with the acoustic ensemble, town and country, and the world music and concrete studies of his solo project, bird show, this new compositional method should not be overemphasized. for this piece, vida creates a complex web of patches that change and morph in what he has contextualized as a series of shifting generative patterns. the subtitle of his piece references how these patterns coalesce in aggressive, almost hardcore, clusters of sound that refuse to slip into contemplative or mystical arenas that so many in today's electronic music reference in relation to their work. vida's composition opts instead to remain engaged in the phenomenal and spatial forces that shape our perception of sound. the flipside of this lp features keith fullerton whitman's third in a series of splits (previous releases have included no fun production's b/w carlos giffoni and amethyst sunset's b/w with mike shiflet) documenting a particularly productive period in his creative output - a series of "synth concerts" from 2007 and 2008. recorded on january 14, 2008 at pa's lounge in somerville, ma, this piece documents the fourth in whitman's solo synthesizer sets. his technical set-up is based around a theme (and circuitry) of economy, in which the artist makes use of each cv-source in a variety of fashions. throughout the recording one can discern talking from the audience and ambient room-tone noise, as well as sound coming from different sources spread throughout the room - a small battery powered speaker on stage right, a giant barbetta on stage left. each speaker was fed into a different patch irrespective of its frequency response. whitman uses a hybrid system of digital and analog sound sources that, with the exception of a single 4096 bd delay, is presented here without treatment, overdub, or sequencing of any sort. new york-based artist meredyth spark provides the cover art and sixteen-page booklet for this release. sparks has been assisting amish for the last few years with design and layout. this is the first release to exclusively feature her work. the images and design elements for the cover art come from her extraction series (in truth, the front and back covers are extractions of her extractions), paintings and collages that draw heavily from the aleatory methods and analog/digital processes that both vida and whitman utilize in their recordings.

son of earth “improvements” long playing record

• time immemorial
  
• muttering triumph
  
• slow shakes
  
  
• gone to float
  
• upward impetus
  
• a function observed

amish press release...

ami 031 r/w son of earth improvements lp beginning a decade ago in a pre-weird america, son of earth has traveled a surprisingly linear trajectory through noise and collective improvisation to a simple, quiet, and more considered music. the band's path has led through hundreds of performances and collaborations (including shackamaxon, which brought together all three members of son of earth with marcia bassett and chris gray of double leopards and pete nolan of the magik markers), but has resulted in only a handful of releases, often handcrafted and released on the group's apostasy recordings label. while still being filled with the unease and tension that is their hallmark, improvements is the first record that also allows the humor and camaraderie between the members of son of earth to come to the fore. most of their previous releases have been culled from live recordings, and the group has always thrived on the tension of live performance. earlier studio efforts, such as the acclaimed pet lp, though recorded at home, were composed in an everyone-has-to-be-serious approximation of the live performance experience. this time, possibly for the first time, in a sweaty little room, and in a stairwell, and in a back yard tossing horseshoes in holyoke, massachusetts, the group finally dropped all pretense - not of seriousness, but of obligation to some unseen spectator. on improvements, you can really hear john shaw, matt krefting, and aaron rosenblum being themselves, and being son of earth and it's weird. manchester-bred, rick myers, who has worked with john cale, andy votel, dinosaur jr. and badly drawn boy and has created books with nieves zurich & gladtree press to name a few, provides us with the beautiful art and design-work for the lp jackets. lp comes wrapped in letter-pressed band and contains a 16-page art book by rick.