It's just a normal night for The Cats' Orchestra…somewhere else. The little factories hum, tiny drunks stumble home, miniature drive-ins play wee adventure movies, a flock of robot geese flies over, and an orchestra made of pint-sized Russian cats fiddles away on prepared violas, contact-mic'd cigar boxes, and underwater wine glasses on the bandstand. The half-tunes, half-abstractions of this naively brilliant one-man orchestra are a fine demonstration of acoustic and wonky electronics tools that build scaffolding to bring us to the cosmic. This is one of the most appropriately-named groups ever, though we wouldn't have thought cats had such good taste in music. A rare example of delightfully meandering plink-plonk that you can't help but follow.

The Cats' Orchestra is poet and musician Nicholay Syrov, label head of Moscow's Dumpster Diving Lab and editor of magazine Nisha.

Somewhere deep in the CPU sleeps the mind of a poet, dreaming in binary of a particular time and place in space. How he got there is of no consequence to us, rather it is his dreams that concern us now. Sun is the square wave, the color blue, the saw wave. Trees and the merest hint of grass on the hill behind are pink noise, the sea a pulse wave. We are seeing in two dimensions but hearing in three as the code unwinds, pausing, turning and leaping towards the horizon as the wind, played here by a low E, carries us past the seagulls on the horizon and towards the beautiful digital expanse above.

Regular Music is a Portland, Oregon electronic super group consisting of E*Rock of Audio Dregs, Marius Libman of Copy and Charlie Salas-Humara of Grapefruit / The Planet The / Panther.

Field hymns

As you may have noticed, we in the world of synth-based cassette music are awash in a tide of baby-faced analog synthers and teen arpeggiators, but we at Field Hymns are here to tell you that not all arpeggiators are created equal. Inception showered over our monochromatic minds like a candy factory on the blink spewing Skittles. As the burbling, sputtering synth-sequencing, gleaming but with a little wear around the edges, plopped and plooked, our minds giggled with non-thoughts. When we flipped the cute lil' orange striped C-40, we wandered a landscape of brown, haggard synth textures that is Aftermath to the point of exhaustion. We reached the end of all ideas, the shattering of histories, and the bottom of all champagne flutes, believing our Inception-induced hangover was terminal. Soon enough, though, Nodolby took our arm and glick-glacked us out of the stately, somber void with his jangling arpeggi and it was fucking joyous!

(Nodolby is Michele Scariot of Italy & runs the Dokuro imprint)

Field hymns

You know that feeling when you snap back to awareness and wonder where the last 47 minutes of your life has gone? Let us introduce our instrument of that erasure: Fluorescent Bells. Born during a year punctuated with frequent hospital visits, Bastion Void mined what glimmer of hope there was for the keys to coping. Within his sterile environment, overwhelmed with the sense of uncertainty inherent in long-term suffering, this work managed to assuage that crippling miasma with wonder, reverence, and a little bit of guile. Fluorescent Bells is the sound of coming to grips with mortality and beating Death back behind the curtain, if only for a little while.

(Bastian Void is Joe Bastardo, also the founder of label Moss Archive.)

Field hymns

Well Tempered Ignorance is the debut solo work from Jonathan James Carr, member of Seattle's Brain Fruit. This recording finds the classically trained pianist marrying free-jazz inspired synthesizer arrangements with musique concrète elements recorded abroad in India and Berlin. These two 20+ minute pieces that make up Well Tempered Ignorance run the gamut from elastic modular psychedelia to calm, transparent symmetry that create in its entirety an amalgam of top-tier drone and exultant audio sculpture. Featuring Kaori Suzuki of Magic Echo Music on an early production model of one of her hand-built synthesizers.

(Jonathan James Carr lives in Seattle, WA)

Field hymns

This is the second time we are proud to feature the work of Swedish mastermind, Jan Svensson, on Digitalis. Previous to Dreamers, you likely heard his contributions as 1/3 of the maniacal FRAK and their Muzika Electronic LP. Well, with Studio SS he abandons his crew to toil away in his wired-up bunker. Dreamers rips out all the dance and pop elements from Muzika Electronic and focuses on the brittle, shattered bones.

Explorative synthesis is the name of the game, here, with Svensson digging through buckets of corroded circuitry, hoping that the one sound to unlock them all is still waiting to be found. But it's a fool's game, as we all know, because the further down that electronic hole you go, the less sense it all makes. Reckless bleets and splurps careen along like gravity is suddenly optional and we're just drifting through a field of space debris. Mutant rhythms blast out, making sure you make it back to the ground in a million pieces, ready for reassembly. Next thing you know, you're totally consumed by technology and have been sucked into the borg.

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The journey of S. Kidlat! Ocampo is a mysterious one with endless twists & turns, but with the result always swimming in neon and on the virgo tip. First we have BETAWAVE X and this eight piece songbook, "Ghetto Hymns for the Earthbound & Weary." The title couldn't be more fitting. Aspirations and public archiving make their move with funk-infused synth routes blazed on golden highways and leads that drip with sweetness and hope. Futurism is never far from the past and robotic vocals are simultaneously harmonic and clinical. It's in the groove that paths are traversed and the stars are brought into line. These are exaltations. Post Office Damaged Parcels Clerk, Totoy Monteiro, assents, "…this is some funky shit I ain't never heard before!"

MX7 for MYSTERYSEVEN is another vehicle entirely with Ocampo burning the candle from the other end, looking for new modes of public broadcast. Context is stripped down to the basics and reconfigured into machinistic daydreams. Academic in approach, "A Patient Transit" unfolds organically and uncovers heavy sonic truths. This is music that will integrate into your synapses, becoming a singularity within your fluid mind. It is living aural research. These simple ideas breed explosive results and each note, chosen with purpose, sings like an endless parade to the cosmos..

Your stars are my stars.

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ex-mutation in the gryd hauntress that is willing to throw acid on your dreams

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Part of the final cassette "batch" from Digitalis Ltd. The label will continue to release special edition cassettes, but not in large batches as they have in the past. As always, Digitalis cassettes are designed and manufactured with the highest standards of sound and visual presentation...

blown-out scuzz that is utterly, deliciously relentless

Digitalis limited

Part of the final cassette "batch" from Digitalis Ltd. The label will continue to release special edition cassettes, but not in large batches as they have in the past. As always, Digitalis cassettes are designed and manufactured with the highest standards of sound and visual presentation...

time-lapsed drones that drown beneath the blackness

Digitalis limited

Part of the final cassette "batch" from Digitalis Ltd. The label will continue to release special edition cassettes, but not in large batches as they have in the past. As always, Digitalis cassettes are designed and manufactured with the highest standards of sound and visual presentation...

alex barnett & ken camden weave alien sonic environments into a brand new world. Part of the November / December 2011 batch of Digitalis Limited edition tapes. Artwork by Brad Rose.

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russian excursions mixing field recordings and orchestral reverie. Part of the November / December 2011 batch of Digitalis Limited edition tapes. Artwork by Brad Rose.

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the 'living wage' EP was recorded over a few mornings following 12 hour graveyard shifts as a taxi driver, in a very weary and warm state of mind while adjusting to a new sleep schedule. each piece was recorded live and manipulated using spring reverb, 1/4″ and cassette tape, with a piano as the sound source on the A side, and a lap steel guitar on the B side. it is intended as a window into my own tattered and crude processes of of tape manipulation, as well as the feeling of soon-to-sleep in full summer light, and a bridge between more fleshed-out and composed full-length albums.

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surprise surprise... montreal wins again. i don't know what the fuck is cooking up there but i am becoming a full-on glutton. the cryptic e.s./i.s. is the trio of jean-sebastien truchy, riccardo lucchesi, & john chang (familiar to all who frequent the excellent los discos enfantasmes label). "i see you sister...." ticks all the boxes. it is the sound of being trapped in a cybernetic torture chamber. modular workouts catch fire and fade out. disjointed rhythms tease, but never quite take hold. there's a general sense of unease building throughout and eventually with truchy's vocal excorcisms, everything just explodes into hellish chaos. e.s./i.s. is totally, gloriously fucked. edition of 75. chrome.

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selaroda is the work of san francisco resident, michael henning. "synaptic portals" gets deep into the cosmic cracks, looking for dark corners in which to find life. subterranean rhythms run head-on into dying city streets before hiding again where it's always night. looping soundscapes dissolve into major chord progressions and sequential wanderings. eventually, though, henning decides to reanimate the rabbit hole, pluck your piano strings, and sink in this synthetic quicksand. wretched beauty. edition of 75. chrome.

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born in the bright lights and smog of los angeles, tiger stripe is the work of ashish sharma. "imaginary number" offers up an entire night that stretches into the far reaches of the morning. club shocks hit first with purposeful movement and downplayed charm. sharma stretches his voice into killer hooks and blasts synth swells over slow, pounding beats. on the backside comes the come down. syrupy synth excursions flicker quietly and build into lazy mountains. it's the best way to drift off. first the party, then the afterglow.

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joe bastardo returns with bastian void's sophomore missive thrown into the swirling abyss. mirrored shards reach out and pluck chord changes from a diamond's eye. these electric daydreams move along on muted rhythms. soak it all in as you take a journey into the unsettling sonic environments of melting landscapes. this is as much in the sky as it is buried underground. a festive spectrum.

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ben baker billington has been having an excellent run this year with his solo wares as quicksails. with releases on stalwarts like deception island, NNA, 905, etc, there's no room for error. where a lot of people are happy to let their synthesizers do the talking, billington muffles their voices and increases the impact with layers of chaotic percussion. the combination gets us wondering which road to follow: organic or synthetic? but in this mauling, both provide the aural fruits to get drunk on. technicolor absolutes.

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danchisko may have shortened the name but the impact is still long for this world. the previous sovetskaya jaunts were dreamy affairs but "kimberley al butnan" is something else. skeletal, irregular rhythms dot the horizon while methodic key plundering follows the trail up the mountain. each point on the map flirts w/ melodicism while staying on the knife's edge. there's a wobbly, uneasy feeling hiding under the surface, but i'm okay with getting seasick as long as we continue down this way.

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killer collaboration between the fried minds of flamingo creatures & hering und seine sieben sachen that keeps getting weirder with each subsequent listen. two side-long excursions that float and sink all while chasing their collective tails. what? ghost choirs dream of synths that flicker and fade away. quiet, minimalist wanderings through an electric forest emerge from darkness to find sun-soaked strings and twisted it all into a faux orchestral embrace.

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two favorites matching the upward trajectory of both montreal, qc and portland, or together w/ double-sided tape. hobo cubes brings the relaxation zone and plasters synthetic drips into a bright, glossy sheen. beautifully constructed meditative music that brings you into the zone. j. hanson continues his modular explorations with expert moves. pulsating debris grown from metallic fibers

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space ghost meditations rising from underneath the darkening waves floating out to sea. hailing from japan, buchikamashi (aka mizuhiro) skirts through the shallows unnoticed until emerging, dripping w/ organic, soothing tones on the beach. this is drone music done right, slick as nails and drawn out until it naturally concludes. using a mix of tones and source material, mizuno fires each missive with delicate care and as the float toward the glowing moon there is redemption

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mike shiflet's "llanos" was one of my favorite albums of 2010 and these two extended reworkings/remixes turns that material on its ear. shiflet and his longtime cohort, joe panzner untangle and retangle the thick aural web of album tracks "pink meadow" and "sunbathers" (hence the title). thick swashes of noise are undermined by subterranean melodies that aren't succeeding if they're not falling apart. the two pieces work very well in tandem with shiflet's restrained touch working as the perfect opposition to panznzer's blown-out mini-masterpiece. i usually shy away from remixes but "meadowbathers" finds very worthwhile new ground. get lost. edition of 75, pro-dubbed chrome.

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debut from this post-taiga remains project of alex cobb's, "a continued garden" is an organic virus festering its way into your skull. cobb has left behind the savory glacial landscapes of his taiga past, instead filling the cracks with expert synthesis and sonic debris. each side-long excursion is visceral to a point. "3d thumbnail" churns along mechanically like a soldier determined to make the kill before evaporating into a digital symphony of bubbling resonance. the awesomely-titled "convenient height" is drenched in euphoria and disconcertingly comforting. you know nothing is really this sweet. edition of 75, pro-dubbed chrome.

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logan seguin makes his digitalis return and follows up his exquisite fake soundtrack with another exploration of bare-bone keys, samples & minimalist rhythms. "drone" is not entrenched in drone. instead we find basketcase melodies and handwoven rhythms that sneak a peak under the hood of halloween and cape fear among others. seguin chooses his film samples wisely, manipulating them into a caustic mess. paired with music that creeps along at every angle, the effect is ominous to say the least. expertly macabre. edition of 75, pro-dubbed chrome.

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dense reduction's travis bird veers off course and into space with his first solo effort, "two tidal states." bird cracks out his MS2000 to send up this homage to radigue and other forms of synthetic expression. sparse bleeps and blops open the tape, gently guiding you through the rabbit hole. as he rumbles his way through the sub-sonic basement, you're greeted on the other side with the promise of skull-boring oscillations. solid, methodic drones coalesce into a mountain of sonic debris acting like an artificial monument to the cosmos.

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fossils from the sun is the solo moniker of century plants and burning hills shredder, ray hare, and with "pop shoot pop" he's got all his bases covered. melodic electric guitar interludes share space with dark synth & vocal weirdness. electronics hum and spurt out dust and debris like a midnight meditation. there's even early library sound vibes and bizarro radio colalge creeping into the mix hare has an impressive ability to cloak himself in whatever shroud he spitting out and drop entirely convincing escapades. it's absolutely bonkers.

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jefferson pitcher has quietly been plying his trade as he's moved from the US to canada and back again (covering both coasts and everywhere in between). "hirondelles" is a series of guitar explorations, both acoustic and electric, focusing on the idea of minimalism. pitcher uses an effective combination of abstract melodicism and simple repetition to gently drag the listener into the aural landscapes of his ideas. somehow you find yourself lost within its walls, in a lonely and contemplative place.

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solo recordings that bleed melodic cosmic dust. serious times.

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it's time for portugal to stand up and be recognized. "singe qui voit, singe qui fait" is the second offering from the enigmatic j. francisco after a tape on cubic pyramid. "singe" picks up where that one left off and pushes off into another realm leaving a spacewake in her dust. this is the kind of drug you get hooked on at first bite, but it's the deeper experiences on repeated outings that really get you in deep.

revolving chord progression and repetitive sound waves pound themselves into the air. brass-infused flourishes and synthetic loops drip into parts unknown. it always give me this random feeling of being totally blitzed in some smoke-filled downtown jazz joint circa 1974. don't ask, just go with it. heavy blasts are in store if you can pull yourself off the floor for the flip. early moments of chaos dissolve into blissful loops and jangles before devolving into something far more calm & collected in the manner of processed field recordings of birds. it's quite the strong statement from an artist just finding her way.

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following up their killer lp on immune, the chicago-based duo of steven hess and michael vallera offer up another 40 minutes of expansive, haunting drones and skeletal blues. subterranean tones sacrifice themselves into mounds of barely-there rhythms before hess takes over those duties with aplomb. combined with vallera's angular guitar work, there's a feeling of wandering through empty city streets on "II (6PM)" while "III (NATURAL)" is as dense and sprawling as a black hole. cleared sounds like chicago. what stands out most with cleared is the subtlety with which these two operate. this is long-form experimentalism at its best.

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travis bird and evan lindorff-ellery caught my attention straight away on their first trio of releases on the label they run together, notice recordings. "fictive agriculture" finds them spewing new organic sonar trails through hazy concrete forests. this is music that requires repeated listens to fully digest all the layers. things start off minimal and almost-melodic before bursting into a blown-out, churning mess. things go back & forth, covered in tape hiss and full of tonal warmth. it's like unsuspectingly tuning into lost radio transmissions from the past half-century, sending out maydays from a distant planet.

the flipside opens things up a bit with some harmonic sand castles from the start. eventually the tide rolls in and smashes the whole thing into bits, but the cleansing is all well and good because bleak, dissonant electronic triumph emerges from the ashes. it coalesces into a feedback labyrinth, unsafe for those with delicate ears.

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library sound explorations with minimal interference

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the boggling continues fresh out of the bowels of the san francisco space program. "banjo signal generator as advertised" keeps the psychedelic synth scrapes brewing and brewing until everyone is buried underneath his electronic portal clouds. inside this howling vortex of bubbling electronics come unexpected shifts of composed guitar melodies that fade away as quickly as they arrived. in its wake, the synth waves dial it in and intensify until petering out into a sample of your favorite piano spooks of all time.

but as i've come to expect, headboggle shows up for a live rendition next making me jones heavy to see this spectacle in person. minimalist electronic sculptures battle it out with the crowd's voices, the latter adding an unexpected bonus to the proceedings. it's some haunted spliff. headboggle never sounds like anything but headboggle and ends up stuck in your skull for days on end. you just have to keep going back to it, trying to figure out what the hell happened while you were out.

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AC brings his bag of toys back to oklahoma, but this time goes back in time and pulls out a total war bomb from the archives. heavy electronics and thick, bleeding walls of synth skronk are just what you need after a long weekend of drinking with the fam. it feels like there's some serious guitar riffing trying to find its way out of this electronic hell, but half the time there's no fucking telling what's going on here. it's everything all at once. coltrane goes to eleven. i don't even know. sax blasts come in from the deep, sourcing new megacreatures that don't just want your blood, they want your fucken soul.

rusted factories breaking down never sounded so damn good. hell, if this isn't cathartic, i don't know what is.

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finally done, this little split guy has been on the books for a while. EAGLE ALTAR offers up a thanksgeever slice of synthed out space. barely methodic, crawling along linear lines we search for hooks in the frozen undergrowth. hypnotic on some level, but always a good time.

bugskull gives us three dishes from the "communication" sessions that had to be cut from the final album to fit it on vinyl. more glowing electronic reverie that fades into the background, turning it into pure, psyched-up magic. good times again.

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dan dlugosielski's body morph project has been scorching ear drums all over the world for the past few years. fuzzed-out and stretched-to-oblivion electronics spit their way into a black cauldron. scuzz reeds scatter like buckshot, painting everything in town a solid shade of red. in the static, beats emerge to plug the holes where water is pouring in. i dunno if this is a nightmare or a wet dream or what, but i can tell you it sounds oh so fucking good. screamers for the masses.

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sam gas can is one to leave you wondering endlessly and wandering aimlessly. it all starts with a low-key dance party for your favorite haunted asylum. manic voices and near-tribal beats plummet like a meteor through the clouds. you walk into this mental ward with no fucken clue how you got there. luckily there's clarity on the horizon in the form of uber-melodic synth passages that will guide you like a drunken sailor back to the shore. the morning brings pump organ catharsis that's bathed in warm white light. hypnotic vocals fill the air while the melodies grind along underneath. it's blindingly emotive - you can't help but be drawn in by the familiar comforts of each note that gently takes you home. beautiful stuff from one of the most underappreciated artists in massachussetts.

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solo effort of alice dourlen for gnarled guitar and voice. ugly, pretty.

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christopher riggs is 1/2 of the soulcrushing duo, trauma (w/ graveyards' ben hall), but has been cranking out mounds of cryptic debris in his own right for years. "live in michigan" documents one of his rare live performances, recorded in december of 2008. riggs turns his guitar into a sonic chainsaw, dismembering strings and notes with the precision of a blind surgeon. this is not a safe environment and soon you'll feel your bones cracking under the pressure. good stuff.

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alms is the solo project of nathan young (ajilvsga, indian weapons). static synthetic drones, zone out galore.

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