FOR ARBORS / FOR SATELLITES

Cabinet of Natural Curiosities in the Hartford Examiner

2011-11-08T20:14:00.000-08:00

Success! The roads are finally clear and tree-free in our part of New England. For those of you residing in other parts of the country (or other parts of the world,) the northeastern states suffered an unusually strong blizzard over Halloween weekend, leaving many without power for a week or more.

After eight days of reading by candlelight, what a relief to return to the digital world and find this wonderful article and in-depth interview with Cabinet of Natural Curiosities in the Hartford Examiner. The Examiner's Vincent Bator talks with Cabinet's Jasmine Dreame Wagner about her newest album, "Blue Highways," the travels and inspiration behind her earlier records, "Searchlight Needles" and "Vineland," and her thoughts on home recording and the "lo-fi" aesthetic.

Cabinet of Natural Curiosities will be performing at Church of Boston on Saturday, November 19th as part of "Two Nights of Mayhem," an event curated by excellent small press Black Ocean and Walter Sickert Presents. You can RSVP to the Facebook event over here. See you there!

Shenandoah Davis, Prairie Empire, Skye Carrasco, Ami Saraiya, Lysbeth Guillorn, Cabinet of Natural Curiosities & MORE

2011-10-09T19:52:00.000-07:00

Hello folks, two great shows coming up this week in New Haven, CT and Brooklyn, NY.

Monday, October 10th

Shenandoah Davis
Cabinet of Natural Curiosities
Prairie Empire
Lys Guillorn
@ Neverending Books
810 State Street
New Haven, CT
7 PM / All-ages

Friday, October 14th

Skye Carrasco
Cabinet of Natural Curiosities
Ami Saraiya
CLYDE
@ Sycamore Brooklyn
1118 Cortelyou Road
Brooklyn, NY 11218
8:30 PM / 21+

See you there, follow us here:

For Arbors / For Satellites on Facebook

Cabinet of Natural Curiosities "Blue Highways" Summer Tour 2011

2011-07-13T15:26:00.000-07:00

Hello friends! Cabinet of Natural Curiosities will be touring the United States to celebrate the release of "Blue Highways," a new full-length record that has been a long time in the making. The record was recorded by Jasmine Dreame Wagner and Alex Reed Wilson on their Tascam cassette tape machines, mastered to vinyl by Roger Seibel at SAE Mastering, and hand-printed and letterpressed at Stumptown Printers in Portland, OR.

This record and its sleeve aren't just containers for music. Each piece has been handcrafted and assembled like a quilt. "Blue Highways" is a product of people and their hands, down to the smallest detail. We are even reluctant to release it digitally. The cover looks like a relic from a lost era and the LP sounds like a music box found in a dusty attic in the 1940s: dark, warm, and haunted.

This June, July, and August, Cabinet will be sharing shows with friends from near and far, including mini-tours with the great World History, Whitman, Fort King, Blaka Watra, Edwin R. Perry, and Reed Wilson & His Tree of Smoke.

There are still dates being booked, if you see a date marked TBA with a question mark and you might be able to help out, please be in touch!

+++CABINET OF NATURAL CURIOSITIES SUMMER TOUR 2011+++

5/28 @ ArtSpace Hartford, Hartford, CT (NLUV.org Presents Hammered & Nailed)

6/3 @ The Wassaic Project / The Lantern Inn, Wassaic, NY (w/ Kath Bloom, This Frontier Needs Heroes)

6/9 @ The Mothership, 302B Main St., Stroudsburg, PA

6/10 @ VOMA (Venue of Merging Arts), Johnstown, PA

6/11 @ Bela Dubby, Cleveland, OH (w/ Ted Flynn, Blaka Watra)

6/12 @ Rachael's Cafe, Bloomington, IN (w/ Brian Johnson & The Acquitted)

6/13 @ The Red Herring, Urbana, IL (W/ Morgan Orion, Petunias)

6/14 @ 403 Linden Street, Normal, IL (w/ Teaadora, Mark & Mary)

6/15 @ Mars Cafe, Des Moines, IA (w/ Wolfgang)

6/16 @ PS Collective, Omaha, NE (w/ Family Picnic, Mint Wad Wally)

6/17 @ Cultiva, Lincoln, NE (w/ Less Talk More Polka)

6/18 @ Dragon Eye Studios, Spearfish, SD (w/ Wax Banana)

6/20 @ Baby Bar, Spokane, WA

6/21 @ Beaterville Cafe / Service Bay Bar, Portland, OR (w/ Reed Wilson & His Tree of Smoke)

6/22 @ Northern, Olympia, WA (w/ Derek M. Johnson, Hair & Space Museum, Thee Source ov Fawnation)

6/23 @ The Ridge, Bellingham, WA (w/ Memes, SCUMEATING)

6/24 @ South Whidbey Commons, Whidbey Island, WA (w/ World History, Memory Boys w/ Eli Moore)

6/25 @ The Business, Anacortes, WA (w/ World History)

6/26 @ Funny Button, Seattle, WA (w/ World History, Jordan O'Jordan, iji)

6/27 @ Cabin Tavern, Bellingham, WA (w/ World History, Sarah Goodin)

6/28 @ The Boiler Room, Port Townshend, WA (w/ World History)

6/29 @ Jade Lounge, Portland, OR (w/ Reed Wilson & His Tree of Smoke)

7/1 @ Alberta Street Pub, Portland, OR (w/ Joel Kraft, Reed Wilson & His Tree of Smoke, The Binary Marketing Show)

7/2 @ Space Art Collective, Vancouver, WA (w/ Sea of Oaks, Reed Wilson & His Tree of Smoke)

7/4 @ East End, Portland, OR (w/ The Blind Shake, The Binary Marketing Show)**Playing drums in SON CATS

7/6 @ Campbell Collective, Eugene, OR (w/ Real Live Tigers, New Science Projects)

7/7 @ Blondie's, Arcata, CA (w/ Creepy Marbles, Nuclear Holocaust Island)

7/8 @ Ohm Sweet Ohm, Oakland, CA (w/ Moomaw Jackson, Miwa Gemini, Davyd Nereo, Pacific Rhythm Co.)

7/13 @ Stories & Books, Los Angeles, CA (w/ Emily Lacy, Fort King, Christina Antipa)

7/14 @ Hyperion Tavern, Los Angeles, CA (w/ Fort King)

7/15 @ PB&J, Pomona, CA (w/ Whitman, Eva & The Vagabond Tales)

7/16 @ Echo Country Outpost, Los Angeles, CA (SUPERSTAR BBQ w/ Whitman, Fort King, Ruthann Friedman, Christina Antipa, Moomaw Jackson, Miwa Gemini, more)

7/20 @ Tin Can Alehouse, San Diego, CA (w/ Fort King)

7/21 @ TBA, Highland Park, CA (w/ Fort King)

7/24 @ Starry Plough, Berkeley, CA (3 PM MATINEE SHOW - w/ Fort King, Moomaw Jackson)

7/24 @ Mama Buzz, Oakland, CA (7 PM EVENING SHOW - w/ Fort King, Rachel Toups)

7/25 @ The Knockout, San Francisco, CA (w/ Fort King, Zachary Cale)

7/26 @ Cafe Mekka, Nevada City, CA (w/ Brianna Lea Pruett, Fort King)

7/27 @ The Naked Lounge, Sacramento, CA (w/ Fort King, Jessie K. Phillips of Ellie Fortune, Brianna Lea Pruett)

7/28 @ Robot Rocket Residence, Davis, CA (w/ Fort King)

7/29 @ The Mantle, Portland, OR (w/ Purrbot, Fort King)

7/30 @ The Saratoga Bar, Portland, OR (w/ Screamin' Cyn Cyn & The Pons, Creepy Marbles, Sex Hair)**Playing drums in SON CATS

7/31 @ Gallery 1412, Seattle, WA (SPECIAL PERFORMANCE - I will be performing new songs from my next album on Gallery 1412's baby grand piano, it's not everyday I have the chance to perform at such a venue on such an instrument - w/ Fort King, Blanket Truth)

8/1 @ Baby Bar, Spokane, WA (w/ Dancing for the Flesh)

8/2 @ Cactus Records, Bozeman, MT

8/3 @ Staging Grounds, Rapid City, SD

8/4 @ TBA, Colorado Springs or Denver, CO

8/5 @ Sidedoor Lounge, Omaha, NE (w/ Frozy, more)

8/6 @ The Mill, Iowa City, IA (w/ Brooks Strause, Skye Carrasco)

8/7 @ The Space, Cedar Falls, IA (w/ Brooks Strause, Skye Carrasco)

8/8 @ The Laundry Chute, Milwaukee, WI (w/ Edwin R. Perry)

8/9 @ Ball Hall, Chicago, IL (w/ Edwin R. Perry, Unicorns in the Snow)

8/10 @ Pancho's, Chicago, IL (w/ Moonrises, Blaka Watra, Ted Flynn)

8/11 @ House show in Chicago, IL (w/ Blaka Watra, Ted Flynn)

8/12 @ Bear's Place, Bloomington, IN (w/ Blaka Watra, Brian Johnson & The Acquitted, Eric Radoux, The Rutabega, Edwin R. Perry)

8/13 @ Trumbullplex, Detroit, MI (w/ Blaka Watra, Edwin R. Perry)

8/14 @ Now That's Class, Cleveland, OH (w/ Ted Flynn Trio, Blaka Watra, 9-Volt Haunted House)

8/15 @ Labyrinth Press Co., Jamestown, NY

8/16 @ The Vault, Buffalo, NY

8/17 @ The Spotty Dog, Hudson, NY (w/ Fall Harbor)

8/18 @ Elf Parlor, North Adams, MA (w/ Forever Autumn)

8/25 @ C. Ryder Cooley's XMALIA, Down Street Arts, North Adams, MA

8/26 @ Toadstool Bookshop, Peterborough, NH (w/ Fall Harbor)

8/27 @ TBA

8/28 @ TBA

Arrington de Dionyso's Malaikat dan Singa, Girls in the Boy Scouts, Night of the Rabbit, & MORE @ Charter Oak Cultural Center, 5/14

2011-05-14T13:44:00.000-07:00

TONIGHT! Saturday, May 14th!

Arrington de Dionyso's Malaikat dan Singa

Girls in the Boy Scouts

Night of the Rabbit

The New Object

Fairyland Express

@ Charter Oak Cultural Center

21 Charter Oak Avenue

Hartford, CT 06106

7:30 PM / All-ages

$6/$5 with a donation for Food Not Bombs

Come early! Stay late!

Arrington de Dionyso makes trans-utopian world music for a world that exists in fever dreams and hallucinations. Using performance and visual art, he traverses the nameless territories held between surrealist automatism, shamanic seance, and the folk imagery of rock and roll. Ecstasy vs. Madness.

De Dionyso's most recent project, Malaikat dan Singa, is a trance-punk outfit featuring bass clarinet, guitars, multiple drummers and his trademark wild vocals (multi-spectral harmonic throatsinging combined with grunts, yelps, and barks) -this time, all sung in Indonesian. Malaikat dan Singa translates as "Angels and Lions," and de Dionyso's Indonesian lyrics combine mythology and fantasy with haphazard translations of poet William Blake on the debut Malaikat album. The project, however, ultimately defies a clean translation. Malaikat dan Singa gains power by crossing boundaries -- both linguistic and psychic. On the one hand, the Indonesian language allows Dionyso to communicate on levels more deeply subliminal than those accessible in his native English. On the other, he hopes to reach his growing Indonesian audience with his eccentric brew of ecstatic lunacy and prophetic madness, clarified to perfection during his 15 year tour-of-duty with Olympia's OLD TIME RELIJUN.

ARRINGTON DE DIONYSO'S MALAIKAT DAN SINGA @ ART DAMAGE LODGE - 6.2.10.

Interview with Friedrich Kerksieck of Small Fires Press

2011-04-11T10:57:00.000-07:00

If you aren't yet familiar with poet, book artist, and printmaker Friedrich Kerksieck and his press, Small Fires Press, you will be soon. Friedrich is the creator of Matchbook, a literary journal whose poems and stories come housed in the covers of vintage matchbooks. Friedrich has also published an impressive series of chapbooks and broadsides, hand-assembling each piece in his Memphis studio. (I have a poem in Matchbook No. 3, which poet and North American Review editor Vince Gotera posted in a review of Matchbook over here. Lots of love for this bookmaker everywhere!) Here's a glimpse inside his head.

Seven Questions with Friedrich Kerksieck of Small Fires Press

JDW: Matchbook is such an incredible project -- how did you come up with the idea for a tiny, paper book full of tiny, flammable writings?

FK: I got my initial punch of inspiration from a gallery talk that Walter Hamady (of The Perishable Press Limited) gave at the University of Northern Iowa in 2003. I’d already had an interest in starting something significant, but was a young little thing back then and wasn’t too sure how to get started. I didn’t know very much about the processes Hamady used at that time, but I was enchanted. That night I made a little blank journal in a Matchbook and that quickly developed into the magazine. I’ve discovered a whole slew of books and art in Matchbooks since then, but at the time for me it was a brand new undiscovered idea and the excitement of having that really pushed me to make the magazine. I was working as an intern for the North American Review and they did a lot to get me started. They ran a call for submissions free of charge and one of the designers working at the magazine, Sally Kueker, did most of the work on the layout of the first volume.

JDW: I love the vintage matchbook covers. Where do you find them? (Or is that a trade secret?)

FK: The answer is not so fun or secret. If you look for them you can find them.

JDW: How did you first get into printmaking and book arts?

FK: First by drawing a lot, then by making a bunch of collages, then posters, then magazines, then books, then really involved, complicated books.

JDW: Tell me about Feelings Using Wolves, the chapbook collaboration between Emily Kendal Frey and Zachary Schomburg. How did you come up with the design for the book? The colors are so brilliant -- how did you choose them?

FK: It started with the poems as it usually does for me – I look at them both in their form and content. Then I start playing around with a page size and font that shows off the poems before working towards a book structure.

I borrowed the adhesive binding/non-adhesive cover structure from a book Terry Chouinard borrowed from another book artist I can’t remember the name of. I really love the way the elements attach the cover to the book so that it adds a pleasant heft without seeming clumsy. The initial sewing and spine lining is also the same structure for a hardcover case so it really made sense because it allowed for a greater versatility of structure with succinct steps.

The colors for most of my books get chosen as I’m printing the images. Sometimes I have a picture or another book that I’m playing off of, but getting around to the colors is usually where I have the most fun printing after many a long hour of printing black ink on white pages. I’ve always shied away from orange so I figured it would be a good place to start with this book and I choose the rest of the hues to cue in with the cover.

JDW: Do you find yourself drawn to a specific palette? Do you have a favorite typeface and why (or why not?)

FK: I’m a sucker for really bright pink/reds and metallic colors for images. For type I usually like to go the traditional route of black black black ink – my favorite ink is Senefelder's Crayon Black Litho Ink.

For typefaces I still have so much to learn and explore, but I use a lot of Eric Gill’s faces - I especially love Joanna and Perpetua. I’m also a sucker for Bernhard’s gothic faces.

JDW: If you could make a chapbook for any writer in the history of writing (yes, includes Sanskrit,) whose work would you choose to work with and why?

FK: Probably Jack Spicer. He’s one of my favorite all-time poets and it would also put me within shouting distance of Jess, one of my favorite all-time artists.

JDW: What projects does Small Fires Press have lined up for the future?

FK: I’m currently faced with the dilemma of being outside of academia – most of the books I’ve produced were all done behind the velvet ropes of my MFA at the University of Alabama. For the last couple of years I’ve been busy putting together a studio's-worth of equipment and now that I have most of what I want, I’ve been putting it to use as a freelance printer - mostly as a wedding invitation printer for the splendid Lucky Luxe.

Right now I’m putting together a chapbook that’s a collaboration about dinosaurs I wrote with BJ Love. It’s got really rad illustrations by Cherie Weaver and will show up via the Dusie Kollektiv. I’ve got an experimental book form I’m going to try out with it that I’m really excited about. After that, for Small Fires Press I’d like to continue to bust out issues of Matchbook a little less haphazardly and concentrate the near future on smaller endeavors. Short/small chapbooks, one-page books, and the like that I can spend a little less time on and afford to put lower price points on.

More information on Friedrich Kerksieck and Small Fires Press:

http://www.smallfirespress.com

Cabinet of Natural Curiosities - "St. James Infirmary"

2011-04-11T08:11:00.000-07:00

Here's a sneak peek at "St. James Infirmary" by Cabinet of Natural Curiosities, the first track on the band's upcoming LP/CD "Blue Highways." This version of the re-worked traditional was recorded by Alex and Jasmine on a Tascam 488 cassette 8-track. Alex's ebow channels the ghosts.

Jasmine Dreame Wagner: vocals, acoustic guitar, piano, toy piano.
Alex Wilson: vocals, electric guitar, drums.
Photograph by Alex Wilson.

Paleo, John Parson, Cabinet of Natural Curiosities, & Meghan Maguire Dahn @ Charter Oak Cultural Center, 4/26/11

2011-03-24T17:44:00.001-07:00

Tuesday, April 26th

Paleo
John Parson
Cabinet of Natural Curiosities
- with readings by Meghan Maguire Dahn

@ Charter Oak Cultural Center
21 Charter Oak Avenue
Hartford, CT 06106
All-ages / 8 PM / $5

$4 with a can of food for Food Not Bombs

Paleo
"David Strackany, better known as Paleo to some, is riddlesome and caught in a straight-jacket of emotions and feelings, to a point where his head and soul must feel like they are resting at tens times their capacity levels, filled with eyes, vines and stray spider legs. It's a matter of backing up against a wall that's just been covered in the stickiest adhesive known to man, and with hands straight up in the air and legs spread as if one were being arrested and padded down at gunpoint, getting stuck there, for all of the elements to just peck away at you. While Paleo is free to roam about the country - something that he does more than anyone else I know - he is trapped with himself and like the image described above, he is at the mercy of everything that gets lobbed his way, anything that falls on him from out of the sky, everything that hunts him down, anything that's hungry, anything that's lonely as well and everything sad, glad and in-between." - Daytrotter.com // On his current tour, David/Paleo will be performing with a full band, including bassist and songwriter C.J. Boyd. Not to be missed.
http://www.paleo.ws
http://www.myspace.com/paleo
http://www.daytrotter.com/dt/paleo-concert/20031195-110465.html

John Parson
John Parson mostly plays acoustic guitar and sings words that fallow a melody over it. Lately he has been rather fond of the electric guitar and a 60's- era beat machine. John has shared the stage with Heirlooms, MT Bearington, Timbre, Jonny Rodgers, Goodnight Blue Moon, You Scream I Scream, String Theorie, and touring act Denison Witmer on a stop during fall 2010. He once opened (unknowingly) for Leftover Crack, he would say that was a very fun show (no crack was involved in this fun). Production is in final stages for a full-length album, due for release on Reel Tape Records in Spring 2011.
http://www.myspace.com/johnparson
http://www.facebook.com/johnparsonmusic
http://www.johnparsonmusic.blogspot.com

Cabinet of Natural Curiosities
Cabinet of Natural Curiosities sprouted roots in the froggy ponds of New England. After roaming the alleys of Brooklyn and the mountains of Montana, songwriter Jasmine Dreame Wagner returned to her home in the woods to record chilling lo-fi lullabies and country dream songs with slide guitarist and percussionist Alex Wilson. The result is Cabinet’s forthcoming LP/CD, “Blue Highways,” recorded on their Tascam 424 4-track and Tascam 488 8-track tape machines. Over the past five years, Cabinet has released two albums and an EP and has toured widely in various incarnations, sharing stages with Magnolia Electric Company, Alela Diane, Calvin Johnson, Tiny Vipers, Dan Deacon, LAKE, Liz Durrett, and many more. // "Cabinet of Natural Curiosities is a result of the indie-music world's ongoing experiment with folk: the music is cut apart, sending its pieces back to imagined woods, shires, and netherworlds, patiently drifting back in new configurations... Cabinet leader Jasmine Dreame Wagner has a feel for her influences' primal sweetness and creepiness." -The Onion A.V. Club
http://www.cabinetofnaturalcuriosities.com
https://www.facebook.com/cabinetofnaturalcuriosities
http://www.last.fm/music/Cabinet+of+Natural+Curiosities

Meghan Maguire Dahn
Meghan Maguire Dahn writes mostly about things that can not be neatly contained: bodies that are opened up, illnesses that have indistinct edges, miniscule cells and massive forests. She published her first poem in Highlights magazine as an 8 year old. It had something to do with the mirror phase of an Arthurian night - she thinks - but she can't be sure, because no one kept a copy. Since then, she's been better at keeping file copies. In 2001, she was selected by the Beloit Poetry Journal for a special issue on poets under 25. She has since aged. She has a master's degree in literature from the University of Connecticut, where she directed the Poetic Journeys project. She is a contributing author to The Nervous Breakdown and she co-edits a journal of vintage and contemporary pulp. She is in the process of revising her first poetry manuscript on the hysteria patients of Paris's Salpêtrière hospital. When she's not writing, she works at Real Art Ways as Development Manager.
http://peculiarsusceptibility.blogspot.com

RSVP on the Facebook event page over here:

https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=209280942418263

Drupe Fruits #2 & Matchbook #3

2011-03-21T21:05:00.000-07:00

I've got a couple new poems in Drupe Fruits #2 and Matchbook #3, two fine, handmade literary magazines out of Michigan and Kentucky, respectively. I am boundlessly impressed with the creativity and craftiness of Edwin R. Perry of Plumberries Press and Friedrich Kerksieck of Small Fires Press who curated each edition's content and assembled the books by hand. Also, the colorful covers, letterpressed and vintage, make the neverending gray sky a bit more bearable as we edge into spring here in New England.

Drupe Fruits #2 features poems by Harold Abramowitz, Jeremy Behreandt, Erin M. Bertram, Stacy Blint, Jamison Crabtree, Kevin Dunham, Amira Hanafi, M.C. Hyland, Jennifer Karmin, Susan Kirby-Smith, Dolly Lemke, Jonathan Lohr, J.S. Makkos, Jenn Marie Nunes, Daniela Olszewska, Edwin R. Perry, Meg Prichard, Jasmine Dreame Wagner, and Joseph Young.

Matchbook #3 features poems by Anna Moschovakis, Jen Hofer, Tony Mancus, MC Hyland, Kate Lebo, Vince Gotera, Daniela Olszewska, Sophie Klahr, Brooklyn Copeland, Anne Marie Rooney, Ben Pelham, Trey Moody, Justin Runge, Marshall Walker Lee, Lisa Ciccarello, W. Vandoren Wheeler, Greg Weiss, Jasmine Dreame Wagner, Chris Hosea, Fred Schmalz, and Stacy Blint, and letterpressed illustrations by Cherie Weaver.

It feels good to hold these books in my hands.

Sunspots, Ports of Spain & Cabinet of Natural Curiosities Form a Syzygy @ Stella Blues in New Haven, CT, on 3/20/11

2011-03-19T09:40:00.000-07:00

Sunday, March 20th

Sunspots
Ports of Spain
Cabinet of Natural Curiosities

@ Stella Blues
204 Crown Street
New Haven, CT
8 PM / 21+

For one night only, Cabinet of Natural Curiosities will be performing as "SUPERMOON" in honor of the wickedly close perigee going down this weekend: the closest full moon we've experienced since 1992. Come celebrate the celestial intensity.

Countdown to awesome...

2011-03-17T16:28:00.000-07:00

Four videos I'm really into right now:

4. April March - "Mingnonette"

I saw April March play at Tonic back in the late 1990's and she was unforgettable.

3. Agent Ribbons - "Grey Gardens / I'm Alright / Don't Touch Me"

These ladies are so awesome live. And the songwriting! I can't wait for them to get huge.

2. Mark Gutterman - "Feel Free"

"No one skates like Mark. We all wish we could." -Alex Wilson, who should know,

because he lives and shares a frying pan with the dude.

1. "How To Be Alone"

A short film & poem by Andrea Dorfman and Tanya Davis, two beautiful Canadians

with a beautiful message. This video makes me feel warm inside.

Son Cats @ 5 Star Bar, Los Angeles, 1/15/11

2011-03-15T13:36:00.000-07:00

SON CATS @ 5 STAR BAR from deebs on Vimeo.

Video by Danny Bobbe of LA Font. Weedshirt 2'45". Check it.

Cabinet of Natural Curiosities - "Glass Bottom Boat"

2011-03-11T17:54:00.000-08:00

Cabinet of Natural Curiosities has a brand-new, unreleased track entitled "Glass Bottom Boat" available on the new edition of Like Badgers and Birds, a compilation to benefit Wikileaks, curated by bassist, performer, and composer C.J. Boyd.

According to Jasmine: "'Glass Bottom Boat' is a song about staying hopeful when the bottom feels like it's falling out. It's doomier than other songs I've worked on before, and marks a new direction in the album I've been working on this winter. More drums!"

Do check it out. And spend some time with the other tracks as well, excellent songs by Ghost to Falco, The Binary Marketing Show, The Impossible Shapes, Bonfire Madigan, Hellcake, David Rovics (who Jasmine once saw perform in a snowstorm in Halifax, Nova Scotia) and many others.

The Son Cats track is still available in the alumni archive.

Much thanks to C.J. for putting this together. We'll be seeing some of him in Oregon this weekend and in New England this May.

Peace.

The Mountain Movers, The Loom, The Wailing Wall, The Postmodern Panic @ Charter Oak Cultural Center, 2/18/11

2011-02-25T16:27:00.000-08:00

The Mountain Movers

The Loom

The Wailing Wall

The Postmodern Panic

The Mountain Movers, The Loom, The Wailing Wall, The Postmodern Panic @ Charter Oak Cultural Center, 2/18/2011

2011-02-15T15:00:00.000-08:00

Friday, February 18th

The Mountain Movers (New Haven)

The Loom (NYC)

The Wailing Wall (NYC)

The Postmodern Panic (Hartford/New Britain)

@ Charter Oak Cultural Center

21 Charter Oak Avenue, Hartford, CT

7:30 sharp / all-ages / $5 door

$4 w/ a canned good for Food Not Bombs

Please join us for an intimate evening of folk music at the Charter Oak Cultural Center in downtown Hartford on Friday, February 18th.

New Haven's Mountain Movers have just followed up the release of their LP, Apple Mountain, with a brand-new cassette on their label, Car Crash Avoiders, and I am very excited for them to share their music us.

The Loom are a 6-piece chamber-folk group from Brooklyn who are touring on a haunting new EP with their good friends The Wailing Wall, an indie folk duo from Brooklyn that will add a good dose of electronics to their acoustic guitars. Both are not to be missed.

Starting off the evening will be Rachel Adele Cabaniol and Karl Messerschmidt of String Theorie/Hot Pocket Mafia, performing in their new project The Postmodern Panic. It's Rachel and Karl's first acoustic show for this project, so let's say we're witnessing history here.

With luck, Hartford's 6 1/2 feet of snow will melt away under the warmth of this show.

More info:

The Mountain Movers (New Haven, CT)

http://themountainmovers.tumblr.com

http://www.safetymeeting.net/one/mountainmovers.php

http://www.ctindie.com/2009/10/car-crash-avoiders-label.html

The Loom (NYC)

http://www.myspace.com/theloommusic

http://www.thestureidexperiment.com/2010/02/tsre-wonders-exclusive-interview-with.html

The Wailing Wall (NYC)

http://ampeatermusic.com/aem012

http://jdubrecords.org/artists.php?id=31

The Postmodern Panic (Hartford/New Britain, CT)

(Rachel Cabaniol & Karl Messerschmidt of String Theorie)

http://www.hardwarecityarts.com

See you there!

Yours,

Jasmine D. Wagner, esq.

An Evening of Folk & Classical Love Songs at La Paloma Sabanera

2011-02-08T10:37:00.000-08:00

Warm up for Valentine's Day with an evening of love songs, traditional and non-traditional, in honor of Saint Valentine and the snowy shivers of February. Music & warmth brought to you by five of Hartford's biggest heartbreakers/menders.

Jesse Stanford of Heirlooms
Crystal Pascucci of The Sophisticates
Jasmine Dreame Wagner of Cabinet of Natural Curiosities
Tyler Bussey of Old Hannah
Mia Zucker of Petite Mal

Saturday, February 12th
@ La Paloma Sabanera
405 Capitol Avenue
Hartford, CT
7 PM cocoa / 7:30 music

Jesse Stanford
http://www.heirloomsmusic.com

Crystal Pascucci
http://www.quartettovivo.com

Jasmine Dreame Wagner
http://www.cabinetofnaturalcuriosities.com

Tyler Bussey
http://www.myspace.com/godownoldhannah

Mia Zucker
http://www.myspace.com/petitemal

The venue:

La Paloma
http://www.lapalomacoffeehouse.com

Son Cats thank you! +photos

2011-01-28T19:12:00.000-08:00

Son Cats tour was off the hook amazing!

Many thanks to everyone who made music with us, shared food and good times with us, who helped us on our way and gave us warm welcomes and places to sleep, including (but not limited to) Romy Mimi Ilano, Pat & the Little Red Lion, Quade & Schmieshmar Aggdornaut, Backwoods Baglady & Dreamgoatz, Zach Ledbetter & Sea of Horses, Miguel, Boufa Mike & everyone at The Lodge, Josh Redman & everyone at Biko Garage, Coastlines, Jason Lougow, Ramona Cordova, Danny Bobbe & Greg Katz & the LA Font crew, Bob Klonarides, Mitchell Sheldon & Backseat Bingo, Ramon & King Cat, The Gardeners, everyone at 5 Stars Bar, and FERNANDO! of course, Sean & Kyle Mabson & everyone at Pehrspace, Matt Gray & BYODeath, Shane O'Neill, Bene Tleilax, Melted Cassettes, Ryan Fuller of Fort King & Julian at The Standard Hotel, Skip Allums & The Shants, Cave Country, everyone at The Hemlock, Chris Stroffolino, Cenotaph, everyone at Copland, Andy Fix & The Hh, Northeast Northwest, Marmints, and our friends who carried us home.

Here's two pics that just came our way -- more, many more, to come:

Son Cats @ Pehrspace, Los Angeles, CA 1/17/2011

Photo by Sean Carnage

Son Cats @ Copland, Oakland, CA 1/19/2011

Photo by Jesyka Washburn

LVOESONNCATTS

Son Cats - "O'Dell" Video

2011-01-04T22:17:00.000-08:00

Animation by Alex R. Wilson. Starring Alex R. Wilson, Jasmine D. Wagner, a lobster, a Ninja Turtle, an evil flower, bags of money, Clint Eastwood, Dock Ellis, and a baseball. Schazam!

Like Badgers and Birds: A Compilation to Support Wikileaks

2010-12-21T22:29:00.000-08:00

CJ Boyd curated a compilation to raise funds for Wikileaks. Son Cats have a track on it, along with tracks from Lost Trail, Casey Chisolm, Br'er, Mahjongg, Hellcake, and CJ Boyd himself (among many others.)

The compilation will change and grow every week or so. The next edition has Lazarus, Madigan Shive, Norman Oak, and Mikael Lind on deck.

Check it out and donate if you like what you hear: Like Badgers and Birds: A Compilation to Support Wikileaks
http://obsoletemediaobjects.bandcamp.com/album/like-badgers-and-birds-a-compilation-to-support-wikileaks

SON CATS WINTER TOUR 2011

2010-12-19T20:30:00.001-08:00

Friends, lovers, and friends' lovers! Join us for 2 solid weeks of rock and roll as Son Cats take over the California coast and the foggy forests & alleyways of Oregon.

This tour celebrates the upcoming release of the Cats' debut 7" on For Arbors / For Satellites. This sweet piece of vinyl was recorded by Alex Wilson and mixed by the band using Wilson's Tascam 488 8-track machine.

"O'Dell/1971" was mastered straight to vinyl by Roger Seibel at SAE Mastering. The digital download (which is available on the Son Cats bandcamp page) was mastered by Carl Saff at Saff Mastering. The cover, designed by Jasmine Dreame Wagner, was printed at Pinball Publishing in Portland, OR.

You'll be able to get your paws on it soon!

+++

SON CATS WEST COAST TOUR 2011

1/11 - Little Red Lion - Eureka, CA (w/ Schmieshmar Aggdornaut)
1/12 - Revolution Cafe - Oakland, CA
1/13 - The Lodge - San Luis Obispo, CA (w/ Sea of Horses, Judd Kaufman)
1/14 - Biko Garage - Santa Barbara, CA (w/ Coastlines, Ramona Cordova, Lougow)
1/15 - 5 Stars Bar - Los Angeles, CA (w/ Backseat Bingo, Gardeners, King Cat)
1/16 - House Show (mssge for addy) - Las Vegas, NV (w/ Dreaming of Lions)
1/17 - Pehrspace - Los Angeles, CA (w/ BYODeath, Shane Shane, Melted Cassettes, Bene Tleilax)
1/18 - Hemlock Tavern - San Francisco, CA (w/ The Shants, Cave Country)
1/19 - Copland - Oakland, CA (w/ Cenotaph, Mortar & Pestle)
1/20 - Cafe Flo - Chico, CA
1/21 - The Hh - Portland, OR (w/ Marmints, Northeast Northwest)
1/22 - House Show TBA - Portland, OR (w/ Purrbot)
1/23 - Sam Bonds Garage - Eugene, OR

+++

More information:

http://soncats.bandcamp.com
http://www.last.fm/music/Son+Cats
http://www.forarborsforsatellites.com
http://www.mmmmrecords.com

Venue addresses and more info after the break:

Tuesday, January 11th
Little Red Lion
1506 5th Street
Eureka, CA 95501

Wednesday, January 12th
Revolution Cafe
1612 7th Street
West Oakland, CA 94110

Thursday, January 13th
The Lodge
3069 Broad Street
San Luis Obispo, CA 93401

Friday, January 14th
Biko Garage
6612 Sueno Road
Isla Vista, CA 93117

Saturday, January 15th
5 Stars Bar
267 S. Main Street
Los Angeles, CA

Sunday, January 16th
House Show - Vegas
Message for Address
Las Vegas, NV

Monday, January 17th
Pehrspace
325 Glendale Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90026

Tuesday, January 18th
The Hemlock Tavern
1131 Polk Street
San Francisco, CA 94109

Wednesday, January 19th
Copland
2313 San Pablo
Oakland, CA

Thursday, January 20th
Cafe Flo
365 East 6th Street
Chico, CA 95928-5630

Friday, January 21st
The Harney House (HH)
8450 SE Harney
Portland, OR

Sunday, January 23rd
Sam Bonds Garage
407 Blair Boulevard
Eugene, OR 97402-4510

Poems, People, Places

2010-12-11T09:44:00.000-08:00

Tonight at Detritus in New Haven, CT, I'm going to be sharing some poems with Nancy Kuhl and Mark Horosky at a reading curated by Jason Labbe. Shaki Presents will be spinning some rare and stunning tracks on the turntables before and after the words. If not for the poems, then come for the handmade books, zines, and printed matter that Detritus collects, curates, and distributes.

I'll be bringing some copies of Humble Humdrum Cotton Frock, The Young Sun Press, and Tom Tom Magazine with me, along with a letterpressed broadside I worked on with Mindy Beloff at Studio on the Square / Intima Press and a poster from the poem series I worked on at Kultuuritehas Polymer when I was in residency in August (with grateful thanks to the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.)

I also have some new & old poems in these places. Check them out.

The Young Sun Press

Caketrain 08

Humble Humdrum Cotton Frock (Interview with Edwin R. Perry)

2010-11-21T12:30:00.000-08:00

Humble Humdrum Cotton Frock: A Twilight Teeter Into Organic Esoterics is a hand-bound, silkscreened poetry journal edited by Edwin Perry and Cat Reis of Plumberries Press. The latest issue, which came out this spring, features poems by Jake Acosta, Macallister Armstrong, Ali Boyd, Kathryn Cesarz, Nick Demske, Shannon Marie Kerrigan, Lisa Loew, J.S. Makkos, Monadnoc, Peter Murphy, Brenton Harper-Murray, Julie Strand, Carmen Tracey, the editors themselves (Edwin R. Perry & Catherine Annabella Reis,) and me and Alex, too (Jasmine Dreame Wagner and Alex R. Wilson, of Son Cats and Cabinet of Natural Curiosities.)

Edwin and Cat have been active in the midwestern DIY scene for a while now, making irreverent folk-pop, psychedelic bubblegum, and lo-fi sugar punk music (okay, I'm terrible describing music, it's why I don't write for Spin) as Perpetual Dusk at Curtsy Caverns, Plum Wife and Plum Union, as well as hosting shows at Chicago's The Radish Patch and Ball Hall. Edwin and his poems recently shared a few tour dates with World History on their way across the midwest.

Four Quick Questions With Edwin R. Perry

JDW: How did Humdrum and Plumberries press first come about?

ERP: Humdrum was a product of imitation and a wealth of raw materials. Both of which were sourced from J.S. Makkos in Cleveland who works under the guise of the Language Foundry. It was a love of process... of making stacks of things, etc., of course it spawned between both myself and Catherine Ries.

JDW: Do you think of your writing as part of your music, or do your songs & writings have separate drives and sources?

ERP: I've been doing a lot of readings lately, and have found that when the room is really poorly lit, I have to bury my face in the paper to actually read... which is no fun for anyone... I have reverted to reciting some lyrics as poems, changing the pace and so on, quite a bit of course. But in general, I tend to keep endeavors sort of separate from one another. It is generally to acknowledge whomever I work with on said project as a definitive partner. I'm really into teams... I'm hoping for a lover sometime or another to co-pilot the press... It would be nice to have a second opinion. Just saying.

JDW: What kinds of things or experiences do you hope to find in a poem?

ERP: All kinds, from confusion to unadulterated empathy... generally all back-lit by a bit of euphoria. I tend to like strange things, shorter things which are allowed to resonate.

JDW: Have you read any other great handmade books that you could recommend?

ERP: Check out Language Foundry, Flying Guillotine, Melodeon, Dancing Girl, and Interbirth.

For more information, check out the Plumberries Press website, and if you're in or near Wisconsin, Illinois, or Michigan, keep your eyes peeled for Edwin's readings and music. He tours around quite often, and isn't one to miss:

Plumberries Press

World History & Cabinet of Natural Curiosities Shows

2010-11-19T11:55:00.000-08:00

World History and Cabinet of Natural Curiosities will be playing two shows together in Connecticut this week.

Friday, November 19th
World History, Cabinet of Natural Curiosities, An Historic
@ Neverending Books
810 State Street, New Haven
Golden Microphone Music Series
7 PM / $5 / All-ages

Tuesday, November 23rd
World History, Cabinet of Natural Curiosities
@ Cafe Nine
250 State Street, New Haven
9 PM / $Free / 21+

apolf! #6

2010-10-28T13:33:00.000-07:00

Cabinet of Natural Curiosities has a song on this lo-fi comp, curated by Nathan Carter
(Portland, OR's Purrbot.) The compilation and its individual tracks are free to download
if you're looking for something autumn-y to listen to.

apolf! #6
http://cllct.com/release/apolf6

xo

Son Cats Winter Tour 2011

2010-10-19T19:50:00.000-07:00

We're going to play some shows!

(More info soon.)

Interview with Germaine Baca-Has (Arrington de Dionyso's Malaikat Dan Singa/Old Time Relijun) in Tom Tom Magazine

2010-10-15T20:44:00.000-07:00

Back in June, Son Cats played a few dates around New England. One of the most memorable nights was a show with Arrington de Dionyso's Malaikat Dan Singa at the 119 Gallery in Lowell, MA. The show was tight. Hermit Thrushes and Ladderlegs totally killed it. When Malaikat Dan Singa started playing their groovy jazz-inflected Indonesian pop, everyone in the crowd was either dancing or hypnotized. Arrington, the frontman, is an incredible performer. Between his throat-singing, microphone-manipulating, and switching between instruments, he held a completely captivated audience. It was, however, difficult for me to look away from the drummer, Germaine Baca-Has. She's amazing!

I was lucky enough to be able to interview Germaine for Tom Tom Magazine, a sweet drumming magazine out of Brooklyn that focuses on female drummers. It's almost too good to be true. Great musicians, photography, everything. If you haven't checked it out already, please do so. Issue No. 4 is where it's at.

Check it out:

http://www.tomtommag.com

xoJasmine

Caketrain No. 8

2010-10-15T20:25:00.000-07:00

Wow.

The new issue of Caketrain is now taking pre-orders for its November release. Yes, the issue is taking its own orders, it has grown a pair of hands. And has developed into such a looker! This journal is gorgeous. Look at the cover.

Not to judge the book by it, but who wouldn't want to read what's under such a beautiful cover?

Poems and Prose by:

Joseph Aguilar, Nubia Bint Aqeel, E.C. Belli, Carrie Bennett, Amaranth Borsuk, Paul Braffort, Blake Butler, Jak Cardini, William Cardini, Jon Cone, Juliet Cook, Olivia Cronk, Kelly Dulaney, Laura Eve Engel, Géraldine Georges, Kristen Gleason, Sarah Goldstein, Adriana Grant, Hillery Hugg, Gabriela Jauregui, Sean Kilpatrick, Robert Kloss, Darby Larson, Tan Lin, Matthew Mahaney, Megan Martin, Gordon Massman, David Ohle, Brian Oliu, Kim Parko, Nick Ripatrazone, Kim Roberts, M Sarki, Kathryn Scanlan, Farren Stanley, Heidi Lynn Staples, Louisa Storer, Emily Toder, Ashley Toliver, J.A. Tyler, Maren Vespia, Danielle Vogel, Jasmine Dreame Wagner, Rosmarie Waldrop, Joel Weinbrot, Jess Wigent, Corey Zeller.

5 3/8" × 8 5/16" × 276 pp.

Yes, please & thank you.

(I have two poems in this issue and am very psyched.)

Politics and the Third Dimension

2010-09-19T14:37:00.000-07:00

Just saying...

These glasses are a prototype for some 3D glasses that actually extend into the 4th dimension. In your face James Cameron.

C. Ryder Cooley & The Aesthetics of Empathic Hybridity

2010-08-03T00:10:00.000-07:00

Carolyn Ryder Cooley is an inter-disciplinary artist working in a variety of mediums, including painting & drawing, installation, video, music, and aerial performance. My first introduction to Ryder's work was her songwriting and accordion & saw-playing for Fall Harbor. I was lucky enough to find myself sharing a show with her in Troy, New York, at the 51 3rd Street ArtSpace deep in the summer of 2009. Though Fall Harbor usually performs as a duo (Ryder and Todd Chandler, video artist/filmmaker/bass player for Dark Dark Dark) Ryder was alone that evening. The lights were dim and she haunted every soul in the room with her throaty vocals and accordion, sometimes accompanied by looped samples she'd crafted of bird calls and rustles of wind through the trees.

Since then, I've had the lucky pleasure of being able to share a few more nights of music with Ryder, and the honor of visiting her studio in Hudson, New York. The room was packed tight with drawings and paintings, some finished, some in a kind of primordial-soup phase, papers shuffled about, pens and pots of paint in jumbled places that had a secret order they kept to themselves. Ryder handed me things, giving me things, cards that she'd drawn, cut, and folded by hand, prints of video stills, she kept filling my arms with beautiful works that she'd made. In this way, she's like a mother animal, nurturing, sharing, generous with her craft, her time, her music, and her listening. Which makes a lot of sense once you begin to enter the haunted dream worlds that she creates: post-apocalyptic narratives populated by hybrid animals and semi-human forms that exist in an empathic future where, in order to survive, one must take dangerous leaps of faith and nourish the animal first.

There is pain in Ryder's work, something most obvious in past performances where she and her collaborators would embed feathers in her skin to allow Ryder to become the creatures she envisions. Her aerial work is demanding and sometimes dangerous, suspending herself hundreds of feet above running water from the edge of a bridge to serenade the nesting pigeons with her accordion. Recently, she walked 20 miles from Hudson to Cairo, New York, hefting the taxidermied head of a deer, documenting and collecting the roadside dead for a group burial at the end of the map, a Faulknarian journey along the twisting roads of industrial upstate New York.

Like those roads, Ryder's work is dark and winding. Experiencing her world is like finding a message in a dark glass bottle at the far edge of the farthest tidal pool. Hidden by kelp and barnacles, snug between broken mollusk shells, you pinch the treasure from where it's been lodged for a hundred years. Whoever lobbed that message is long gone, you couldn't even be a figment of that man or woman's imagination, all the wires and asphalt buzzing behind you, behind the parking lot at the seashore. You pull out the cork, press your eye against the opening to see what's inside, then slowly fish the message from the neck of the glass, unravel the paper, and begin to read...

Six Questions With C. Ryder Cooley

JDW: As a multi-media artist who has worked extensively in painting, drawing, sound, performance, and songwriting, is there any one artistic mode that you are most strongly drawn to? Is there one mode that supports the others - for example, do you begin drawing and work towards performance or songwriting as a branch sprouts from a tree? Or do you work within a spiderweb of equal but connecting strands?

CRC: My parents were English teachers and my father is a writer, so my background is language driven. Narrative is the thread that connects and collects all of my work into one vision. I used to be drawn to written words, but as I started making music, drawing and performing, these visceral forms took over, which was a relief because I think in pictures and I write phonetically. Over the years I’ve also become interested in live interactions and exchanges. In the 90’s I made a lot of zines, which were eventually performed, making way for embodied manifestos and investigations into presence/absence as experienced in fleeting time and intimate, feminine spaces. All of my work retains threads of narrative; I bring text to images and I draw on discarded book pages. It’s all a departure from the writers, thinkers, poets & hippies who I grew up around.

JDW: Your work is often concerned with environmental issues and animal themes. Why do you think images of animals in distress or in hybrid states are so emotionally compelling to the contemporary human viewer?

CRC: This is a question I ask myself all the time!

What is it about animals and hybridity? They are everywhere, in the mainstream and the margins. Is it a response to genetic modifications, cloning and animation/technology? Perhaps it is a form of post-essentialism. We’re finally in the age of Frankenstein, Mary Shelly was way ahead of her time, science fiction isn’t fiction any more, we’re in the future. Have you ever read Shelly’s other other novel, The Last Man? It relates to topics of Extinction.

Ultimately I think that we ourselves are distressed, hybridized cyborg-ish mutants. Many people share a longing to escape humanity and to project themselves into other bodies, places, genders and identities. Humanity seems to be devolving. We’ve reached a saturation point and now we’re wallowing in the residue of pollutions and diseases. It’s our reckoning time. The United States is a first world distopia. Now we are facing the repercussions of our parasitical lifestyles. There’s a need for new utopian visions. Artists and activists are envisioning new lifestyles. These blueprints may not be entirely applicable, but it’s a spark in the right direction.

JDW: What role do you think animals play in our contemporary, post-industrial, global narrative? How do these roles (or these ideas) surface in your aerial choreography?

CRC: Animals are a connection/reference point for us. They remind us that there is life beyond our media-driven, manipulated experience. Animals need environments to live in, they need trees for nesting and plants and other creatures for food. They don’t have a shopping mall to go to for groceries, or air conditioners, and they can’t drive cars. We observe animals, we use and abuse them in laboratories. Animals exhibit evidence of the effects of industry and pollution. I don’t have any pets myself, but I take care of a lot of pets. Caring for a dog in NYC is a big reminder of how important it is to go outside, to run and play. If the dog doesn’t go to the park, she is instantly depressed. The dog doesn’t have virtual reality to escape to, she can’t distract herself with travel plans, there’s no doggie gym or yoga, and if she runs into the street, she gets hit by a car, a reminder of how dangerous our streets are! When a dog eats garbage on the sidewalk, we’re reminded of how much trash we generate and how dirty our fabricated landscapes have become. Animals are a great reality check.

Animals hold a space of innocence. I’m drawn to the innocent, my work is very sincere.

During outdoor performances I enjoy interacting with animals, and when there is an aerial element, I feel like I’m joining the creatures of sky, bridge and tree. Spiders, squirrels, bats, birds, insects, fish… they make great audiences and collaborators and they are amazing performers. The animals are my muses, as they have been for so many people through the ages. Animals have inspired us for centuries.

Death plays a big role in all of my work. Right now I’m working on a series of drawings, performances and songs focused on extinction. There seems to be a growing concern about human-caused extinction. Stay tuned for ANIMALIA 2, featuring extinct animals such as the Dodo, the Passenger Pigeon and the Pyranean Ibex! This music and aerial-driven show is scheduled to debut in the spring of 2011.

JDW: The aerial performance component of your installations is physically challenging. How do you prepare for this kind of performance? Do you believe that art should challenge the human body as well as the mind?

CRC: As I mentioned earlier, my background is narrative-driven. It’s certainly been a challenge to learn how to work with my body. I’m shy and I can be quite the masochist, but you can’t trash your body and do aerials, at least not at my age. I’m an introverted performer. Sometimes the shyness gives me an edge, and other times it backfires. I never know if I’m going to pull the performance off or not. This keeps everything very real, very honest. In this age of high production/fabrication, I like to push the precarious elements, the vulnerability and emotion. My work is old fashioned, everything is handmade.

I tend to reject things that come naturally and embrace difficult things, like trapeze. It was hard learning to go upside down and hold my body weight from a bar. I haven’t studied aerials (too expensive!). Most of what I know I’ve figured out on my own or through friends and collaborations. The aerial work is about flight, pushing through limitations and defying gravity. This work is often site-specific. It began with a 6 hour installation-performance in a chair that was suspended over a stairwell. This evolved into explorations in trapeze, harness and rope work. I like to interact with architecture, environment and vertical spaces. I have an obsession with bridges, and I love vaulted ceilings, beams, corners, stairwells and passageways. I love looking up. I work with circus metaphors as a way of seducing and confusing viewers, not quite giving them what they expect. Body and mind are symbiotic to me. If you tap into one you’re inevitably touching on the other. I’ve been drawn to working with bodies in response to my fairly disembodied youth. Ultimately I think that it all about energy, will and desire.

JDW: What, in your day to day life, grounds you as a person and as an artist? Where do you consider yourself truly at home or at rest?

CRC: I’m at home when I have a good studio to work in, a place to hang my trapeze and to draw/paint/write songs. It needs to be a place to collaborate, make noise and create. I recently moved out of an incredible studio at Contemporary Artist Center in Troy, NY and now my only work space is the stuffy attic in my small apartment, so I’m feeling a bit ungrounded. If anyone knows of an affordable/work-trade studio in the NY Hudson Valley let me know! I’m lucky to have a living space right now. I’ve been working with a non-profit called Time and Space ltd. in exchange for housing. I prefer the barter system. Before this I was traveling from place to place, making art and music but unable to pay rent. I went to a lot of artist residencies!

JDW: As a viewer steps away from your aerial performance or multimedia installation (or both) for the first time, what do you hope he or she has gained?

CRC: My work is cinematic, and sometimes haunting. I like to inspire people to use their imaginations. If viewers step away feeling transported, as though they’ve been on a journey, then the work is successful. Sometimes there is a political message in my work (ecological, anti-war, gender-queer). I never intend to beat viewers over the head. These messages are more poetic and speak to the subconscious. Sometimes I perform with taxidermy deer. Deer are apparently considered pests to homeowners and car drivers because they graze in the garden and run across the road at dusk. After shows people have told me that the deer performance made them see deer in a new light, which makes me very happy. Anything people can take away, even if it’s unconscious, is great. Ultimately I hope everyone can have their own unique experience that they will remember.

Photo Credits:
1. The Journal of Mythic Arts (The Riverbird Serenade)
2. Anno Domini Gallery (Installation View)
3. Ryder's website (Feather Infirmary)
4. David Lee (20 Miles)

More Information:
C. Ryder Cooley's website
Fall Harbor's website
Vermont Studio Center Interview with Ryder
Video of Ryder performing on Governor's Island
Video of Ryder performing at The Watermill Center

Petition to Allow Musicians to Carry Instruments on Airplanes

2010-08-02T19:04:00.000-07:00

Please sign this petition to help ensure that traveling, working musicians gain the legal right to carry their instruments with them on airplanes. Right now, there is no federally mandated regulation, and often, musicians are forced to stow their expensive, fragile, often handcrafted, pieces of art (and sources of their livelihood) in unstable storage areas.

From the American Federation of Musicians website:

Musicians constantly face difficulty traveling with their instrument. Although AFM won a commitment from the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to allow instruments through security checkpoints, policies for carrying instruments on to airplanes still vary wildly from airline to airline.

The inconsistencies in airline policies make it extremely difficult for musicians to plan their travel and earn a living. Thus AFM fought for language to be included in the Senate version of the FAA Reauthorization Bill (S.1451) that will streamline the airlines’ carry-on policies regarding musical instruments. If this bill passes musicians will be able to carry most musical instruments on board and place them in the overhead compartment or in a seat (if a ticket is purchased).

This bill is currently being debated in Congress and it is critical that all musicians weigh-in to demand that the Senate version (S.1451) of this language be included in the final bill. Please sign our petition below to support streamlining airline carry-on policies, so that travelling with an instrument is safer and more reliable.

Please sign this petition to demand that the language included in S.1451 is included in the final version of the FAA Reauthorization Bill.

Petition to Allow Musicians to Carry Instruments on Airplanes
http://www.afm.org/departments/legislative-office/carrying-instruments-on-airplanes

Please read and sign when you have a moment.

-X

Shows & Color

2010-07-20T09:52:00.000-07:00

Cabinet of Natural Curiosities is playing a few shows over the next few days!

Tuesday, July 20th @ 119 Gallery, Lowell, MA, w/ Summer Blondes, The Sinbusters
Thursday, July 22nd @ Roots & Tendrils, Belfast, ME, w/ Gem Club, Manners
Friday, July 23rd @ Mayo Street Arts Center, Portland, ME, w/ Arborea, Kelly Nesbitt
Saturday, July 24th @ 119 Gallery, Lowell, MA, for the LOWELL FOLK FESTIVAL!

Carl Saff is mastering some songs for us! Very exciting.

And that's a picture I made.

More soon,
xoJasmine

Cabinet of Natural Curiosities @ Folklore Festival, 119 Gallery, Lowell, MA, 6/18/2010 -- Photos!

2010-06-26T10:58:00.000-07:00

Thanks much to the folks at 119 Gallery for the excellent night of food and music! (And these photos.) Driving up to Lowell was awesome as usual, great bands, and a huge table of vegan dinner made by chefs Stephanie and Olivia. Above and beyond great.

For more pics, visit our flickr page:
For Arbors / For Satellites on Flickr

xo

New SON CATS Song!

2010-06-20T20:42:00.000-07:00

Here it is! Check it.

Son Cats - 1971 (mp3)

Heavy neon. More coming soon.

- Cats

FOLKLORE FEST @ 119 GALLERY, Lowell, MA! June 18th/19th

2010-06-14T14:20:00.000-07:00

FOLKLORE FEST is a two day music, craft, art and food festival
held June 18th and 19th at 119 GALLERY in Lowell, Massachusetts.

Each show will be sliding scale $3-$5.
The 119Gallery is a non-profit, all volunteer-run space.
All money goes to the Gallery for rent for the two days.
The rest of the money will go to the touring bands to cover travel expenses.
119 GALLERY is @ 119 Chelmsford St., Lowell, MA.
BYOB if you are 21+

Also we will have tables for merch, art, crafts, zines and any other things
you may want to sell or give out. Contact Stephanie about setting up a table
for zine / art / craft items etc: stephanielak(at)gmail.com

FOLKLORE FEST on Facebook!

************************************************************
If anyone wants to bring food and make it a vegan potluck-
style thing that would be great, anything helps!
************************************************************

FRIDAY JUNE 18th
6:30pm Busy Arms (MA) http://myspace.com/busyarms
7:15pm Jessie Williams and the Boozehounds (CA) http://www.myspace.com/thesuburbanrevolt
8:00pm St. Claire (MA) http://www.myspace.com/stclaireboston
8:45pm Cabinet of Natural Curiosities (NY, NE) http://www.myspace.com/jasminedreamewagner
9:30 The Bill Murray Experience (NY) http://www.myspace.com/billmurrayexperience
10:15pm Brown Bird (RI) http://www.myspace.com/brownbird
11:00 The Crop Circles (CA) http://www.myspace.com/cropcircles666
11:45pm Jake and the Infernal Machine http://www.myspace.com/jakeandtheinfernalmachine
*******************************************
SATURDAY JUNE 19th
GIANT KICKBALL GAME
@ The Bartlett Middle School Fields, Lowell, MA!
http://maps.google.com/ (Wannalancit St & Oliver St, Lowell, MA)
(across the Pawtucket Canal from Walker Street Kitchen)
with the bands and friends... all Welcome... food and FUN!
FREE to attend and participate!
NOON - 2pm
*******************************************
SATURDAY JUNE 19th (3pm - midnight)
Back to the 119gallery!!
4:00pm Wooden Dinosaur (VT) http://www.myspace.com/woodendinosaur
4:30pm Matt Fox (MA) http://www.myspace.com/matthewkfox
5:00pm Big Wilson River (NJ) http://www.myspace.com/bigwilsonriver
5:30pm Hello Shark (GA) http://www.myspace.com/hellosharkvermont
6:00pm The Thin Heir (MA) http://www.myspace.com/thinheir
6:30pm Boy Without God (NY) http://www.myspace.com/boywithoutgod
7:00pm Tallahassee (PA, RI, MA) http://www.myspace.com/tallahasseeband
7:30pm The Points North (MA) http://www.myspace.com/thepointsnorth
8pm - 9pm Lonesome Lake, Redwing Blackbird and Tell Stories
http://www.myspace.com/lonesomelake
http://www.myspace.com/redwingblackbirdnh
http://www.myspace.com/harper
9:00pm The Accident That Led Me To The World (MA) http://www.myspace.com/tatlmttw
9:30pm The Woodrow Wilsons (MA) http://www.myspace.com/thewoodrowwilsons
10:00pm Sway (MA) http://www.myspace.com/swaymusicforever
10:30pm Ladderlegs (MA) http://www.myspace.com/ladderleg
11:00pm Hermit Thrushes (PA) http://www.myspace.com/hermitthrushes
11:30pm The Dope Girls (CT) http://www.myspace.com/aforcetobereckonedwith
***********************

119 GALLERY
http://www.119gallery.org

THE SOCKHOP / WALKER STREET KITCHEN
http://www.myspace.com/walkerstreetkitchen

Fall Harbor, Alexander Turnquist, Cabinet of Natural Curiosities @ The Spotty Dog, Hudson, NY, 5/15/2010

2010-06-12T10:30:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

A few weeks ago, Fall Harbor, Alexander Turnquist, and Cabinet of Natural Curiosities played a show together at The Spotty Dog in Hudson, New York. Ryder brought candles for atmosphere. The show was a wonderful experience -- beautiful music, a quiet, attentive crowd, good local pizza and beer, and cool, crisp weather. I met so many new faces from around Hudson and purchased a few books from the bookshop (which actually has a great poetry selection.)

Here's some pictures:

Fall Harbor

Alexander Turnquist

If you like pictures, you should visit our Flickr page.

More soon!
xoJasmine

Cabinet of Natural Curiosities & Son Cats shows in May!

2010-05-03T15:55:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

We're playing a few great shows this month -- really, really good ones. Here's more information. I've already got my bags packed.

May 15th @ The Spotty Dog, Hudson, NY
Cabinet of Natural Curiosities
Fall Harbor
Alexander Turnquist
8 PM / $5

(Poster by C. Ryder Cooley!)

May 22nd @ Rebel Sound Records, Pittsfield, MA
8-Inch Betsy (Chicago, IL)
Spooky Qs (Lexington, KY)
The Jesse Minute (Providence, RI)
Son Cats (are awesome)
A.J. Shanti (Brooklyn, NY)
7 PM / $5

May 23rd @ 119 Gallery, Lowell, MA
Malakait Don Singa (K Recs, Olympia, WA)
Viva Viva (Boston, MA)
Hermit Thrushes (Philly, PA)
Avi Jacob (Providence, RI)
Ladderlegs (Boston, MA)
Son Cats (are awesome)
6 PM / $5

(Poster by Stephanie Lak!)

See you xo

Pictures!

2010-04-14T21:31:00.000-07:00

South China @ Old Hannah House, Willimantic, CT

Old Hannah (Tyler Bussey and friends) @ Old Hannah House, Willimantic, CT

Alex @ Flanders Nature Center, Woodbury/Middlebury, CT

Sean Hill @ Hickory Stick Bookshop, Washington Depot, CT

Yusef Koumanyaka, Sean Hill, Camille Dungy, Evie Shockley @ Poets House, New York, NY

The Sweet Divines with Billy Prince of The Precisions @ Southpaw, Brooklyn, NY

Love.

Sean Hill and Cabinet of Natural Curiosities Perform at the Hickory Stick Bookshop in Washington, CT

2010-03-30T11:31:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

Please join us on Wednesday for a very special event. Award-winning poet Sean Hill and folk group Cabinet of Natural Curiosities will be performing at the Hickory Stick Bookshop in Washington Depot on Wednesday, March 31st at 6:30 PM. The event is free and open to the public.

Wednesday, March 31st

Sean Hill & Cabinet of Natural Curiosities

Born and raised in Milledgeville, Georgia, Sean Hill has an MFA from the University of Houston. He has received fellowships and grants from Cave Canem, the Bush Foundation, The MacDowell Colony, the University of Wisconsin, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Jerome Foundation, and most recently a Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Callaloo, Indiana Review, Crab Orchard Review, Ninth Letter, Gulf Coast, The Oxford American, Tin House, and other literary journals, and in the anthologies Blues Poems, Gathering Ground, The Ringing Ear, and the forthcoming Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry. His first book, Blood Ties & Brown Liquor, was published by the University of Georgia Press in 2008. He lives in Bemidji, Minnesota.

Cabinet of Natural Curiosities is a folk group that sprouted roots in the froggy ponds of New England. After roaming the alleys of Brooklyn and the Bitterroot mountains of Montana, the group's principal members, Jasmine Dreame Wagner and Alex Wilson, retreated to Wagner's childhood home in the woods to record chilling lo-fi lullabies, quiet country-tinged folk songs and darkly sweet piano ballads.

@ Hickory Stick Bookshop
2 Green Hill Road
Washington Depot, CT 06793
(860) 868-0525
http://www.hickorystickbookshop.com
6:30 PM / Free

Kathy Wasik Presents "Zero" and "Learning To Fall"

2010-03-18T12:35:00.000-07:00

Kathy Wasik is fascinated with the small. Her new work, entitled "Zero," is an exploration of the mathematical concept of zero as an intellectual, personal and emotional journey. A graduate of Vassar with a degree in mathematics, Kathy's movement vocabulary is intricate, fluid and expansive. The worlds that she creates, including the world of "Zero," are self-referencing and at times, neurotic.

The set design created for "Zero" is Kathy's representation of emotional zero space: a four-walled structure, each wall comprised of two antique wooden ladders. She characterizes chaotic space by incorporating jarring sonic, visual and physical aberrations such as wind-up toys and a singing alarm clock. Kathy's piece "Learning to Fall," performed by Cara Liguori, expresses the the dancer's internal search for stamina and weight through the layering of delicate actions accompanied by an improvisational score.

Performances will take place at Triskelion Arts in the Aldous Theater, Thursday, April 1st through Saturday, April 3rd at 8pm. Tickets are $15 and are available online at Brown Paper Tickets and at the door. Students and seniors are eligible for a 20% discount ($12 tickets). Triskelion Arts is located at 118 N. 11th St. (3rd Floor) in Brooklyn, NY.

Photo credit: Mary Ivy Martin

Five Questions With Kathy Wasik

This is your debut performance as dancer, choreographer and producer. Does this inaugural performance have any meaning in regards to the theme of the work presented? Zero being, maybe, the beginning of something? An exploration of your origins?

That's an interesting question. I can certainly draw a parallel between some aspects of Zero and my experience of wearing, for the first time simultaneously, the four hats of dancer, choreographer, producer, and publicist (I should say that I'm getting lots of help from friends and family in this endeavor!). Zero is very much a search for my own origin. I have struggled with perfectionism all my life and some of that neurosis is evident in the piece. Similarly, perfectionism has played a large role in the steps leading up to producing this show. I've been working on this piece for several years now, afraid to present something that might not be beyond reproach. I've finally worked up the courage to put on a show and I'm loving the experience so far. Who knows what the future will bring? Vassar College has already asked me to perform the piece again at the end of September. Beyond that, I have a feeling you'll be seeing more of Kathy Wasik as a choreographer. This stuff is pretty addictive.

How has your experience touring internationally shaped your work?

I began development of Learning to Fall, the piece to be performed on the same program as Zero, last fall during a tour with Aviva Geismar/Drastic Action. Aviva's dancers, along with the other company with which we were touring, were invited to create dances for the Galerie Hans Mayer in Düsseldorf, Germany. Traveling had made me think about home -- specifically the home I grew up in. I was a very shy child and I'm still fairly timid. I wanted to create a piece about the ebb and flow of my quest to achieve greater openness. For a corner of a room in the gallery, I developed what is now called Learning to Fall, a highly structured improvisation that involves opening and closing the body through subtle movements. The dancer becomes increasingly vulnerable, but after each new step towards greater openness, she reverses the minute steps she took to reach that more open place, only to return to her original position. Learning to Fall will be performed by the lovely Cara Liguori, who I've performed alongside many times, both in Aviva Geismar's work and in Cara's work for Propel-her Dance Collective.

How do you relate the abstract concepts of mathematics to such a corporeal art form such as dance?

Well, both forms are abstract. They also both possess a certain creativity and intuition. I have a BA in Mathematics and I continue to have an interest in the subject. I find math and dance to be incredible systems for describing the world in which we live. Zero, along with probably all mathematical concepts, can be represented physically. In Zero, there is a parent phrase of movement that gets increasingly smaller as the piece goes on. Beyond that, the world of Zero includes zero space – a four-walled structure, with each wall comprised of two antique wooden ladders – as well as chaotic space, characterized by entertaining aberrations that include wind-up toys and a singing alarm clock.

When dancing or writing, do you consider a system of movements to be a logical system within itself? Do you consider a hypothesis or a formal truth and seek movement to prove to disprove or disprove it?

I would say that Zero's overall structure – both the path the movement takes and the dichotomy between nothingness and chaos – is logical. And certainly some of the movement motifs, particularly those that illustrate the perfectionism I mentioned earlier, are somewhat logical. That said, I think it's really the existence of those motifs, as opposed to the motifs themselves, that's logical. For example, throughout the piece, you'll see my pulling imaginary strings out of my costume. There's something neurotically perfectionist about that movement, but I can't really say where it came from. Interestingly, there is a parallel between the brand of intuition that generated those movements and the intuition involved in mathematics. Artistically, I can just feel when something is right, just as I can feel when I've discovered the solution to a math problem. I have certain things I'm trying to convey (or even prove) throughout the piece, but as with all art, the messages I impart to an audience will be up to interpretation.

Would you consider your work to be more theoretical or organic? (Not that there has to be a divide between the two.)

Zero and Learning to Fall are both conceptual and intuitive. I began both pieces with a particular concept in mind, from which I developed certain structures logically and others viscerally. In both pieces, this line is illustrated by the simultaneous precision and casualness of the movement.

What questions, concepts or other works have inspired you and how do you see yourself exploring them in Zero and in the future?

I first started thinking about zero after reading Charles Seife's Zero, a brief history of the number. I became fascinated with Western civilization's fear of void and the emotional and spiritual implications of that fear. My piece became about a stripping of personal facades. People seem lost in a world of false representations of themselves, thanks in large part to the overabundance of virtual worlds. How can one return to a zero point – one devoid of such technological confusion? Aesthetically, I hope to strike a balance between formal and experimental. In that quest, I've found great inspiration in the work of choreographers Meg Stuart and John Jasperse. As for the future, I'm not thinking much beyond the present. I guess an effort to remain in the present moment is another focus of Zero.

Kathy Wasik attended the Joffrey Ballet School, then went on to receive her BA in mathematics from Vassar College in 2004. She has worked with Drastic Action/Aviva Geismar, Tommy Noonan, and Regina Nejman & Company. She currently resides in Brooklyn, NY.

Cabinet of Natural Curiosities - "Owllullaby" Video

2010-03-08T09:35:00.000-08:00

Remember all that snow we had a week or so ago? Well, it's gone from the ground but present right here. Now that it's finally getting warm out (57 degrees!), we proudly present Cabinet of Natural Curiosities' video for "Owllullaby," the last and sweetest song on their album, "Searchlight Needles."

Cabinet of Natural Curiosities - "Owllullaby" from For Arbors / For Satellites on Vimeo.

If your browser doesn't like flash, but does like quicktime, you can view a small version of the video on Jasmine's website:

Cabinet of Natural Curiosities - "Owllullaby" Video

Watch and be warmed. Then go outside and be even warmer.

Upcoming Events

2010-03-04T09:59:00.000-08:00

CABINET OF NATURAL CURIOSITIES

3/4 @ The Space, Hamden, CT, w/ Arborea, Alexander Turnquist, Ponybird
3/8 @ Cake Shop, New York, NY, w/ Arborea, Spider, The Wailing Wall
3/31 @ Hickory Stick Bookshop, Washington, CT, w/ Sean Hill
4/2 @ Sycamore, Brooklyn, NY, w/ South China, Mary Halvorson & Jessica Pavone
4/10 @ Acoustic Cafe, Bridgeport, CT
4/23 @ The Sock Hop, Lowell, MA
4/24 @ Rebel Sound Records, Pittsfield, MA, w/ Darlingside
5/15 @ Spotty Dog Books & Ale, Hudson, NY, w/ Fall Harbor

SON CATS

5/22 @ Rebel Sound Records, Pittsfield, MA, w/ 8-Inch Betsy, Spooky Qs
5/23 @ 119 Gallery, Lowell, MA, w/ Viva Viva, Malaikat Dan Singa, Avi Jacob

SPECIAL EVENTS

4/3, Sean Hill Reading with Camille T. Dungy, Yusef Komunyakaa & Evie Shockley
Black Nature: A Panel and Poetry Reading
Saturday panel at 2:30 p.m., reading at 4 p.m.
Poets House
10 River Terrace
New York, NY

4/1-4/3, Kathy Wasik Presents ZERO
Dance performance by Cara Liguori and Kathy Wasik.
Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 4/1-4/3, 8 p.m.
Triskelion Arts
118 N. 11th St., 3rd Floor
Brooklyn, NY

Alex at Woodbury Ski & Racquet

2010-03-03T18:19:00.000-08:00

...back when the weather was dryer/better. It's covered with (mostly fake) snow now. There were shenanigans there a couple months back when the owner pointed a snow machine in the wrong direction and covered the road with ice. The skatepark is pretty much falling apart. This summer there were broken bottles in the half-pipe. But the weird wave-shaped thing is still intact and Alex (and pretty much everyone) likes the place, to a point.

It's snowing, time to eat some ice cream.

Over-and-out.

Arborea, Alexander Turnquist, Cabinet of Natural Curiosities, Ponybird @ The Space, Hamden, CT, 3/4/2010

2010-03-01T15:15:00.000-08:00

Thursday, March 4th

Arborea
Alexander Turnquist
Cabinet of Natural Curiosities
Ponybird

@ The Space
295 Treadwell St.
Building H
Hamden, CT 06514
7 PM SHARP / $10

Upsey-datsey

2010-02-18T11:34:00.000-08:00

Hi. It's Alex 'ere. Jasmine is gone off and abound in Spain, so I'm here to say some neat stuff. It snowed a bunch here, about a metric ton per foot, but now the snow is melting and it's falling off the roof and making all these crashing noises and scaring the crap outta me.

Yesterday I watched a really awesome movie on Howlin' Wolf

pretty awesome. The movie says that dude was a pretty normal guy, despite his menacing stage presence.

Anywho, I don't have much more... oh except this! If this is playing near you, go see it! It's about Skateboarding's relationship to space. Should be cool for skaters and non-skaters alike.

I know it's playing at some film festivals around. I wanna see it real bad. Here's more info about it here.

http://goodproblem.blogspot.com/2006/05/freedom-of-space.html

Now go do something fun. Or else.

Alex.

Orion Rigel Dommisse @ Casa Del Popolo, Montreal, Quebec, 2/24

2010-02-09T16:28:00.000-08:00

February 24th, 2010

Orion Rigel Dommisse
w/ Migrating Birds

@ Casa Del Popolo
4873 St. Laurent
Montreal, QC

Presented by Suoni per II Popolo, What A Mess ! Records, and CKUT Radio.

Poster illustration & design by Jasmine Dreame Wagner.

If you're in Montreal, you should go to this show!

Cabinet of Natural Curiosities Tasty Fanzine Review

2010-02-09T14:22:00.000-08:00

Cabinet of Natural Curiosities reviewed in Tasty Fanzine:

"...a collection of quite lovely folks-ish guitar songs, which are combined with some abstracted electronica as backing and which are quite delicate, haunting, and occasionally and unexpectedly confrontational in their own right." (READ MORE)

http://www.tastyfanzine.org.uk

Big thanks to our friends across the pond!

Birthday Success! +mp3

2010-02-01T20:40:00.000-08:00

It was my birthday!

Alex made amazing hand-rolled sushi. Divine, especially with wicked hot wasabi.

And for dessert, the most delicious coconut cream cake ever. Whipped cream instead of frosting, not too sweet, and covered with sugary coconut. Delish!

Also, here's us in the COOL COVERS tumblr blog... aaand... a new version of "Cities," hot off the mix:

Cabinet of Natural Curiosities - Cities

We're playing at Pianos tomorrow, 9 PM sharp!

Take care,
xoJasmine

Cabinet of Natural Curiosities Digital 7" and Review on Ampeater

2010-01-23T21:10:00.000-08:00

Hello friends,

Cabinet of Natural Curiosities' digital 7" record is available for free download thanks to Ampeater, accompanied by a glowing article that makes us blush. Please read and listen!

Cabinet of Natural Curiosities on The Ampeater Review:

http://ampeatermusic.com/aem058

Thanks much to Ben Heller and Rick Andrews for the kind words and support. Our full album, "Searchlight Needles," will be available to purchase from Ampeater as a digital LP as well as in its hardcopy handmade CD format very soon (if not as we speak.) It was recorded, for the most part, in a living room in Missoula, Montana, and a concrete cell in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, by Jasmine herself and mastered by Paul Gold of Salt Mastering.

Additionally, Cabinet has finished recording a new EP on our Tascam 424mkII and 488 cassette 4-track and 8-track machines and is looking forward to releasing it, along with a CD-R on Perhaps Transparent Records, sometime this spring or early summer, depending how long the artwork takes.

Thanks to all of you for your support and friendship.

Podcasts and Playlists

2010-01-03T12:38:00.001-08:00

Happy New Year!

Thanks much to the podcasters and radio djs that featured us on your shows over the past few months. It's been a great year.

Check these out:

Irene Trudel on WFMU, October 12, 2009

Irene Trudel on WFMU, December 28, 2009

Jeremy Wade Morris AKA Midnight Poutine in Montreal

DaKradha's AKA Blalock's Indie/Rock Playlist, available here, too: DaKradha's Playlist, or here: Blalock's Indie/Rock Playlist, or the Blalock group page on last.fm

Thanks!

Happy 2010.

Cabinet of Natural Curiosities Fall Tour Wrap-Up!

2009-12-15T20:30:00.000-08:00

Hey all,

So Cabinet of Natural Curiosities played a bunch of shows on a zig-zag tour around New England this fall. We went many places for the first time, drove beautiful back roads full of turning leaves and steamy rain, ate fantastic food, and shared a lot of music with wonderful people. Some highlights, and pictures when we remembered to take 'em, or had the good fortune of having passed on to us, especially the pictures from Cyril Moya in Montreal.

Thanks everybody (you know who you are!)

The shows!

October 23rd -- Rebel Sound Records -- Pittsfield, MA
w/ Amberblacks UK, Petulant Child, Ball Turret, Apathy of Longevity

First of all, this record store was awesome! We found an old Rat$ LP in one of the bins. There's a sweet back room with a PA, a place with local food and beer across the street, and some really good bagels a few doors down. This was our first time in Pittsfield, and the first time driving up through the yellow and red leaves. It smelled good. There is a chicken farm in Otis, MA, that you drive past on the way there. It has a kind-of old-timey general store. But I digress. The show was cool. Ball Turret, Apathy of Longevity, Petulant Child, and the Amberblacks were all really loud and rocking. It was pouring rain and we didn't have a place to stay, but the English folks in the Amberblacks offered us a bed in one of their hotel rooms. Then they kidnapped us (okay, I exaggerate) and took us to the only Yankees bar in Massachusetts. The owner of the bar invited everyone to his house after hours so he could have a solo show for himself and his friends. Hijinks ensued, parties included the singer's dad and the bassist's catwalk model girlfriend (who was also named Jasmine, who took a train from New York to Albany and a cab from Albany to Pittsfield to come to the show). I think maybe we got to sleep around 6 AM. My throat was SORE the next day. Thanks Andy at Rebel Sound and all the bands that played!

I only remembered my camera sometime around 1 AM:

October 24th -- King Street Manor -- Northampton, MA
w/ Orion Rigel Dommisse, Tongue Oven

When we woke up (and when we went to bed), it was pouring rain. Alex and I got bagels at a bagel place close to Rebel Sound, then headed out to Northampton by way of beautiful Pioneer Valley backroads. The leaves were yellow, red and orange, and through the rain, steam was lifting off of the hills and rocks. Everything was extremely vivid in a dark-and-shiny kind of way. We arrived in Northampton early, parked in front of King Street Manor, and said hello to Steve and Dan before striking out our umbrellas and wandering around town. We had some tea and cocoa at the Woodstar Cafe, and amazing falafel at Amanouz (some of my favorite falafel in the world.) The show was great! Tongue Oven played first, a set of beautiful, quiet folk songs with 12-string guitar, violin, and dry leaves in a bag (percussion, crushed by hand.) We played next, then Orion. Who was AMAZING. Her performance was creepy, sad, and euphoric. She writes with soul-baring intimacy (literally, she would probably cut your soul from your body if she had the right kind of knife) the kind of music that makes me reconsider everything I've ever thought about songwriting and singing and instrumentation. Beautiful. After the show, we went out to the local theater to see the midnight showing of the classic Italian horror flick, Spider Labyrinth.

Alex partaking of a massive hot chocolate at the Woodstar Cafe in Northampton:

Orion Rigel Dommisse

October 28th -- Cake Shop -- New York, NY
w/ Liz Durrett, Spider, Golden Bones

I had been looking forward to this show for quite some time. Spider (Jane Herships) and the boys of Golden Bones have some my favorite voices and songs humming around Brooklyn. I discovered Liz Durrett's voice online this summer (dark, dusky, soulful) and I'd been waiting to see her perform live. She was joined by an old childhood friend on a few of the songs (seen in the pic I took of them here) and they harmonized beautifully. It was a quiet night at the Cake Shop, really quality people and sounds.

The poster I drew for the show (this b&w illustration was originally going to be used as a tour poster but due to lack of time, I only gave the image to Dan in Northampton and used a different image for our last show in Portland, ME, so have no fear, historians and collectors, it's a singularity):

Liz Durrett

Spider

Golden Bones

October 29th -- Hogfarm Studios Annex -- Biddeford, ME
w/ Tin Ceilings with members of Orchards and more

Hogfarm Studios is an amazing art space and all-ages venue in Biddeford, Maine. The place is run by Coco and Gil Corral, two artists that live with their daughter and make incredible handmade jewelery (Coco) and paintings (Gil.) This night was fantastic because we also got to play with Randy Illian's band, Tin Ceilings. Randy, Eric, Emily and Ed made gorgeous, spare and starkly emotional music. Their set consisted of a few Tin Ceilings songs mixed in with a few songs by Eric Schwan, who performed with Ed and Emily in the Portland, Maine, folk group Orchards. The dynamic these folks have together is incredible, completely organic. You can tell how much they like each other by how well they harmonize. Randy dressed up as a scarecrow. Alex and I wore handmade paper-mache cat masks during our set. Gil screened Labyrinth on a large screen above us as we played. For the first time in a long time (since the short Pacific Northwest tour we did last August!) we performed with looping and laptop, which was awesome. We've been sticking with playing the songs straight, but sometimes it's good for the brain to try something different, or revisit old techniques to see what was there. Afterwards, we drank amazing mulled wine, ate food that Coco had made for us, met their sweet pet turtle and slept soundly in a warm and cozy bed.

Tin Ceilings with Orchards

The only picture we have of our set -- it was dark and spooky! (Thanks to Coco's cell phone):

October 30th -- Montague Bookmill -- Montague, MA
w/ Tongue Oven

One of the perks of touring is that you get to visit new places, re-visit old places, and eat amazing food. The next day, after we visited Coco and Gil Corral's Loving Anvil storefront, we headed off to Massachusetts to make our way to the Montague Bookmill. On the way, we strayed a little off the path to have some fried clams at Woodman's in Essex, MA, a childhood favorite of mine. It was Alex's first time, and he was definitely won over. We took Route 2 in the dark (why does it have to get dark so early? I know, tilt of the earth, length of day, etc., doesn't mean I like it) to Montague and arrived at the Bookmill in awe. The Bookmill is a restored mill turned bookstore and coffee shop in the middle of the beautiful Massachusetts woods. If I lived within 25 miles of this place, I'd come here every day, drink a hot beverage and stare at the running water while intermittently paging through a book. Dan, aka Tongue Oven, played first -- solo 12-string guitar. A man who sat right in front of him listened intently and compared him to Leo Kottke (a high compliment!) The crowd was attentive and friendly, we shared some tea and cider and played an extremely stripped-down set (Alex only used a snare and cymbal with brushes, I only played acoustic guitar -- no keyboard songs this night) and felt a warm autumnal vibe. Afterwards, we followed Dan home and slept on the beloved futon of the King Street Manor. Did I mention that Dan and his roommates have an amazing three-legged cat? They do. If I weren't allergic, I'd consider catnapping!

October 31st -- 51 3rd / Troy ArtSpace -- Troy, NY
w/ Complicated Shirt, My Survival Kit, Blacklight Bloodbath

The morning of Halloween, we woke and went to breakfast with Dan at a cute Northampton cafe. Then we took off for a long drive through the Berkshires and west over to Troy, New York. At one point, Alex and I stopped to stretch our legs at a beautiful park along a river. It smelled good, like damp pine needles and lichen on craggy rocks. The sky rained our whole way to Troy. When we arrived, we loaded in and met everyone in My Survival Kit, Complicated Shirt, and Blacklight Bloodbath, who were soundchecking and filling a huge bowl with candy. The 51 3rd Artspace is also the home of Troy Bike Rescue, a large warehouse-like space stuffed with bikes and bike parts, a stage with a PA system, and a back room full of cool furniture and costumes and music-making things. There's also two rooms for bands and members to crash in -- beautifully mosaic-tiled bathrooms and all. The show was a huge party! We played, then My Survival Kit, who got the room singing along to their songs. Even more people showed up during Complicated Shirt's set, and finally, Blacklight Bloodbath were an electro-techno-dance frenzy. Then a DJ went on, and I promptly fell asleep! Dunno how I slept through it, I must have been really sleepy. Oh, and we ate pizza at I Love NY Pizza, some of BEST pizza in New York. Seriously. And we got to see and hang out with Ryder Cooley, who arrived dressed as a goat. Love her.

November 6th -- Le Cagibi -- Montreal, QC
w/ Fauxbrien

The night before our show in Montreal, Alex and I packed the car with everything we needed... except the bass drum. Because we needed to pass the border without questions, and a bass drum in the backseat of the car would most likely attract questions. On our drive up, we found an amazing radio station that only played Disney songs, no commercials. If anyone knows anything about this, please let us know. Anyways! We arrived in freezing cold Montreal with zero problems at the border. Cyril Moya of What A Mess! Records graciously made us tea, showed us the good parking spaces, and welcomed us into his spare bedroom where we slept until the next afternoon. The next day, we walked around his neighborhood, which is close to where Leonard Cohen lives (Cyril showed us where!) The three of us ate a great lunch at a cafe, played around at a music store, and spent some time trying to stay warm as possible. The show at Le Cagibi was amazing! Fauxbrien played first, slightly-electronic folk songs that reminded me of Magnetic Fields or Little Wings. Then we played, met a slew of really nice people, strangers and friends of Cyril alike, while the folks at Le Cagibi fed us tofu and mushroom pesto sandwiches, bowls of vegetarian chili, and hot tea. Later on, Cyril's friend Peter Nevins came back to Cyril's apartment, too, and we all stayed up late talking. The next day, Cyril (who is practically an angel at this point!) took us out to lunch before we left for Burlington. Montreal was almost too good to be true!

Alex and me in Cyril's favorite alley:

Cabinet at Le Cagibi! Thanks again, Cyril, for the photos:

November 7th -- Radio Bean -- Burlington, VT

Would you believe me if I told you that the border guard on our way back looked exactly like the T-1000? He was aggressively concerned with the possibility that we might be smuggling oranges. Burlington was even colder than Montreal, especially for someone who was lacking a winter coat. We pulled into town and called Paddy Reagan for restaurant suggestions and to find out if he/Paper Castles was/were indeed playing with us at Radio Bean. He sent us to a Thai place next to American Flatbread (the wait was too long at AF, we'd miss the show completely if we tried) and said he'd come down and play a solo set, which he did, and which was sparse and gorgeous. For me, my performance was a bit off. Radio Bean was gearing up for a huge 24-hour anniversary show featuring something like 100 bands that was to take place the next day. I tend to be distracted when the door is opening and closing a lot while the espresso machine squeals and people are rushing in and out to smoke (which is one "no duh" drawback to playing a coffee shop.) But Nick Mavodones, who set up the night, came and listened and was a blast to hang out with. Big thanks to him for letting us sleep on his futon -- otherwise, we would have frozen into solid blocks of human by the next morning! He also gave us hats and mittens and two magic light-spinning toys. And we saw this sweet truck the next morning at the gas station:

November 8th -- She Doesn't Like Guthrie's -- Lewiston, ME
w/ Spider

The next morning, Alex and I ate some enormous sandwiches at a place off the cobblestone courtyard in Burlington before taking off for Lewiston, Maine. The drive was gorgeous. Alex bought some kind of caramel cream puff pastry from a small French pastry shop outside of Cabot, VT. We arrived in Lewiston early enough to settle in and have some food before the show began. (We eat a lot on tour, if you couldn't tell.) Guthrie's is a cool bar-like cafe restaurant with two extremely friendly and personable owners and a clientele of pretty much all the cool and freaky and normal-but-music-loving population of Lewiston. Jane Herships ordered the largest plate of nachos I have ever seen in my life, then preceded to charm the entire room with her haunting, sometimes bluesy, acoustic folk songs. Shanti and Buck Curran of Arborea came to the show, listened, and were great to talk to. We (Alex, Jane and I) ended up heading back to their house afterwards where we relaxed in front of a huge bonfire in their backyard before falling asleep. The next morning, we ate oatmeal, drank coffee and talked through the afternoon. Alex took a long walk around their neighborhood and found some incredible old buildings. I consider myself very lucky to have met the Currans -- much thanks to them for their unbounded hospitality!

Spider

November 9th -- Slainte -- Portland, ME
w/ Vince "Aleric" Nez, Tin Ceilings with Orchards and more

The next evening, Alex and I drove to Portland, a quick drive from Lewiston (well, quick relative to other drives we've done on tour) and had dinner at J's Oyster, a place Randy Illian had recommended a long time ago, when he first invited CONC up to Portland back in 2006. The 2006 show had taken place at the Local 188. We'd played with Mr. Vince "Aleric" Nez, which was one reason I was really excited about this show, the 11/9/2009 show -- because I hadn't gotten to see Aleric play in three years. First, Tin Ceilings played, again, with members of Orchards, also joined by members of Portland bands Tempera and Seekonk. It was breathtaking. I wish I'd been able to record this set. We played, then Aleric, who was awesome. He is totally unhinged, and a wonderful performer. I think Alex and I both felt so good about this night that by the end of it, we were talking about moving to Portland! After everyone packed up and drifted home, Randy and Dave took us out to a pizza place downtown, then over to Dave's art space and theater, The Aphohadion, to listen to records and talk late into the night. We slept in Dave's living room, an airy place with large windows that let in beautiful morning light. It was the easiest morning to wake up all tour (of any tour, I think.) Dave, Alex, and I went out for breakfast at a coffee shop downtown -- bagels, juice, coffee, tea -- with a view of Portland's Free Hug man. We met a few of Dave's friends who were up having coffee and watched pedestrians mill about. I bought a toffee cookie for the ride home, which Alex and I shared standing on the rocks at Fortune's Rock, looking at the ocean, just as we were realizing that tour was ending. The Atlantic is rough and hypnotizing and smells so good. Maine rules!

Poster for the show that I threw together pretty quickly, that the owner of Slainte had printed in the local newspaper. Awesome!

Tin Ceilings with Orchards

So much love to everyone who helped with shows, everyone who played, who shared meals and hot beverages with us, who showed us our their ways around! May we meet again soon.

Take care, and happy holidays!

Love,
xoJasmine

Cabinet of Natural Curiosities on Can You See The Sunset?

2009-12-04T12:07:00.000-08:00

New review -- !

"It’s a dreamy affair that sounds like sitting in a dense pine forest in the middle of the night with the light of the moon reflecting on the snow, the howling of wolves in the distance, and the cold night air chilling to the bone." READ MORE:

Cabinet of Natural Curiosities on Can You See the Sunset?

http://www.canyouseethesunset.com/article/cabinet-of-natural-curiousities-searchlight-needles/

Yeahhh thanks much!
xo

We went on tour!

2009-11-22T16:17:00.000-08:00

More soon, we've been really busy. Here's a picture that Cyril Moya (What A Mess! Records) took of us (me and Alex) in his favorite alley in Montreal:

It was awesome! More updates/stuff after Thanksgiving.

xo

Drew and The Medicinal Pen, Morgan Orion, Cabinet of Natural Curiosities, Parade Parade @ Goodbye Blue Monday, 10/1

2009-09-28T21:29:00.000-07:00

Thursday, October 1st

Drew and The Medicinal Pen
Morgan Orion
Cabinet of Natural Curiosities
Parade Parade

@ Goodbye Blue Monday BACKYARD
1087 Broadway, Brooklyn, NY
8 PM / Donations, please

Take the M train!

xo

Mews

2009-09-21T11:54:00.000-07:00

Awesome things

1. The Great Society Mind Destroyers, the sweet psychedelic garage band we (as Cabinet) played with at Zebulon early in August, have released their live tracks as an album on Commune Records. They just got to play with Dead Meadow in their hometown, Chicago, and are playing some more shows with other folks we love aka Plastic Crimewave Sound this fall. Check the live album, as well as their split with Rabble Rabble (who we played with that night as well, who are awesome and are apparently playing with Screaming Females next week):

Live at The Zebulon, New York 2009 (Commune Records)
Recorded live at The Zebulon in Brooklyn, NY on August 9th 2009.

2. We just played a wonderful show at Goodbye Blue Monday with Jonathan Byerley and His Plates of Cake and Englishman, who were on tour from Lexington, Kentucky. Englishman's haunting folk music is the product of two minds, Andrew English (vocals, acoustic guitar) and Matthew Duncan (vocals, piano), along with others, though only Andrew and Matthew were on tour. I can't describe how beautiful the piano at Goodbye Blue Monday sounded on these songs, but you should definitely check them out, too:

"Taxidermy", Englishman's debut EP, is on ITunes and Amazon, as well as at CD Central in Lexington, KY and Shake It Records in Cincinnati, OH. Physical copies appear at live shows and come complete with hand-drawn/cut/pasted album art and very compact packaging. If you love to hold things with your hands and use all five senses, this EP can serve that purpose! Just mail a request for a hard copy to: englishman.sounds@gmail.com.

3. We're playing a bunch of great shows in the upcoming weeks:

October 1st @ Goodbye Blue Monday, Brooklyn, NY, w/ Drew and The Medicinal Pen, Morgan Orion, Parade Parade
October 2nd @ The Coliseum (rooftop show!), Ridgewood, Queens/Brooklyn, w/ Sacred Harp, Morgan Orion, more special guests
October 24th @ King Street Manor, Northampton, MA, w/ Orion Rigel Domisse, Tongue Oven

And we have some new photographs from the garden.

See you soon,
xoJasmine

Album Review of Chief Bromide!

2009-09-16T16:28:00.000-07:00

So, I've decided to start reviewing albums, specifically, of albums of people we have either met or played with in our journeys. This will be the first of such reviews, a glorious wonderful tribute to the people and music we have found...

Alex Schmalex Reviews: Chief Bromide's Chief Bromideland

Chief Bromide is from Cleveland. If you've never been to Cleveland, you're missing out on one of the great American experiences. Anyways... Chief Bromide is from this industrial monster of the city. Let me state my preference for bands who share vocal responsibilities: I prefer it. Chief Bromide pulls this off as most members (Matt Valerino, Lauren Voss, and I believe I saw [I'm gonna mess this up, 'cuz I'm running off of my live-show memory, which tends to float around in the atmosphere a bit...] Krissy Brannan doing time with the vocals) share the vocal-sphere. You know those awesome songs by The Band where they all sing and switch and trade, it's kinda like that. So... imagine the songwriting aesthetic of The Band, paired with the distorted guitar melodies of Built to Spill, add the atmospherics of basically any album that you love, and you land in Chief Bromide's space. As for the album itself, well, here it is: when you open the box, you get a fold out game of Candyland converted to Chief Bromide standards (hence the title), if you don't remember Candyland, go find that little game of cards and colors where luck is the only factor in your success. I actually can't bring myself to cut out the pieces that come with the thing, I like it so much I wanna hang it on my wall. But in any case, I'll analyze the relationship between the two:

Candyland sets itself up as a sort of children's sugar utopia, where getting stuck in a puddle of mud would suck if that puddle wasn't made of chocolate. Replace the candy cane trees with cigarette butt trees, the chocolate puddle's with industrial waste puddles, and sugar plums with pills, and your in Chief Bromideland. I'm not talking about the visual landscape of the album art, but of the sonic-scape of the album. The movements from piano guided melodies to stereo-guitar lines to the sweet resonance that slide guitar strikes in the human core, those movements into the fast tempo songs like "Proverbs for Paranoids" that push the other side of the dynamic spectrum show off the space in between melodic structure and noise. All here in Chief Bromideland.

Back in the day, sounds used to be associated with the region they were born in: The Nashville sound, the Motown sound, the New York sound, the British sound, the California sound... whatever. Industrial places like Cleveland have spawned a sort of sound which mixes the sound scape bewteen lo-fi and hi-fi recording. An example of this, that I can think of off the top of my head, would come from the Black Keys use of what they called "medium-fi" recording (coming from neighboring Ohio city Akron). While the essence of the music itself comes from outside of a sort of regional binding, the influences from the songs coming from all different types of garage, psychedelia, and straight up rock and roll, the recording and sound itself mixes the low fi tenacity with the hi fi ability to sound full. The first track, "Plastic Bag Girl," is a good example of this, a blur of vocals which sort of creeps below the instrumental surface. While whiny folk who fuss and pout over the inability to understand every word might not like this, I believe that there is a place where the vocals should be noted more for their blend and effect rather than being on the soapbox of music all the time. Awesomely enough, this record switches from the underlying vocal to the prominent vocal, sometimes even in the same songs. It's little sound ticks like this that show that Chief Bromide is paying full attention to the audio space which a whole song lives in, rather than relying on formulaic methods of recording and sound to produce and present their songs.

Ted Vril, whom I met when we played in Cleveland this summer, played his songs through a sea of circuitry and wires to produce a live sound which was reminiscent of hearing songs over distant AM radios. While he could have just sat there and played his songs straight at us and stared at our little eyes and what not... he created a sort of attention to the sound as a whole rather than just the songs themselves, blending songwriting with the duty formerly held onto by a "producer" or "engineer" or something. This, I believe is the new form of songwriting, the attention to both the songs and the quality of the sound as a whole. Chief Bromideland, I would consider this album to be in the "industrial city sound" in that manner, the space in which one wades through industrial toil and the search for bliss, the clear and the unclear.

In any case, check 'em out, they hot stuff.

Chief Bromide =Krissy Brannan, Matt Valerino, Lauren Voss, Scott Davidson, John Panza, Jessica Julian. They're in that picture above. And below.

Cabinet of Natural Curiosities Reviews

2009-09-16T14:56:00.000-07:00

Dear Readers,

More strong reviews of Cabinet of Natural Curiosities' "Searchlight Needles" record rolling in. Many thanks to the writers and editorial staff at Impose Magazine, Wears The Trousers (twice!), Homemade Lo-Fi Psych (twice!), Olive Music, Tome To The Weather Machine, The Dotted Line, and I Heart Noise. Also in the category of good news, "Searchlight Needles" is now available for order online at Insound.com, one of our favorite and most reliable online distributors of excellent music. Cabinet will be playing a slew of shows in New England this fall, specifically, in Massachusetts, Vermont, and Maine. Montreal and New Hampshire are in the works, as well as an upcoming 7" record and a show at Goodbye Blue Monday with Morgan Orion, Drew and The Medicinal Pen, and Parade Parade (Josh Fu from Lonesome Architects solo.)

Reviews:

1. Cabinet of Natural Curiosities on Impose Magazine:

"Cabinet of Natural Curiosities is the brainchild of songwriter and visual artist Jasmine Dreame Wagner. The Cabinet is also full of other artists contributing the flesh to her sparse, wistful, psychedelia-tinged Americana. A Brooklynite, Wagner’s Searchlight Needles dropped in June on For Arbors. The record is a long-playing lullaby that detours into night tremor noise interludes. It recently inspired an exceptional afternoon nap, not because it’s boring, but because it’s soothing and sparse, with those more chaotic tremors less like dream catchers, more like nightmare bear traps." (READ MORE)

2. Cabinet of Natural Curiosities on Wears The Trousers (1):

"Jasmine Dreame Wagner is a pretty awesome name, combining natural, illusory and classical associations, so it’s perhaps a given that a person who inherits such a unique handle would go on to create the totally immersive art of the kind that Cabinet Of Natural Curiosities indulges in. Released on June 9th through For Arbors Records, Searchlight Needles is Jasmine’s first official full-length album (her fifth release overall) under this Albertus Seba referencing epithet, and is rather more song-based than some of her previous releases. The field recordings are very much still a part of the equation, as ‘Grass’ demonstrates with wind chimes, the distant rumble of a train, and a constant backdrop of bird calls and chirrups." (READ MORE)

3. Cabinet of Natural Curiosities on Wears The Trousers (2):

"While most tracks on the album are subtle explorations of a complex psyche, making excellent use of field recordings and Wagner’s soft, double-tracked vocals, it’s the emotionally simpler songs that invoke a real feeling of contentment. Album highlight ‘Cities’, for example, is a calm and poetic ode to nature: “Come and run in the grass with me / until the grasslands are gold with the lights of the ones they hold,” Wagner coos sedately, accompanied only by guitar and distant keyboards – just enough to keep the momentum going. Perfect for a Sunday afternoon on the sofa." (READ MORE)

4. Cabinet of Natural Curiosities on Homemade Lo-Fi Psych:

"Gentle, intimate folk songs played on acoustic guitar with added ambient, sometimes electronic, sounds; at times quite disturbing, often there's something menacing underneath the peaceful atmosphere - excellent music! Reminds me slightly of late 60ies UK Folk Jazz band THE PENTANGLE in places (e.g. vocals on 'Black Water')" (READ MORE HERE for "Searchlight Needles") and (HERE for "Vineland")

5. Cabinet of Natural Curiosities on Olive Music:

"Describing Cabinet of Natural Curiosities' new album Searchlight Needles is just as difficult as fighting a huge grizzly bear. NO--make that two grizzly bears! That's why it's taken me five days to write this. It's a confusing listen, very confusing. There's just so much going on that I really didn't expect to hear. Like Hella's (or Zach Hill's) Church Gone Wild; there are so many things you can hear all coming towards you, like a stampede... OF GRIZZLY BEARS! But in this case, Searchlight Needles does have a lot going on, don't get me wrong, but everything is very subtle...This is probably one of the most focused albums of the year, and I just might mention this in December. It's totally worth listening to and I bet it'll hypnotize you and make you sell every single Iron & Wine LP that you own." (READ MORE)

6. Cabinet of Natural Curiosities on Tome To The Weather Machine:

"I know you are probably sick of reading what else I was doing when I hear an album for the first time. But it was eerily uncanny how fitting this passage by D. H Lawrence was when I sat down for my first listen of Searchlight Needles. Searchlight Needles by Brooklynite by the way of Missoula, MT chanteuse Jasmine Dreame Wagner a.k.a Cabinet of Natural Curiosities. Searchlight Needles is a quietly epic ode to the great expanse of nature. It says a lot about an album that can physically move you to another location, with CONC, such auditory hallucinations take me to the woods, the ferns, and a windswept hillside in the middle of the night." (READ MORE)

7. Cabinet of Natural Curiosities on The Dotted Line:

"I’m always impressed when artists are able to transform their instruments from necessary compliments to actual voices themselves. Cabinet of Natural Curiosities does this remarkably well; they bring the guitar, as well as a determined glockenspiel, and ever present synth, into the limelight. Instead of chords to mark vocal progression, the instruments themselves have their own melodies, their own harmonies, their own solos. Not that Jasmine Dreame Wagner needs overshadowing; the vocals are dark and delectable and her voice seems to teeter on a distinctly sharp edge, yet remarkably self assured. Fantastic." (READ MORE)

8. Cabinet of Natural Curiosities on I Heart Noise:

"Whenever you get a CD that’s look like a work of art in itself, there’s always a fear that the contents will not match the artwork. Thankfully, this is not the case with Cabinet of Natural Curiosities “Searchlight Needles” CD... “Searchlight Needles” initially appears to be a fairly simplistic record, but the simplicity proves to be deceptive. Gradually it unfolds into a sonic gallery of ambient textures, female vocals (both treated and untreated) and spacey atmospherics. Reminds me of Marissa Nadler’s work, minus the morbid angle of lyrics, but the songs are still haunting, plus they’re fairly short and on point. Song titles (“Sun”, “Cities”, “Moon”) and lyrics are like delicate snapshots of various landscapes with images of satellites, smokestacks, factories and piers floating by." (READ MORE)

Be in touch!
-Xavier

SON CATS @ ZACC BSMT

2009-08-31T00:07:00.000-07:00

Some SON CATS photos from the Abiku/Knot Knocked Up/Fag Rag/SON CATS/Abe Coley show at the ZACC BSMT back in May. Alex's friend Justin took 'em. Enjoy. -X

http://www.flickr.com/photos/forarborsforsatellites

Lost and Found: Stories From New York

2009-08-30T14:47:00.000-07:00

Hello out there,

I have a short short story in the new Lost and Found: Stories From New York, edited by Thomas Beller, published by Mr. Beller's Neighborhood Books and distributed by W. W. Norton. The anthology is a whopping 853 pages long and included pieces by many amazing authors and New York notables, including Phillip Lopate, Jonathan Ames, Charles D'Ambrosio, Patricia Bosworth, Meghan Daum, Rachel Sherman, Martha Burzynski, Daniel Nester, Anne Meara and more.

You can buy the book here:

Lost and Found: Stories From New York (Powell's)

Lost and Found: Stories From New York (Barnes and Noble)

Lost and Found: Stories From New York (Amazon)

And read or listen to a bit of reviews here:

New York Magazine

The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC

There's also a review in Time Out New York, but I can't find it online. Boo!

The book is amazing.

xoJasmine

June Madrona, Cabinet of Natural Curiosities, Little Gold, and Fall Harbor @ The Cake Shop, Thursday, August 18th

2009-08-16T18:28:00.000-07:00

Thursday, August 18th

June Madrona
Cabinet of Natural Curiosities
Little Gold
Fall Harbor

@ Cake Shop
152 Ludlow Ave.
New York, NY
8 PM / $5

Tour pictures & Summer 2009

2009-08-12T12:37:00.000-07:00

Some photos from some great shows we played this summer. Love these bands.

Royal Osprey @ Ronny's Bar (Chicago, IL)

Moonrises @ Ottoman Empire (Chicago, IL)

The Andalusians @ Big Bear Cafe (Washington, DC)

Does anyone know who the fish is?

I'm calling him L.E.S. Fishes, because we found him outside of the Cake Shop.

Love
xoxJasmine

We will be playing...

2009-07-31T22:54:00.000-07:00

...some shows! Here's a bit of a list:

Aug 9th @ Zebulon (Williamsburg/Brooklyn), Cabinet of Natural Curiosities with Little Gold (Christian DeRoeck solo), Poor Boy Johnson, Great Society Mind Destroyers, Rabble Rabble

Aug 12th @ Charleston (Williamsburg again), Son Cats, Great Society Mind Destroyers, Rabble Rabble

Aug 13th @ Pianos (Manhattan, Lower Eastside) C.O.N.C. with Binary Marketing Show, Dear Olive & Liitle Quick Heart

Aug 18th @ Cake Shop (Lower East again) C.O.N.C. with June Madrona, Little Gold

Check out some of the bands we're playing with!

Little Gold

June Madrona

The Binary Marketing Show

The Great Society Mind Destroyers

Live Fun or Die Hard

-Alex

Northampawesome

2009-07-17T14:04:00.000-07:00

We (cabinet) played at The Sierra Grille in Northampton last night, with D.C. band The Andalusians and a concept-Boston-bar band called The Steamrollers. Not only was it awesome, but they also fed us dinner, but not just any dinner, fancy entree food. Jasmine and I ended up getting Salmon with mashed potatoes and all these grilled veggies... it was amazing. Thanks to Mark for setting up the show, and thanks to The Andalusians for coming. If you've not heard of them you should check them out, they are so damn solid.

But, yeah, thanks again all, I hope we get to go back there real soon.

-Alex Wowlex

BLACK RABBITS CASSETTE COMPILATION

2009-07-08T12:21:00.001-07:00

Is finally here!

Our summer mixtape, for driving with the windows down. Featuring tracks by Twin Cats, Ladybird, The Black Perfect, Manipulator Alligator, Lonesome Architects, June Madrona, Morgan Orion, Turner Capehart Canty, Wooden Indian Burial Ground, Polka Dot Dot Dot, Fort King, Fletcher Poor Boy Johnson, & Johanna Kunin

Tapes are $3 PPD

Send checks or carefully hidden cash to:

FOR ARBORS / FOR SATELLITES
PO BOX 2651
STUYVESANT STATION
NEW YORK, NY 10009

Or inquire within about paypal:
forsatellites(at)gmail.com

Artist copies will be mailed out soon.

-X

yay bloggy blog and a slice of thanks

2009-07-08T11:05:00.000-07:00

Hi! it's Mr. Alex R. Wilson, adding my thanks to the list of all those folks who let us play/ gave us a place to sleep on tour. It was a long time, longest tour I've taken yet, but we made it and we saw some crazy awesome stuff. Thanks again to Purl (I hope like crazy I spelled your name right) for taking me skating at that little park in Virginia, and to all again. Big no thanks to toll booths and that dude who gave me a parking ticket in Chicago while I was standing right next to my car (though besides that, Chicago kicks a lot of ass, great city that I'd never been to). Either way, thanks again, and enjoy the bloggness.

Cabinet of Natural Curiosities & SON CATS Summer Tour!

2009-07-07T12:57:00.000-07:00

Hey there,

We (Cabinet and SON CATS) just got back from an almost-5-week tour around the middle of the country, the northeast, the Atlantic coast, and the south, which was pretty intense. More intense than swimming and sleeping, which is what we've been doing a lot of since getting back to New England and resting up. Thanks a million to everyone to helped us out with a show, who gave us a place to sleep, and so much more!

So many thank you's--

May 20th -- Irfit's Hookah Lounge -- Rapid City, SD
w/ Point Juncture, WA
...thanks Spearfish and all the folks in Point Juncture.

May 21st -- Washington Arts Center -- Vermillion, SD
w/ Cloud Dog
...thanks Sheridan, and all your awesome housemates and friends, for the zines, the music, and the pizza.

May 22nd -- Bear Claw Mountain -- Minneapolis, MN
...thanks Kaily, Brittany, and Jamie -- and big thanks to Max and Deanna AKA Unicorn Basement for the food and kitties and sleep.

May 23rd -- Ames Progressive -- Ames, IA
w/ Agent Ribbons
Thanks Kai Tanaka, and to your sister, too!

May 24th -- Bernie's Bar -- Ft. Madison, IA
...there is a video online somewhere of SON CATS covering TNT at this legendary haunt on Highway 61. Inquire within...

May 25th -- Monks Kaffee -- Dubuque, IA
...such an awesome coffee shop & cool people.

May 26th -- Ronny's Bar -- Chicago, IL
w/ Royal Osprey and Distractions
...as always, Joey Murphy and his wonderful gang of friends and roomates AKA the Orchid Collective were amazing to see again. And Drew (formerly of the Radish Patch) and Maribelle!

May 27th -- Ottoman Empire -- Chicago, IL
w/ Angel Olson, Meander, and Moonrises
...Thanks, Sabrina at the Ottoman Empire & Ryanne and Erin Hoyt (formerly of The Radish Patch.) Mr. Steve Plastic Crimewave's new band with Libby and Sam were too sweet for words.

May 28th -- Dayton Dirt Collective -- Dayton, OH
...the day after, we spent some time at the Rob Drydek Skate Park and the Kettering water park just around the corner for it. Lap swimming and the sauna never felt so good.

May 29th -- Sheridan House -- Columbus, OH
w/ Old Worlds
...thanks Heather and all your awesome housemates.

May 30th -- Trumbullplex -- Detroit, MI
w/ Oatmeal, Joshua Allen, This Shipwreck
...thanks Jhon and everyone in the community for the hospitality and poems. Seeing Detroit was incredible.

May 31st -- Duck Island -- Cleveland, OH
w/ Theodore Vril and Matt Valarino's band of all-stars
...Ted Vril makes his own reverb, his own pedals, and his own PA and microphones. He also writes some of the most haunting creeped-out murder ballads and blues, and plays in the legendary Scarcity of Tanks. Also, thanks to Lauren for letting us sleep on her floor and for the ceramic strawberry jar. We ate at Sokolowski's, so good.

June 1st -- Bela Dubby -- Cleveland, OH
...we played after the weekly stand-up comedy night, it was a time. Someone told a hilarious joke about going to Big Lots. I loved the place, though, and found a cool blue cowgirl hat outside.

June 2nd -- Boulder Coffee Co. -- Rochester, NY
...Big thanks to BC Likes You!

June 3rd -- 51 3rd -- Troy, NY
w/ C. Ryder Cooley AKA Fall Harbor
...thanks much to Nathan for everything, including the awesome sleeping loft and telling us where the good pizza is! And Ryder's spooky bird songs were wonderful.

June 6th -- The Elevens -- Northampton, MA
w/ School for the Dead, De Osos, Whistlejacket, and The Fauns

June 7th -- HILLSTOCK! -- Brooklyn, NY
w/ Good Night & Good Morning, Royal Osprey (formerly Twin Cats), Drew and the Medicinal Pen, Vultures, Hanz Bronze, Peace, Loving, ACLU Benefit, Elizabeth Butters, Those Galloping Hordes, A.W. Feldt, Shai Erlichman, Laura Stevenson & The Cans, Emilyn Brodsky, Phoebe Kreutz, Don Lennon, and Archipelago
...hung out with old friend BJ Rubin at this amazing rooftop afternoon...Impose Magazine has a great series of photos on their website. Here we are!

June 7th -- Bruar Falls -- Brooklyn, NY
w/ The Binary Marketing Show, Little Gold, and Lonesome Architects
...one of my favorite shows in a long time! Thanks, Andy Bodor and BJ Rubin!

June 8th -- PA's Lounge -- Somerville, MA
w/ Eric Carbonara and The Paper Hats
...saw old friends Steff and Ian Brady, ate Indian food, Love. Thanks to Jen Strickland and the nice lady running sound.

June 9th -- AS220 -- Providence, RI
w/ Tallahassee

June 10th -- Green Line Cafe -- Philadelphia, PA
w/ Lillie Ruth Bussey and Emily Bate
...thanks Rich for having us and Emily for giving us a place to sleep! This was a time.

June 11th -- Cider Haus -- Baltimore, MD
w/ Pocket Circus and Bethany Dinsick
...thanks Abiku for the awesome house show and incredible BBQ tofu stuff.

June 12th -- Big Bear Cafe -- Washington, DC
w/ The Andalusians and Petworth
...A huge thank you to Basla and The Andalusians, can't wait to see you guys again in Northampton!

June 13th -- Nightlight -- Chapel Hill, NC
...Canon Pence! Thanks for the burritos and the decade of friendship. :)

June 14th -- My Favorite Things Record Store -- Greensboro, NC
w/ Adam Thorn
...the sweetest record store I have been to in a while. This show was a good time. Thanks Jackson, Adam, Josh, and everyone else.

June 15th -- Acoustic Coffeehouse -- Johnson City, TN
...The folks at the Acoustic Coffeehouse gave us a ton of food, broadcast the show online, let us sleep in the theater next door. Thanks, Curt, Jim, and everyone working there.

June 16th -- Bobo Gallery -- Asheville, NC
w/ Sparrow of Old Horsey Slideshow and The Legacy of Kathleen Kennedy

June 17th -- Day off, drove to Nashville in a huge storm, the sky covered with strands of purple lightning.

June 18th -- Kelli's House -- Nashville, TN
w/ Arclyte and Mass at Dawn
...Big thanks to Kelli for the show, and for showing us around the archives and behind-the-scenes at the Country Music Hall of Fame. This was one of our favorite days on tour. And thanks to Kyle and Adrian for housing us and letting us watch a movie while the storm calmed down.

June 19th -- The Brick House --> The Lounge -- Louisville, KY

June 20th -- CPR --> Chaosome -- Lexington, KY
w/ Sound and Vision
...thanks Darin and your wonderful family for the hospitality and trampoline!

June 21st -- Gary's House -- Blacksburg, VA
w/ Dear Olive and Little Quick Heart
...thanks Gary and your family for the organic greens, the venison, and the music!

June 22nd -- Twin Oaks Community -- Louisa, VA
...Thank you so much, Kayde, for having us visit this amazing community, for sharing its gorgeous gardens, communal spaces, food, cheese!, and music. We can't wait to come back.

...and back home.

More soon,
xoJasmine

Cabinet of Natural Curiosities Reviews

2009-07-07T12:23:00.000-07:00

Dear readers,

We're proud to share with you more than a few reviews of the Cabinet of Natural Curiosities album we released this spring. Ms. Jasmine D Wagner and Mr. Alex R Wilson just finished up a 5 week tour and are currently finishing mixing an acoustic Cabinet of Natural Curiosities EP recorded in April. Mr. Wilson is in the midst of writing new SON CATS songs out on the back porch. In the meantime, we're proud to share a few words writers had to say about Cabinet's "Searchlight Needles."

1. Cabinet of Natural Curiosities on Love Shack, Baby!:

"The album is not dead. Searchlight Needles is more than proof of that; it is perhaps a shrine to the essence of the album by a gifted and exquisitely articulate singer-songwriter/poet, Jasmine Dreame Wagner. Based in Missoula, MT and Brooklyn, NY, she makes music that is “psychedelic-tinged Americana with elements of electronica and ambient sound.” I honestly could not describe it better than her agent has there. And don’t find that bewildering or off-putting, it’s beautiful and haunting and I haven’t stopped listening to it for five days now. In fact I’m so attached to this CD that I really had to kick myself to write this review. Somehow it felt like I was letting it go, out into the world and out of my grasp… and that had a certain sadness about it because it’s such a tender, intimate collection of songs,… I wanted it to remain mine, all mine..." (READ MORE)

2. Cabinet of Natural Curiosities on BLASTITUDE.COM:

"I'll admit, at first glance I didn't take Jasmine Dreame Wagner and her band, the Cabinet of Natural Curiosities, too seriously. The whole presentation kinda struck me as the Next Freak-Folk Buzz-Bin Chanteuse In Waiting. I mean she looks the part, and her name is Jasmine Dreame, and so on, but then she sent along a couple CDRs (Vineland and Glass vs. Grass) and the packaging was excellent (envelopes, hand-made paper designs, delicate) so I played 'em and not only was the singing/songwriting/playing not bad at all, the Glass vs. Grass disc featured some real extended, jammy and spacey tracks that were mostly instrumental except for her semi-wordless space coos.... not your typical singer/songwriter fare. Now this disc comes along and it's a little more completely song-oriented, a little more typical, though there is one 7-minute jam that fits the ego-dissolution bill nicely, and like I said her songs aren't bad at all, and the band is good too (love the sparse organ accompaniment on "For Sparrow," for example). Ms. Teare also sent along a book of poetry called Charcoal, and it's a real pro job (on For Arbors Press), rather thick with a good 60 or 70 poems, and damn, she's a serious poet as well. So, not to worry, there's plenty of substance here to go with the style." (READ MORE)

3. Cabinet of Natural Curiosities on Milk Milk Lemonade:

"We have one of the sweetest songs in recent memory from Missoula, Montana (and/or Brooklyn, NY) musician Jasmine Dreame Wagner. Her music project is Cabinet of Natural Curiosities and the song featured today belongs to the latest full-length album, titled Searchlight Needles, which was recently released through Missoula label For Arbors / For Satellites. The next live performance will take place May 12 at local venue The Laboratory as Jasmine kicks off a string of summer dates that will bring her through the Great Lakes (midwest to us) region and beyond. For a list of tour stops along the way and to get an earful of what has us completely smitten, stop in for a visit to the Cabinet of Natural Curiosities myspace page. Yeah, it really is that good." (READ MORE)

4. Cabinet of Natural Curiosities on Laughing Evergreens:

"As another week draws to its inevitable conclusion, I find myself increasingly withdrawing from some of my former life's highlights. Perhaps it is the constant haze caused by lack of sleep or the transmutation of long partially dormant feelings, but I just want to get out of here, my reality. To aid me in this and help me imagine myself curled amid the branches of a huge green tree, just feeling the smooth bark, smelling the leaves and watching a green and golden world from above, requires a dream. And not just any kind of a dream: Jasmine Dreame Wagner, also known as Cabinet of Natural Curiosities. As her moniker implies, her works reveal a trove of natural curiosities and wonders, mainly of the folk-psychedelics kind, but not limited to it." (READ MORE)

5. Cabinet of Natural Curiosities on Delicious Scopitone:

"Nous sommes loin du vacarme et de l’expérimentale quand Jasmine Dreame Wagner vient poser sa voix avec autant de délicatesse sur les mélopées composées par Cabinet of Natural Curiosities. Pourquoi vouloir choisir un ailleurs quand il y a tant à recevoir de l’instant?" (READ MORE)

6. Cabinet of Natural Curiosities on Das Klienicum:

"cabinet of natural curiosities, einmal schreib ich es noch. blöder name. manchmal verfolge ich dann solche hinweise gar nicht mehr. aber man muss sich ja auch nicht so mädchenhaft haben. apropos mädchen. hinter dem pseudonym versteckt sich jasmine dreame wagner und weiß mit ganz anmutiger geste zu gefallen. es sind einige verstellte tunes dabei, aber durchhören, freunde, die meisten cuts sind überaus anschmiegsam, gut verdaulich. aber nicht gänzlich ohne wahrnehmbare allüren, schwächen und absacker. ganz mein wetter, wie sie da jungmädchenhaft und doch wissend über all die dinge singt, von denen man meint schon zu wissen. hier ein schweißband überm bauch, dort die sonnenflecken auf der stirn. wie die fotos, die ich von ihr sah. auf manchen meinte man eine schönheit zu sehen, wie sie allenfalls für new soul sängerinnen gelten könnte, auf anderen aber diese trügerische hässlichkeit, das verbiesterte, arme, die trübsal aus brooklyn. die wahrheit klemmt dazwischen. "valentine" und damit einer der ersten ausblicke auf ein neues album, nach mindestens sechs veröffentlichungen, gefällt mir mit am besten. ein shuffle sound auf dem schlagwerk, ein ruheloses klavier und die wundersame stimme wagners. in ferne mäandert eine gitarre. das unverbindliche grapscht nach dir. "for sparrow" kommt noch ein ecke gediegener, anschmiegsamer daher. gut." (READ MORE)

7. Cabinet of Natural Curiosities on Someone To Love More Than Music:

"I'd first heard of Cabinet of Natural Curiosities after downloading a live set someone recorded at some coffee shop or small venue or something. When I got her album I was instantly struck by the unique artwork and packaging. A simple grey/brown CD sized envelope in plastic with a black tree and a moon printed on the front. Simple, but darling. I could say the same about most of the songs on her album. At their base, they are acoustic guitar singer/songwriter songs. Each song has their own little touches, like strange sound effects and unnerving doubling of the vocals, giving the album a sort of somber feeling to it. Her vocals are unconventional, but only just so, which is a bit unnerving as well. The combination of all these elements leaves me a little confused each time I hear the album. There are parts that I really dig a lot, and then, during some of the more peculiar parts of the album, such as the times when the track disolves into a six minute soundscape type thing, I lose a little interest. I liked the album, but I certainly enjoyed some parts more than others. I hope the project continues to be experimental, however, because there were a lot of things that I feel really worked." (READ MORE)

8. Cabinet of Natural Curiosities on WFMU!

Check out Irene Trudel's show (and past podcasts) Mondays on WFMU!

Playlist for May 11, 2009
Playlist for May 18, 2009

9. And Cabinet of Natural Curiosities' "St. James Infirmary" on Cover Lay Down's Songs From The Waiting Room.

So much good news!

Thanks for being with us. More to report on as the summer grows. We're off to the ocean tomorrow to play some frisbee with our dear friend and future roadie Andrew Hand.

-Xavier