Optical Atlas

There’s bad news and great news coming out of Happy Happy Birthday to Me Records.

Their ongoing singles club was scheduled to feature Circulatory System and Sound Houses (aka The New Sound of Numbers) on a split 7″.  Unfortunately Sound Houses dropped out, and the Circulatory System material is already featured on the forthcoming full-length Signal Morning, so HHBTM’s Mike Turner has announced the single will be replaced by a 7″ featuring rare early tracks from Elephant 6 Recording Company projects The Sunshine Fix and Always Red Society.  Imagine, if you will, getting an early-90’s Olivia Tremor Control single, because that’s basically what this is: Bill Doss on one side, Will Cullen Hart on the other, both recording right before they joined forces.  In other singles club news, High Water Marks has replaced Tender Forever on a split with The Love Letter Band.  Also soon to be released are splits featuring of Montreal & James Husband, The Apples in Stereo & Patience Please, and All Girl Summer Fun Band & Cars Can Be Blue.  Subscribers can expect their singles to ship round late June.  If you’re a latecomer who wants to join the club, I’d recommend heading over to HHBTM’s website and sending a message to check availability.

Amanda Palmer’s high school musical adaptation of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (thanks to Stereogum):

The long-awaited magnum pop opus from Casper & the Cookies, Modern Silence, was released this week.  Tour dates can be found below.  Also check out how the band is enduring the recession.

Casper & the Cookies – Tour Dates
05.15.09 – Greensboro, NC – Spazzatorium
05.17.09 – New York, NY – Cakeshop (NYC Pop Fest)
05.30.09 – Athens, GA – Caledonia Lounge (CD RELEASE SHOW)
06.05.09 – Charlotte, NC – Prevue
06.26.09 – Athens, GA – Cine – Athfest HHBTM Showcase
07.18/09 – Pittsburgh, PA – Brillobox
07.21.09 – New York, NY – Cake Shop
07.22.09 – Brooklyn, NY – Bruar Falls
07.24.09 – Washington, DC – Solly’s (Early Show)
07.27.09 – Charlottesville, VA – Twisted Branch
07.29.09 – Athens, GA – Caledonia Lounge
08.11.09 – Iowa City, IA – The Mill

Thanks to Justin for noting this NPR story on the In the Aeroplane Over the Sea-inspired play, “With the Needle That Sings in Her Heart,” which Amanda Palmer has helped put together in her old high school.  The piece features comments by Palmer and Robert Schneider. You can listen to the report or read the article here.

If the cover art to the latest EP by Brooklyn’s The Shot Heard Round the World seems vaguely Fun Trick Noisemakeresque, that’s because it’s by the visual representative of The Apples in Stereo, Steve Keene.  Although any Elephant 6 comparisons should hew more closely to The Essex Green or The Sixth Great Lake.  I greatly enjoyed the band’s first album, Ten Songs for Town and Country, which perfectly melded 60’s psych with pastoral country/folk.  The 5 songs on Felluponastone continue to press in those directions in pleasingly unselfconscious ways.  Have a listen to a sample MP3 below.

The Shot Heard Round the World – Holly Bush

It’s official now: the art, track listing, and release date have been issued for the 2nd album by Circulatory System, Signal Morning.  Here’s the full press release:

Cloud Recordings will release Circulatory System’s Signal Morning in LP, CD, and digital download formats on August 4, 2009.

Seven and a half years in the making, culled from hours of recorded material sculpted in at least seven different studios, the new Circulatory System album is an absolutely stellar document of song and sound. Still concerned with matters of the inner/the outer, the incomprehensibly huge and the very, very small, Signal Morning is an imperative blast of kinetic motion. Composed by W. Cullen Hart while in the midst of battling Multiple Sclerosis within his own system, the new album finds Hart broadcasting his urgent pleas to the world(s) to evolve into a higher dimension, or for existing patterns to reveal themselves at peace within the natural order of the universe.

Featuring all the members of The Olivia Tremor Control, as well as Jeff Mangum and Julian Koster of Neutral Milk Hotel, Signal Morning has been eagerly anticipated since the release of the first Circulatory System record earlier this decade. Past and recent tours with the Elephant 6 Orchestra, the Instruments, Pipes You See, Pipes You Don’t, the New Sound of Numbers, Need New Body, and the Sea & Cake have only served to enhance excitement for a new record from the group. New Circulatory System songs posted on the group’s myspace page in 2008 immediately received favorable attention from Pitchfork and National Public Radio.

Signal Morning features Will Hart and Bill Doss singing in harmony once again on the first song “Woodpecker Greeting Worker Ant”. Thick with textures, layered percussion, angular guitars, vibrating strings, woodwinds, and brass, Signal Morning represents a welcome addition to the musical landscape of this year and beyond.

The band plans to tour extensively in support of the album.

Circulatory System – Signal Morning

Side One -
1. Woodpecker Greeting Worker Ant
2. Rocks and Stones
3. This Morning (We Remembered Everything)
4. Tiny Concerts
5. Electronic Diversion
6. Overjoyed
7. The Breathing Universe
8. News From The Heavenly Loom
9. The Spinning Continuous

Side Two -
10. I You We
11. Blasting Through
12. Solid Forms Dissolving
13. Gold Will Stay
14. The Frozen Lake / The Symmetry
15. Until Moon Medium Hears The Message
16. (Drifts)
17. Signal Morning

Big thanks to Rarn for noticing this interview with Robert Schneider at Entertainment Weekly.  There are two topics of discussion, both of great interest to myself personally (can’t speak for you): (1) what did Robert think of the American Idol cover of “Energy,” and (2) what does the new Apples in Stereo album sound like? 

If you ordered one of the Nesey Gallons CD-Rs (here) and have been awaiting a package in the mail, you should be getting one soon.  Nesey posted at the Townhall:

hi. i apologise, there were some delays, but everyones parcel will be going out tomorrow so it shouldnt be long now. the hurrahforkaramazov.com website will be changing and there ought to be some specific news soon about eyes ago vinyl etc. thanks everyone for your patience and support. nesey

Exciting news about an Eyes and Eyes and Eyes Ago vinyl!