Founded in 2010, Powderhorn Cranes is an experimental collaborative lo-fi studio project based in Saint Paul, MN. The foundational member F. James Bardozi, a veteran Twin Cities multi-instrumentalist, operates as project engineer in his low-tech makeshift home studiowith a 4-track and a computer that's over a decade old. 

The identities of the slow-building number of members - including singers, musicians, poets, authors and visual artists from around the nation - are kept anonymous, each member favoring an alias. 

The sound focuses on texture and amateur/crude recording techniques, and most flaws are kept in the mixes. Keyboards and computer effects are used minimally in favor of no-frills beat sequencing, manually manipulated stringed instruments and stompboxes.

Tropical Depression was recorded in a studio in the belly of a 600 foot yacht named the AVTOMATIK during two years of voyages, spanning the waters of the globe from the Cape of Good Hope to the Straits of Magellan, the Black Sea to the Antarctic, the Caribbean to Ibiza.  The Captain and his crew navigated through fields of sullen icebergs, painted party girls dressed in luxuriant furs, hostile Somalian oil pirates and droves of overly eager paparazzi in their helicopters and cigarette boats, shutters clicking and clacking, for a hundred here a thousand there.  The trials, tribulations, sea faring hedonism, high stakes truth or dare and celebrity show and tell is all documented in Tropical Depression's eponymous debut album. 
~Ted Resin

Murder Vibes is a band from Seattle, WA with Pete Hanks and Jordan Evans.

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