Catpower

Physical: Sold Out
Digital: shiningskullstudio.bandcamp.com/album/in-summer
Catalog #: GN35
Barro negro cassette, limited to 100

For nearly two decades, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma has led an ambitious and exploratory trail through a variety of sounds and genres. As a member of longtime underdogs Tarentel, Cantu-Ledesma broadened the horizons, challenged genre constraints, and pushed the boundaries of the entire post rock genre. Later, Jefre established with several experimental bands (the Alps, Portraits, Moholy-Nagy, etc.) and collaborative projects (Raum, with Grouper). But Jefre has also operated a bit behind the scenes, issuing heady sets of experimental music and film through Root Strata, the label he co-runs with Maxwell August Croy.

As a solo artist, Cantu-Ledesma creates deeply emotional sets of drone, noise, tape collage, and field recordings on the likes of Type, Mexican Summer, Digitalis, Students of Decay, and more. 

Jefre now joins Geographic North with In Summer, a cassette that furthers the nostalgia and melancholy portraits of 'A Year with 13 Moons' (2015 Mexican Summer) and 'Songs of Forgiveness' (2014 BARO) for briefer, yet more potent tape loop meditations. 

"Love's Refrain" opens the cassette by plunging into depths of reeling, Cocteau Twins-esque clouds of guitar and patient drum machine. Riddled with static and glorious, hypnotic tape warble, the song perfectly sets the stage for In Summer's emotional arc. "Little Deer Isle" meditates on a series of field recordings and unbelievable calmness.

"In Summer" exists in a rolling simmer of aural infidelity and physical, circumstantial magic. "Blue Nudes (I-IV)" creates a deep and undulating traipse through various vignettes of hope, love, loss, and admiration, while "Prelude" closes things out with a calm, understated but permeating sense of calm optimism.

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - "Love's Refrain"

Wobbabass

Cover of Kids from the Stranger Things OST using Korg DSN-12 on my 3DS

Stranger Things - Kids

S33D

Sunlit drive, warped by memory. The right channel was dubbed between two cassettes about 30 times.

Nylon Melt

A Violent Noise (Four Tet Remix)

the xx a violent noise four tet remix

Morning improvisation on my Juno 106.  All drums are from Native Instruments' Battery.

june bug

Reaching/Grasping

Unnumbered

Hank Yates reached out to me in early 2020 after navigating the loss of his daughter, Ida, whose stillbirth occurred only ten months after his mother Kathy's passing.

To focus his grief, he wrote each a requiem -- dual tributes which span the extreme edges of loss. 'Life of a Leaf' for Kathy memorializes a life well-lived, while 'The Mockingbird' for Ida mourns unrealized potential of a life not given its full chance.

What strikes me most about Hank is that he found not only reason but strength to create in the wake of such personal tragedy. These albums demonstrate a spiritual resilience that I admire *so much*.

A big part of the support network for Hank and Ali, his wife, is Saul's Light -- a non-profit which provides community and resources to families with babies in the neonatal intensive care unit. Shining a light on this organization was a big motivator for Hank to share Ida's story with us, so if you're able please consider supporting them: https://www.saulslight.org

Thank you to Matt Lowery for his remarkable and empathetic edit of this episode. And thank you to Hank, for his generosity and perseverance.

Life of a Leaf: https://mousymagazine.bandcamp.com/album/life-of-a-leaf
The Mockingbird: https://mousymagazine.bandcamp.com/album/the-mockingbird

Catpower

hankyates