Asthmatic Kitty Records releases first DVD: the Encyclopedia Asthmatica
From the Asthmatic Kitty press release:
Though a record label, Asthmatic Kitty Records has always leaned heavily on visuals. Not only has the label established and maintained an installation art gallery in Indianapolis and garnered a reputation for striking album art, but by employing up and coming directors, its music videos often exhibit qualities found only in the most progressive underground film-making. These visual remnants are spread across the web in disparate locations, or in closets and file cabinets . . . until now. Asthmatic Kitty is proud to present its first visual compilation: Encyclopedia Asthmatica, Volume 1.
This is a collection of distinctively Asthmatic Kitty Records visuals; the odd, the sublime, and the delectable. Gala and Zack Bent, established visual artists in their own right, have meticulously designed the box art and transferred their imaginative perceptions of Asthmatic Kitty and its roster into the DVD’s stop-animation menus, all set to characteristic music arrangements by jingle-virtuoso Rafter Roberts.
Nearly all of the Asthmatic Kitty Records’ roster, and many of their friends, make an appearance somewhere on this DVD: from the playful choreography of the Think Dance Collective frolicing in shoes made of bread to the music of Half-handed Cloud, to the lovely abstraction of Sufjan Stevens‘ projectionist, Deborah Johnson; from the haunting and raw post-apocalypse video fuzz of live Castanets, to the crisp color footage of My Brightest Diamond at Northsix, there are visual pieces that hopscotch the chasm between the professionalism of a music-visual DVD to the rabid eccentricity of a five-copy, underground video-zine. Asthmatic Kitty is known for its creative fanbase, and so this disc also includes the winner of the Rafter YouTube video contest. The label’s patent homemade aesthetic is here too, with Bunky’s bizarre yet appropriate space alien video, and a selection from Liz Janes that employs found footage. The Shapes and Sizes videos turn the incidental and accidental into a hidden design, while a video from the Curtains subverts the banality of surveillance video by rendering it magical.
With over 30 videos, the DVD clocks at over 2 hours. Preorders for the DVD will be available in independent retail and on asthmatickitty.com starting on February 4th for $15.99, with release on March 4.
Asthmatic Kitty on YouTube
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=0WYxI6ZTJfk[/youtube]