AGAR AGAR: This is gonna be the year......

02 Cedar Hives by feltbattery
Spring come soon, please.

STANDARD MINERALS

Standard Minerals is David and myself in a metamorphosed form of the living feltbattery.
We will be opening for A is Jump and Binary Marketing Show on Saturday, November 14th at Nightlight in Chapel Hill. Come bring your livers, ears and feet and say hello....

beginnings of Agar Agar package:

Images and assembly by the Art Lodge.

More to come.....

The Twighlight of the Gods

The summer is heating everything and everyone up-Fire has purged and water has rinsed-expansion is the law of the times and we are all swept up in it. There is a tape release of Agar Agar coming out on Madison tape label Multiverse very soon. Look for this over the summer as a companion to the CD.

In other worlds, the lilies are out in full force and there is a resurgence of net-games: volleyball and badminton seem to be on the rise. The moss this year is responding to almost-daily downpours by spreading out in mounds and blankets all over the land.

My son is spouting words and chanting spontaneously. He recognizes moss and 'baby' moss, the tiny blooms that protrude from mature moss patches. He is also enjoying being naked and riding in pickup trucks.

There will be feltbattery shows this summer, Agar Agar finally released (!) and perhaps some action at Eagle Lodge # 19. So long for now.

Well, the disks are here. Agar Agar has begun its slow labor, past conception, creeping down the birth canal and into your ear and eye drums. The disks arrived today. Here's a closeup:

This will be blastocoel sound 001-stay tuned for a release date as Matt and I hash out the packaging. This promises to be a lush affair and it seems that spring comes just in time for a big project like this. However, before spring comes, we have a few cold bones to work out of our system. here's to warmth and greenness and hopeful forgiveness for all of winter's nasty bits.
Until the future comes, go hear for some Agar Agar tastes.

Autumn is almost here and as I hunker down for the year feltbattery will make one more action in space on September 6 at Eaglewing Farm in Chapel Hill. We will be opening for a cycledelic tour featuring Kurt Weisman of Feathers and Horaflora from San Fransisco. These guys are touring on bicycles and playing only what they can carry! Also playing is Matt Bauer who is a banjo playing fellow hailing from Brooklyn. Anyone who can make it at about 8:00pm should come out. And, by the way, its an outdoor show which I am really psyched about.
Directions to Eaglewing Farm:

Take the 15/501 South towards Pittsboro.
Go left on Mt. Carmel Church Road immediately after crossing the James Taylor Bridge.
Go roughly two miles, and make a right on Clearwater Lake Road.
Make your first right down the gravel driveway; Eaglewing Farm is the first house on the left.

The address is 1533 Clearwater Lake Road, Chapel Hill, NC, 27517.

Meanwhile, agar agar!! is chugging along with graphics and packaging. We even have a virtual band photo (see above). Blastocoel 001 will be ready soon....So some to the farm and support these awesome bike guys and listen to feltbattery outside. Bring a picnic.
I will.

Good evening and welcome to the waning summer days. Iron is falling out of the sky and I am quickly approaching the first day of school. So now is a perfect time for all the various projects outside my day job life to begin to bubble.

Feltbattery will play another event as a duo on September 6th at EagleWing farm with Horseback and members of Feathers who are touring on bikes! This will be an outdoor show and promises to be tons of fun.

In other news, agar agar! is moving along and matt hart is close to finishing a print for the packaging and disc. I am psyched for this as you should be too. No promises on when this will be out.

Oh yes, a new site for feltbattery is being hatched as we speak. go peruse the pages and let me know what you think. Savor the last bits of summer and come say hello on the 6th. farewell.....

In the near future, there will be a feltbattery action at local haunt Nightlight. I will be joined by a fellow journeyman and we will be a gnawing duo. It will happen Wednesday, July 9th at 9:30pm. It will probably really start at 10:00 or so. We will be opening for Impossible Shapes from Bloomington, IN. Come and enjoy the slow breathing of summer. I will bring the locusts.

Spring creeps up again-flowers burst open and all the creatures come crawling out of their holes. Feltbattery has been on deep hibernation but now there are signs of a return to the surface-I am getting ready to hatch a CD of a recording from summer 2006. This will not be feltbattery business but a quartet of sun-stroked freakers rocking out one warm evening in August:
Zak (drums) came to visit from New York, Wylie (bass) had a killer hobbit hole of a space to record and Josh (guitar) had the recording setup. There were paeans to trees and plenty of hoots and somehow it all gelled. We're going to call it Agar Agar! I twisted knobs and ran tape and howled into things....so this is going to be the first release for a 'label' that I want to birth-it will be called Blastoceol or something like that.Look out for this. I hope to work with local artists and construct some rad skins for these souvenirs. In other news, the insect recordings are being mashed and mangled and returned to me slowly. I hope to edit and mold over the summer. Finally, being a dad is best thing that has ever happened to me, endless miracles, endless mystery. I am a very lucky egg. Oh yeah, I am building a website since I ditched my Myspace page but I did post some songs on VIRB in the meantime, hope this finds the odd drifters well....

Slowly, a new set of organs are being formed-with every day their tender shape and inner workings are refined. On the outside the world bubbles on and we lucky few wrap ourselves in fatty flesh suits to make it through the cold months. Another year has passed and with it a litany of transformations. All I can do is look back with awe and thanks and look ahead with resolve and anticipation.
In the year to come I plan on finishing and releasing the swarm compositions (a patchwork sound painting derived mostly from insect recordings). I also hope to put out some tinier releases with/through friends. Live actions will also return-I look forward to finding some fresh venues and collaborators. I will return to Chicago in the Spring and reconnect with some of that city's souls. I would like to play in these locations in 2008:

1.a greenhouse
2.Wilson Library, UNC campus
3.somewhere outside of the Triangle

Beyond this my life exists in the realms of school, forest and home. All of these worlds inform one another and I sense that being a parent means as much to the world as it does to our micro-family, one deed is enlivened by another, resonating with it. So thats it-more resonance in the year of work before us.

Listening Window:

Mammal-The Lonesome Drifter
David Watson-Fingering an Idea
Yellow Swans-At All Ends
A Hawk and a Hacksaw & The Hun Hangar Ensemble-S/T
Pax Titania-Cult of the Colonist
The Aeolian String Ensemble-Lassithi
Lucky Dragons-Widows

There is a beautiful little being living in our house. His feet are perfect. This new wave of life has taken over and I am in it-Little else is happening around here save snail-like movements towards a new cycle of sounds and lots of third grade revelations. Some kind musings about feltbattery appeared today in Paper Thin Walls. Meanwhile, Samuel casts a calm cloud around the house, all sounds and actions are amplified. I can't wait to take him outside, let him hear his first birdsong or eat his first mouthful of dirt. Dirt....mmmm.

Now the gnomes digest the dead husk of summer-this is our time-expositions are over for now and autumn calls me back to ferric work. I sent out a batch of rough insect recordings to my swarm. Over the next few months, as I prepare to be a father, I hope these crude messages will be translated by all the other ears and organs of friends. I am also encouraging visual art folks to start brainstorming for a multiple cover edition of the insect CD when it is released. Trevor intimated a vague plan for this but needs the capital-so that means it may take awhile. But I have plenty of time-And meanwhile, I am refining the rough recordings in anticipation of folding them back into the remixed tranmissions I recieve-All of this between failing computers and a beautiful woman with a blossoming belly. Steal yourselves-

We are here nestled in the deep of summer-the corn is ready to pick and the crickets have reached an astounding volume. I am preparing for summer travels. First north and then across the ocean to work with a wise wise woman. Brian Howe wrote a piece in the Independent about feltbattery. I learn more every time I read a prismatic ray gleaned from my sound work. Recording has commenced for a new sound action that I hope to reveal in late August at a show with Rah Dunes from San Fransisco. These guys are going in some wind-swept terraplane voyager type direction and should not be missed. Keep breathing....

picking beets. picking tomatoes. independence. summer opens her arms and everything is warm. the insects are building a monument out of consonants. I am listening. there are plans to play a show in late August in Chapel Hill, hopefully outdoors. Meanwhile, Trevor has more copies of "it had wings" at migration media. get you some before they all disappear. enjoy the warmth quality.....

The days are beginning to simmer and soon the strawberries will be gone. After getting acupuncture, I have the blessed feeling that the air has been let out of my tires. Vision blurs and sounds tune in and out. The approaching end of school means a return to sweat and outdoor adventures. I took a short trip up to Asheville to see old friends and found the place alien to me. There are good people there but I felt as if I was being sized up like a piece of real estate. I did talk to an old friend about bees and he explained an old technique that beekeepers are using again to attract wild bees and help them propagate. We need more of this. Our survival is linked to the fragile lives of these creatures. The ever mysterious Brian wrote a review for It Had Wings forThe Pitchfork-it feels as though people are listening and perhaps not just people. I am grateful for all the ears out there, no matter how small. I'm getting excited about the seasons changing.The world is unfolding to greet me. Best summer drink: 1 part iced yerba mate w/ honey, 1 part lemonade, 1 part water (chill and serve).

hi.
Spring is creeping in, soggy toes and green everywhere. A guy named Will came to our house and interviewed me. A couple hours worth of footage later and he turned out this bit of editing magic for a local TV show. I really like the news anchor's response to my zoological disco references. I've been paying attention to the colony collapse situation with our friends the bees and listening to the forest with all my little second graders. So much life and so much death. It is Spring after all.

A friendly ghost at Pitchfork Media wrote about ‘It Had Wings’ for the 'Forkcast' section of the site. It makes me wonder how these sounds would have turned out if I had grown up in Hillsborough. I have been listening to Ellen Fullman and dreaming about building a long string instrument to be played outside. Buy this record now.
Incidentally, the house finches that inspired the piece ‘a house finch’ on It Had Wings have returned to nest in the rafters of my porch. I am going to try to record them again and perhaps make a video. So spring is on in full force. Look out for feltbattery happenings in May-June and a split cassette between feltbattery and fellow etheric kinsman Myth Trees. Drink mint tea.

Spring has come in the South and everyone is crawling out of their caves. Meanwhile, Meudiamorte is distributing my cassette releases in Europe. Its actually the only place to buy these on line. All tapes are lo-fi forest electronics from my days amongst the deers. They are roughly chronological records of my escape from Georgia- Order one from Pascal because he is a good fellow and runs a great mail order deal. so long.....

Eating squashes and tubers and weathering the last bits of southern winter: there is a feltbattery song, called "sundog" on a compilation from some good folks in Chapel Hill, Austin and Arkansas. Go here for more business about these rad peoples. i'm off to brooklyn to record some noises with an old friend and have a short vacation. feels like regressing back into winter. there are other plans to release a cassette split with Myth Trees from Sacramento this spring and my buddy Zak (aka Caural) is commencing to work on a collaboration we freaked out last August (see pictures here). it will be a cut-up dialog built on the foundation of those sweaty summer sounds.
canned tomatoes for everyone,
benjamin

it is raining. the earth is cooling. go to
migration media to read trevor's musings on 'it had wings' as well as his project Teith. in addition, a strange and wondrous fellow in Germany has offered to distribute my tapes, feltbattery vols. l,ll,&lll. They should be available this week from mediademorte.
Also, John from Nightpass Handmade Records says nice things here about feltbattery's sound.


I will make noises on Wednesday, November 22, at the Nightlight bar+club+love cave+apothecary as opener for Volcano the Bear. make this your last purging moment before Thanksgiving's comedy of food. these fellows are not to be missed and come from the middle of Britain for our peculiar pleasures. don't forget to layer,
benjamin