We’re busy here at our various Wisconsin headquarters. Mostly, we’re working on a new album, and learning the new songs we’ve been writing. We hope to have one or two ready to test out when we do a small string of midwest shows coming up in December. In the meantime, take a minute to check out Andy’s new project: Exurbs, and be sure to get the tape when it’s released.

http://exurbs.bandcamp.com/

12/15/2011 – Milwaukee, WI – Cactus Club
12/16/2011 – Minneapolis, MN – Cedar Cultural Center w/ Dosh
12/17/2011 – La Crosse, WI – The Joint

Well, it’s that time again. Andy made another collage from our 2 week and some odd day June tour. Some fun stuff in here. Awesome art installations, inspirational radio, and tons of memories. Enjoy!

Download June 2011 Tour Audio

Buy from Hometapes.

Download from iTunes.

Here we go! From the Hometapes website:

Today, Wisconsin quartet All Tiny Creatures, led by Thomas Wincek (Volcano Choir), releases “Glass Bubbles”, the second single from the band’s forthcoming debut full length Harbors. Much like “An Iris” — the first single from the album which featured vocal contributions from Volcano Choir bandmate Justin Vernon — “Glass Bubbles” is coming to life on its very own cassette mixtape.

Glass Bubbles Mixtape is a limited edition cassette that includes two songs from Harbors elaborated upon by three continuous tape-exclusive compositions. “Glass Bubbles” begins the tape and features vocalist Ryan Olcott (12 Rods, Mystery Palace, Solid Gold). At thirty minutes, the Glass Bubbles Mixtape beautifully documents the prolific creativity of All Tiny Creatures, while unfolding another part of the treasure map that will soon lead to Harbors, out March 29, 2011 on Hometapes on 2xLP, CD, and digital formats.

Purchase the Glass Bubbles Mixtape directly from Hometapes here

All Tiny Creatures “Glass Bubbles” MP3

Glass Bubbles Mixtape is limited to 250 copies. The imprinted clear tape is packaged in a heavyweight paper case printed in two spot colors, including a wild and rich fluorescent on the outside. Art by Hometapes.

All Tiny Creatures Glass Bubbles Mixtape
Side A:
Side B:

Glass Bubbles Mixtape Tracklist:

01. Glass Bubbles
02. Wave Particles
03. Snow Removal
04. Reservoirs
05. Heritage

The word (and the cover art) is out:

All Tiny Creatures Harbors will be released 3/29/11 on Hometapes!

All Tiny Creatures Harbors 2xLP/CD:

1. Holography
2. An Iris
3. Cargo Maps
4. Valves or Hatches
5. Glass Bubbles
6. Breathing Set
7. Aviation Class
8. Triangle Frog
9. Reservoirs
10. Tine Feature
11. Plankton March

The cover (and full album art: stay tuned) is by none other than Aaron Draplin of Draplin Design Co., Portland, Oregon. You might know him from Field Notes. We can’t say enough.

Grab “An Iris” (featuring Justin Vernon) right here, and take a ride with me through the realm of All Tiny Creatures and Harbors:

For as long as I’ve listened to music, I’ve been planning the soundtrack for the movie of my life. “Comfortably Numb” scores a pitch black drive through the woods in a 280ZX. A hand selects “Into the Mystic” on a jukebox. A clever scene fades Neurosis into Tangerine Dream, and Fleetwood Mac’s exquisitely-titled “Albatross” is looping through eternal credits. Music is a part of everything, both the product of life on Earth and a dominant ingredient of living in the first place.

But who scores the quick cuts and long stares, those in-between moments that often matter more than anything else? What keeps the pulse of the story of a life? For the past four years, I’ve been listening to All Tiny Creatures. Living to All Tiny Creatures. It began with a demo forwarded over by Chris Rosenau, attributed to Thomas Wincek, a guy I only knew as Chris’s bandmate in the venerable Collections of Colonies of Bees and the brain behind Emotional Joystick, a name that rested in my mind somewhere between Autechre and the Morr Music label. Sure, I’ll put it on. A day later, I’d played the songs no less than a dozen times over. They’d taken root. Some guy in Wisconsin just gets it. Among our extended group of friends, I’d found the music that could stand up to my brain and hold its own. I’d long-loved Harmonia, Ashra, XTC, and King Crimson, like some time-traveler three decades away from her home…but All Tiny Creatures taught me why.

Two years after that first listen, Thomas Wincek multiplied by four: enter Andrew Fitzpatrick, Ben Derickson, and Matthew Skemp. Hometapes collaborated with the band on the release of Segni, a four-track 12” EP and instrumental thunderclap of skill, theory, and intention. Live performances turned explosive; All Tiny Creatures was evolving. By then, Wincek, along with his Collections of Colonies of Bees bandmates and Bon Iver frontman Justin Vernon, was now a force behind the band Volcano Choir. With a mind stretched across projects, not to mention life with a young family in Madison, Wisconsin, Wincek seemed to run on some hidden aquifer of ideas and energy. It was just this accretion, like gasses swirling in outer space, that brought the band to critical mass in the shape of 2011’s Harbors.

Harbors, like any great album, defines its artists and has the power to further define its listener. It’s meticulous and soulful. The building blocks of the record, like Segni, were whittled from looped and freestanding sounds democratically created by synthesis, guitars, and percussion. But as the needle glides into “Holography”, the swift and playful start of side A, there’s a new kind of compositional poise. Harbors is an album of transformative repetition, of music that travels freely between the left and right brain. It pulls from the same well (with a new bucket) as their Krautrock and Minimalist forebears (guys like Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and Manuel Göttsching) and even the greater history of rhythmic percussion found the world over. And then there’s one entirely new instrument for All Tiny Creatures: the human voice.

All Tiny Creatures introduce vocals on Harbors, adding a new dimension to their sound as well as to their entire creative process. As songs began to take shape, they were shared with a close (and very talented) group of friends. These were instruments that could talk back. Joining All Tiny Creatures vocalists Thomas Wincek and Andrew Fitzpatrick are Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Roberto Carlos Lange (Helado Negro & Epstein), Phil Cook, Brad Cook, and Joe Westerlund (Megafaun), Ryan Olcott (12 Rods, Mystery Palace), Matthew Byars (The Caribbean), and Jennifer Fitzpatrick (a scientist and Andrew’s wife).

This mix of control and community is audibly liberating, balancing what it means to take the primitive urge of music and to push it through machines. The result is just downright beautiful. All Tiny Creatures captures the mood of a sunrise, the hum of a factory line, and the swirl inside your mind, all at once. Harbors honors a whole era of musical history, and, as you nod your head to the beat, writes a new chapter, all its own. This is truly modern music.

-Sara Padgett Heathcott, Hometapes

Made for All Tiny Creatures’ September tour, An Iris Mixtape is limited to 250 copies, most of which have found homes. But — we’ve got a good stack left, and we’d love for you to have this souvenir of Hometapes 2010. The music, the packaging (Stumptown Printers Brad Pak), and the process by which it was created (made, start to finish, in a short three weeks) really capture, to put it simply, the vibe we’ve got going around here.

Built around two songs from All Tiny Creatures’ upcoming full-length Harbors (supplemented by mind-bogglingly terrific cassette-exclusive compositions, totaling almost 30 minutes of music), the tape features the single “An Iris” — complete with guest vocals from ATC leader Thomas Wincek’s Volcano Choir bandmate and Bon Iver frontman, Justin Vernon, as well as The Caribbean’s Matt Byars. Side B was constructed around the track “Cargo Maps” and includes vocals from Roberto Lange, a.k.a. Helado Negro.

There’s much more to come from All Tiny Creatures in the coming months, and this little release definitely sets the tone (and the music sounds really, really good on tape). And do not fear: the cassette includes a link to download sides A and B for digital listening.

Full disclosure: we listen to this release every day.

Order HERE.

0:00 – 1:28 : Pennsylvania
1:29 – 1:38 : New Jersey
1:39 – 4:44 : New York
4:45 – 4:52 : Washington, DC
4:53 – 7:49 : North Carolina
7:50 – 9:01 : Georgia
9:02 – 9:09 : Missouri
9:10 – 10:30 : Kentucky
10:31 – 12:07 : Indiana
12:08 – 12:25 : Illinois
12:26 – 13:42 : Iowa