Von Sleight

Von Sleight formed in June 2005 in an attempt to merge analog synthesizers, homemade instruments, electrified household objects, and other strange percussive devices. So far all experiments have failed except for six (all released here). Highlights so far include the track Bipolar Bears off Signs of Life somehow being a huge hit in Israel, a stolen suitcase in Sweden being the inspiration for the video Scandinavia Darkly, the merging of Kaoss Pads with ancient technology concepts on Sieves & Cyphers, the krautrock-inspired, space rock track New Kraut that was played on KEXP, and a video from the Drop the Space Needle album played at a Space Needle-themed film festival in Seattle. Von Sleight was last seen on a viking ship in Finland headed to Egypt.

Rubber Band Banjo

Rubber Band Banjo is a sci-fi soundtrack composer, homemade instrument percussionist, and biology geek. Musical styles are all over the map and include electronic, jazz, avant rock, krautrock, IDM, video game music, cut-ups, drums ‘n’ bass, dub, no-wave, and musical collages. Compositions often involve MIDI programming and playing multiple musical instruments. These instruments include 3-stringed and rubber band zithers, objects amplified with contact mics, Kaossilator, the Mandala drum, Buddha Machine, Kaoss Pad 2, sampler, electronic drums, voice, and natural recordings. Rubber Band Banjo’s seven full-length albums and one EP (Repeating Elements) have been released on FBR and Weirdomusic Recordings (The Circlemaker featuring tracks entirely constructed on homemade instruments). Several tracks have been played on numerous radio stations including Don Campau’s No Pigeonholes, podcasts, Warren Ellis mixtapes, and made into Ninja videos. RBB has played live only once: in a Medellin, Colombia night club while wearing a tiger mask his new friends found for him at a nearby store. The most recent trilogy of Synthetic Biology albums are imaginary soundtracks to a synthetic biology film in outer space and were developed in collaboration with art-science high school students from Minnesota.

Revolutionary Cells

Revolutionary Cells is a Seattle-based experimental rock/metal band combining disparate musical elements from progressive rock, post punk, black metal, noise, hip hop, krautrock, and dub. In the spring of 2010, Revolutionary Cells released the Barium/Buenos Aires (“Ba”) album, a two-part, ten-song collection of songs that can be described as spacious ambient tracks driven by tremolo guitar, propulsive black metal/noise rock, post punk grooves augmented with krautrock-style rhythms, machine-like marches, and dissonant soundscapes. Thematically, Barium/Buenos Aires draws inspiration from Cold War geopolitics, the speculative literature of J.G. Ballard and Jorge Luis Borges, urban decay, and science run amok. The overall mood of the recording is laid back paranoia. A track from this album was played on our favorite radio station WFMU. A follow up EP, Circadian Rhythm, was released in 2013 and is thematically based on the rhythm of the human body and the unseen influence of the larger universe it inhabits. The songs are eclectic, ranging from ‘60s soundtrack (Morricone by way of Secret Chiefs 3), to dark grind-dub, to Tim Hecker-esque ambient noise, to krauty trance rock, to blissful ambiance. In 2020, the second full-length LP, Narcotized, was released, drawing on elements of black metal, post punk, krautrock, industrial and prog to create an atmospheric soundtrack for our current state of the nation.

Bocinas

Somewhere between the grassy knolls of Cincinnati, industrial pockets of Seattle, and the slums of Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl lives the music of Bocinas. One toothless old man described it as Latin-infused psychedelic rock for the everyday hobo. It’s not quite Pink Floyd, but it’s also not Los Lobos. The three mysterious members of Bocinas go by pen names for a reason. They don’t want to be found. Not in this increasingly political and unjust world that is crumbling into a pile of rubble more and more every day. But they made this music and beautiful artwork and want to share it with you. Listen and let your polluted mind float downstream. Two full-length albums have been released here and three earlier EPs are locked in our vault for safe keeping.

sean von sleight

For the Fringe Biology Recordings label head, this album is the first recorded under his own name after years of the various recording projects with friends and solo under the guise of Rubber Band Banjo. On his debut album Life Under Quarantine, Sean Von Sleight plays the rare Suzuki Waraku Koto Synthesizer to create an ambient soundtrack to the current pandemic.

caustic enzymes

Little is known about Caustic Enzymes. Besides the fact that they catalyze nasty, industrial reactions at a rapid rate. Enzymes seem to be caustic by nature. They take things in and then spit them out. They’re transformative.

Caustic Enzymes are comprised of two weirdo Seattleites by way of Airport Way. One plays synth, the other percussion of some sort. For fans of Tussle and adventurous synthonauts.

devil on parade

Devil on Parade is the eponymous debut double EP from enigmatic filmmaker and electronic composer M. Lewis Popov. While he has been composing short electronic pieces for over twenty years this is the first time his songs have been collected in one place and published for the masses. Thematically this body of work is eclectic, including but never limited to meditations on Italian murder mysteries, artificial intelligence, the loneliness of space, and the common metaphorical truths of 80s electronic funk.

Mutant Microbes

A cut-up experiment where tiny fragments of audio are mangled and reassembled into Mutant Microbes. Styles include post-punk mixed with early industrial, avant garde metal mashup, Norwegian icy jazz, and cracked-out pop.

Machines For Hire

Synths, programming, sound manipulation, metallic beatings, guitar, fluorescent tube crushing, styrofoam brutality, general noise making, etc. Two tracks were released on the Fringe Grooves compilation. Demon Zero Highway is an exclusive track for the compilation and Living in the Dead Lights is from Machines For Hire self-released first album.

Borg and the Ultimate Seeds

Borg and the Ultimate Seeds are an absurdist electro/space/krautrock band hailing from Finland. They have been described as Hawkwind and The Residents fighting in a back alley with hammers and sauerkraut (whatever that means). The composer, guitarist, and vocalist Borg was found playing on the streets of Helsinki before finding his backing band of Ultimate Seeds, who we’ve been told are seedy fellows indeed.

Brickburner

The defunct post-punk/krautrock/no-wave band Brickburner sounded somewhere in between Cabaret Voltaire, The Fall, early Kraftwerk, DNA, and Joy Division. The future (and Lansing, MI) didn’t need them. Their full length album and live shows are stored in our vault.

Press of our releases:

“Mycophagist has released its debut album, Fungal Future, an eight-track fiercely psychedelic project themed around mushrooms and the wider fungi kingdom. The spellbinding, inventive and surreal sojourn moves comfortably between progressive rock, hypnotic krautrock, tribal-style chants, and trancy electronic music propelled by heavy rhythms.”
–Progressive Rock Central

“Synthesist Sean Von Sleight presents an album with two extensive, fascinating tracks. It is spellbinding, gradually evolving electronic music featuring dreamtime ambient layers, Berlin-style sequencers and tribal beats. Sean Von Sleight composed this music to represents the various stages of life during the COVID-19 pandemic, fluctuating between slow trance-like passages and interspersed bursts representing panic and a final joyful section representing recovery.”
–Progressive Rock Central

“As the album title might indicate, the band has a a taste for the loose assembly of musicians dubbed krautrock, and it’s tempting to place them closest to audio pranksters Faust.
… has the genre finally found its own Pavement or Half-Japanese?” 
–Pennyblackmusic 

“This is the kind of relatively unassuming instrumental psych record that you’ve listened to three times or so without it making much of an impression, and then one morning you throw it on while the sun’s breaking through your window and voila, it all comes together.” (B+ rating)”
–Redefine Magazine 

“While they claim to be an ‘experimental rock/metal band combining disparate musical elements’, James S. and Sean S. have crafted an album that will surprise anyone expecting something ticking those genre boxes.”
–Pennyblackmusic 

Plugged by Warren Ellis!

“…sounds like a more spaced out version of Fuck Buttons…the inclusion of the homemade three-stringed synthesizers add to the unique vision and sound of Synthetic Biology.” 
–PennyBlackMusic

“The entire concept behind this project is rather complex and pretty crazy, but the composition deserves a special mention for its originality in ambient progressive music!” 
–Side Line music magazine 

“Album highlights include ‘Terraforming Planet DIY Bio,’ which has a great rippling rhythm and clever synths, while ‘Self-Assembling Virus Spaceship’ is a kind of mutated ambient jazz stroll – my favourite cut. Album closer ‘Human Engineered Pathogen’ is a ten minute Orb-esque romp through synth themes and samples. A different kind of listen…” 
–Terrascope (2/3 of the way down the page) 

“Fellow travellers, here on the bridge of the star-ship Re-Enterprise, the star log says “It’s cyber, genre-defying, playfully groovy shit… but not as we know it – ye canna change the laws o’ Rubber Band Banjo.” 
–AllGigsUK 

“Chase Scene Through DNA Wormholes” with its driving rhythm and technological bleeps is more Krautrock in construct.” 
 –Leicester Bangs (UK)

“RBB make music from sounds that might have been organic at one time but now have cybernetic enhancements bolted on to replace missing limbs. These hybrid sounds stride a landscape of shadowy and malicious intent, mixing, dancing, and fighting to unstoppable beats. There is almost no cowbell.”
-iTunes review

“Von Sleight’s Scandinavia Darkly is a travelogue confessional, a trip by viking longship to the ice deserts of the old north. Set your sound machine to “play” and sally forth to the Finland of the mind.”
–Amazon.com review

“Like a gelcap of musical antibiotics, Von Sleight’s Sieves and Cyphers reinvents the whole concept of how to use your ears. An audio landscape of schizophiliac hedgemazes, Von Sleight makes music to get lost in. Throw your compass in the river, dump the oars and let the canoe of your mind drift to foreign ports unheard of.”
–Amazon.com review