adding releases gradually and uploading out-of-print stuff soon.
full length albums
middlemarch
audiobulb records / cd / may 2008
01 dials
02 Suite Part Three
03 My (Mother's) Records
04 Agnes (After Woodland Pattern)
05 Pan-Fried Fern
06 A Small Thing
07 Contractors and Architects (With Nick Sanborn)
08 Suite Parts One and Two
cover by nick sanborn
new ground has not broken, soil last week and dirt today
fork series records / cd / 2004
These songs are all about the comfort of smothering: The thickly layered sounds echo the familiarity of warm blankets, impenetrable snowfall, a mother's embrace. The whole affair seems like a gushy proposition, but Schoster approaches the challenge with consistency and style, backing up melodic content with chops in beat programming and signal processing. The sheer variety of sound sources used in the album's nine cryptically named tracks add up to a sonic scrapbook of sorts, cataloging conversations with friends, eerie voicemail messages, and interviews with fellow composers, adding necessary inhabitants to an otherwise depopulated landscape of pure tones and micro-beats. - John H. Degroot, Grooves [read the rest]
Erik Schoster's debut album seemed to be passable blues for those in a pajama'd fetal position, until I heard a track that is virtually nothing but FM static. "Go On, Temple, Said a Stout Ruddy Student Near Him. I'll Stand You a Pint After" is lathered in a technicolored buzz that broadcasts images of a year in a day. Thereafter, in "So Many Words," this Wisconsonian adjusts the static to unravel snaps that flicker on the beat before rapper Noah Wark's rather conventional glitch-hop soliloquy kicks in. Elsewhere, Schoster and his seven collaborators all display good charcoal sketches desperately in need of color. Let's hope that our man never fixes his radio, just adjusts the dial slightly. - Cameron Macdonald, XLR8R
This is a really wonderful work. A new debut album of He Can Jog is arrived from the US. This album contains a variety of music, such as electric sounds, vibraphone, and fender rhodes that creates a beautiful soundscape as well as vocal-chop (like prefuse 73) and lounge melody. This album has a perfect sense and is comfortable for listening. - Bounce Magazine, published by Tower Records Japan [link]
eps
we all have hot chocolate tummies and frozen faces
audiobulb records / mp3 / november 2008
we all have hot chocolate tummies and frozen faces
01 prelude (two hour delay, dane county)
02 we all have hot chocolate tummies and frozen faces
03 should i take a sweater, i'm restless
04 who knocked over the snowman?
05 approximately four a.m. in january, children's song
06 it will be winter again next year so pack away your mittens
bonus
07 the autumn loud
abuse of power comes as no surprise
famous for 15mb / mp3 / 2006
You can download this ep right here.
we all have hot chocolate tummies and frozen faces
labrabbit records / mp3 / 2003
deleted
compilations and remixes
nexsound records / cd / 2007
I contributed a 'portrait' of Saint Paul Minnesota alongside portraits by Gregg Kowalsky, Motion, Lawrence English, Autistici, and others.
Lawrence English balances between harmonious undulation and
perplexing madness, He Can Jog digs out his rhythm machines and
go all soft and easy to sketch "Saint Paul" and (etre) go from spoken
word to noise in their concisely titled "Reprocessing the voice
between memory, drone-memory, frequency-memory as a painting".
- smallfish records
odd shaped case records / cd / 2006
I contributed a remix of Ryan Francesconi called Our Homework alongside remixes by sawako, greg davis, .tape., filfla, and others.
He Can Jog's "Our Homework" is shifting palette of guitar textures and glitchy, pulsing
swaths of sound whereas Kranky artist Greg Davis' "Aquifers & Conifers" takes RF's
granulated sound and turns it into a bubbling, aquatic place that submerges the listener
in a cool mountain pool.
- opus magazine
The fruits of this particular set of very creative loins is a delectable selection
of friendly and very warm Electronica and guitar-based sounds and comes with versions
by Greg Davis, RdL (aka Mondi aka Spekk main-man Nao Sugimoto plus Naph), Sawako, Filfla,
Midori Hirano, Familiar Trees, .Tape., Sora, He Can Jog and RF himself. It's hard to state
just how beautiful this album is as each artist takes key elements from Francesconi's songs
and weaves them into an organic and luscious series of reworks. Layered guitars, breathy
vocals and the gentlest hint of electronic manipulation all breathe life into these
heartfelt and wonderfully evocative tracks. To say it's highly recommended is obvious and
fans of his earlier work, any of the remix artists and certainly a label such as Plop should
treat this as an essential. Delightful.
- smallfish records
bootleg / mp3 / 2006
remixes of the beach boys' pet sounds record. download my contribution here.
Coming off like Cornelius' wet dream, the remixed Pet Sounds presents a
song-for-song fusion of the original Beach Boys vocal tracks and modern day
electronica, with each song featuring arrangment by a different Hippocamp artist.
And while a daunting (and potentially disastrous) thought considering the melodic
complexity of Brian Wilson's original arrangements, the album actually manages a
near-seamless blend of the two stylistic extremes.
- pitchfork magazine
Hippocamp Ruins Pet Sounds is a set of remixes of the Beach Boys' classic album,
Pet Sounds, by a group of remix artists to celebrate the thirty-ninth anniversary
of the original album's release. Like Danger Mouse's The Grey Album, it breaks
current copyright law by sampling and releasing music without permission. It was
not organised by the net music label Hippocamp, but rather was organised by the
artists on the Hippocamp web forums.
- wikipedia
audiobulb records / mp3 / 2006
My band Cedar A.V. contributed a remix of The Roots of Orchis called A Talon For The Flywheel.
the biggest surprise is the inclusion of uptempo cuts, like Cedar A.V.'s "A Talon for the
Flywheel (Remix for the Roots of Orchis)" whose rollicking percussive sway invites a post-rock
label as much as any other.
- textura magazine
calika - small talk kills me
audiobulb records / cd / 2005
I contributed a "stray egg" called too weak, too weak is the king's bow at the end of Calika's excellent debut full length.
intricate maximals
audiobulb records / cd / 2005
My band Cedar A.V. contributed a track called republic.
There is stuttering glitch pop in Marion's "Unpeopled," clattering burps of sound against a laconic melody, while Cedar A.V.'s "Song for a Republic" slathers radio hiss over a slow acoustic melody, a folksy banana republic commentary that picks up a gamboling lattice work of glitch and micro-elements. As the song progresses, Cedar A.V. continues to layer elements, adding drum kit, squelchy synth pads and looped vocals to build a comprehensive slice of life from the tiny capital of a minuscule republic.
- Mark Teppo, igloo magazine
hippocamp summer compilation 2005
hippocamp / mp3 / 2005
Nomad Palace and I contributed a track called ame to this edition of the hippocamp summer comp. You can download it here.
switches
audiobulb records / cd / 2004
you can Listen to my track called June on the late John Peel's radio show here.
The bizarrely terrifying and yet still quite cute cover art is a pretty good indication of the electronic oddness housed within the Switches compilation; there's enough glitch, drone, pulse, beat, melody and digital disarray to send you delirious with weird, should you wish. The artists brought together here span the Atlantic from Portland to Sheffield via Toronto, LA and Wisconsin before stretching further afield to Europe and Rennes, but they all have one thing in common: a degree of cybernetic humanism that elevates Switches way above most of the 'experimental' electronic dross that tumbles through my letterbox. Absent, present, eerie and charming all, this is very, very good.
- nick southall, stylus magazine
Exhibition #2
audiobulb records / mp3 / 2003
I contributed a track as "erik schoster" instead of "he can jog" (for some reason, i don't exactly remember why - maybe because keith fullerton whitman was doing it) called study no.1 dedicated to chris penrose and eric lyon, for making the fftease max/msp externals i used all over this track.
By far the most restful entrant here is Erik Schoster's "Study No. 1 (For Chris Penrose & Eric Lyon)," which is truly ambient: absent of a downbeat, ethereal even as it develops texture. - disquiet
hippocamp / mp3 / 2003
sebastian krueger and i contributed a track called there's a bright blue sky outside. you can download it right here.
Exhibition #1
audiobulb records / mp3 / 2003
you can download my contribution - a collaboration with terry o'brien - called spinning on a chair in a room here.