Rafter 'Sex Death Cassette' album

Following up on the ornate and optimistic odyssey of Mu-sic For Total Chickens, Rafter returns his second proper full-length, SEX DEATH CASSETTE, once again donning his indigenous brand of oddity. His school bus-cum-Cabinet of Wonders rambles down dusty roads, polluting the air of pristine studio- calculated-concoctions with post-pre-psychedelic exhaust. He sets up camp in strip mall parking lots, steps out of the truck hat in hand, red hair gleaming in the sun, and offers a taste of his many sonic trinkets and audio delights.

Inspired by influences as diverse as Guided By Voices, R Stevie Moore, Fela Kuti, Lightning Bolt, Fushitsusha, Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, and Cody Chestnutt, SEX DEATH CASSETTE is an album full of hope, determination and chaos. It'll leave you with sweat dripping down your face onto your swelled lip; fresh, liquid salt, the quintessential flavor of late night post-disco parties and booty slinging good times. After dancing to this album, you're heavy with it, like too much cough syrup on a stomach full of hi-quality sushi. Rafter executes the helter-skelter boogie-down pro-duction so gracefully that it is no mystery why those in-the-know recruit him, including the likes of Fiery Fur-naces, The Rapture, Arab on Radar, The Album Leaf, Rocket from the Crypt, Danielson, Black Heart Procession, The Peppermints, Hot Snakes, his own band Bunky, and fellow Asthmatic Kitty artists (Castanets, Liz Janes, and Sufjan Stevens).

Rafter's inspirations and friends are as strange and di-verse as his upbringing. Raised by a hippie commune in Sebastopol, California, he naturally fell upon noisy tinker-ings at an early age. Rafter then encountered critical suc-cess in high school with a band called Faucet, the most popular (and only) punk band in town, with audiences of three to four hundred strong. Despite this raging local success, he flew the coop after graduating and landed in a communist apartment in New York City, then migrated back west to San Francisco until finally landing in San Diego, where he resides to this day.

Musically he has migrated from the antagonism and nihil-ism of noisy punk to the populism and congruence of pop, meanwhile smuggling with him all the frantic noise and feedback squall. Put in the same pot, it's a potent brew. He’s been refining this mix for years; he first brought it to San Diego stages when he joined with fellow KCR DJs/music-freaks for the more- talk-more-rock formatted Free*Stars, a band big on topical covers, original protest songs, and unpredictable mash-ups (eg Spring-steen/Coltrane). Rafter then teamed-up with Emily Joyce for the sing-song punk pop of Bunky, which deserves mention as one of the least pretentious and predictable, and most smiley bands that has ever graced San Diego stages. All the while, Rafter’s been busy with his own secret stash of tunes and motifs, bringing in friends when there are gaps that need filling. Now he rides with former Red Pony Clock drum-mer Lizeth and assorted cohorts to play his songs.

His day-gig is making music for commercials, meanwhile recording every lovely musical soul around in his souped-up garage. He has made music to sell automobiles, cheeseburgers, submarine sandwiches, desalinization, quit-smoking-gum, soda, toothpaste, orange juice, bleach, paper towels, cologne and eBay.

In fact, because Rafter is too prolific to be slowed down by the typical distribution and release schedules, Asth-matic Kitty has no choice but to allow Rafter to release a song a week on asthmatickitty.com in the beginning of October, 2007 until late 2008. SEX DEATH CASSETTE will infiltrate on January 22nd, 2008.

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Rafter - Sex Death Cassette