Thank you so much for your continued support.  A LOT has been happening here, so much so that we almost cannot keep up. 

First off, WELCOME TO OUR BRAND NEW WEBSITE! We are still adding a lot to the site over the next two weeks so bare with us while that happens but  for today we have a BRAND NEW WEBSTORE which you should go check out, we have some special one off items in there over the next few weeks as well as a DISCOUNT BIN for special items. To celebrate, we're giving you 20% off anything purchased through the weekend with discount code "r a t 2 0".   

Second, we have a brand new preorder announcement we are beyond humbled and excited  to announce our very next release, RAT089, MARIA CHAVEZ / LUCAS GORHAM "Live At Jewel's Catch One" Cassette and Collaboration T-Shirt. The shirts are limited to 25 and are hand dyed with natural dyes from NYC based artist Julia Norton in collaboration with Maria Chavez. 

you can CLICK HERE TO PREORDER THE CASSETTE and/or T-SHIRT from our new web store, or order directly from Bandcamp. 

"Abstract turntablist, and sound sculptor Maria Chavez and avant-garde guitarist Lucas Gorham. This collaboration afforded us with a unique opportunity to work with both artists and release a sonically and conceptually beautiful sound work. Both Chavez and Gorham are known internationally for their acute investigations into improvisational sound, the complexities of chance improvisation and free-jazz inspired compositional 
methods, unifying the breath of all sounds big and small, and seemingly the very essence of sound herself. 

On “Live At Jewel’s Catch One”, the duo creates a deep, rhizomic, sonic investigation of texture and rhythm that span deep listening through chance operations. Synthesizing the space between Chavez’s uniquely brilliant and idiosyncratic methods of turntablism and Gorham’s fractured, abstracted lap-steel guitar/electronics work, a beautiful sonic adventure emerges. Chavez’s extended technique of turntablism, chance operations and compositional strategies pull equally from John Cage, Elaine  Radigue, Pauline Oliveros and DJ Premier alike.

Our newest release, "Expectant"  from GOLDEN CHAMPAGNE FLAVORED SWEATSHIRT, is released TODAY!

ORDER HERE ON BANDCAMP. ALREADY it's been reviewed in ASTRAL NOIZE, THE TAPE DECK , THE SEATTLE PI,  and lastly  SHI THE MUSIC CRITIC MAGAZINE  and you can read them by clicking these link  here! 

The special editions are almost sold out, last count at the time of writing this there were only TWO special editions remaining. 

"It’s obvious just from listening that blood, sweat and tears have been poured into this album’s production. Each of the tracks function both on their own and as a whole. The record veers between sublime washes of downtempo techno beats over hypnotic, buzzsaw waves on tracks like ‘Sea Creatures’, whilst tracks like ‘Horsemouth’ jar the listener’s brain with snarling, crunchy waves of synth and skittering beats, though never suffer from this juxtaposition. Each track flows neatly into the next, perhaps because of the keen line of thinking behind Expectant’s hyperactive catharsis. Golden Champagne Flavoured Sweatshirt explains that “the personal and political nature of creating art under capitalism has been an intense journey of self actualisation. This is to remember these feelings, this time, this part of my story.” - Astral Noize 

"Golden Flavored Champagne Sweatshirt’s new record, like so many great boundary-breaking sonic works, says a great deal with a careful fusion of sounds. Yet it’d be foolish to claim it’s simply a response to recent catastrophes, despite knowing titles like “3.26_”. 2020 might have been one of the most traumatizing years in recent history for American Black people in particular, but those traumas have roots dating back decades, even centuries. Albums like Expectant, with its distinctly misanthropic POV and pointed discord, speak to ancient queries still ignored, often aimed less at sophistic resolution than release." - The Tape Deck

"GCFS is one of the artists looking to take electronic music out of its almost cloistered existence and bring it to a wider audience. She's a multimedia artist - working in everything from watercolours to digital to create visual art - and she brings the sensibilities of both musician and painter to her work. Her pieces are a type of synaesthesia - generated sounds which create images and pictures in your head. 

This isn't music you can listen to as background or something you're going to hear piped in to some coffee shop. This is music you have to pay attention to. Like a painting which reveals its secrets the longer you stare at it, the more you listen to Expectant the more you will appreciate the atmospheres and moods it creates."

- Seattle PI

Also last Friday, we launched a Trailer and Go Fund Me Campaign for our largest and most realized project to date, MiXED REALITY FESTIVAL, a festival and virtual venue experience centering accessibility through the lens of de colonial artists and musicians. The festival is happening in October 2021, and we began working on the. concept and basic testing in October 2019, and are beyond elated to share the initial trailer and fundraising campaign. 

MIXED REALITY FESTIVAL Trailer:   Watch On Youtube 

Please direct folks who can spare a few extra dollars TO OUR GO FUND ME. We're not really calling on our direct community to donate, but rather share with friends and family who might be down to support i a number of different ways. 

Also thank you to everyone whop voted us BEST RECORD LABEL  2020 in SF BAY GUARDIAN & 48 HILLS, what an honor, read it here.

Preorder RAT090: GOLDEN CHAMPAGNE FLAVORED SWEATSHIRT "Expectant" on Cassette/Digipak CD/Download Now & Bandcamp Sale + End Of The Year Breaths. 

Thank you much for your continued support of Ratskin. This year has been challenging for many different reasons, but we have so many projects in the works that are really inspiring, that we cannot wait to share with you. We are extremely excited to present you with one of our two remaining releases of 2020 up for pre-order now. Our 90th release, Golden Champagne Flavored Sweatshirt, presents "Expectant" available on Cassette, CD Digipak, and Download.  The preorder is up now on our Bandcamp page.  

There will also be a Limited Artist Edition of the CD  (ltd to 15)  that comes with a Custom  Puzzle Which unlocks an additional section of the album, as well as an all-over print T-Shirt. Keep your eyes peeled for these special items.  
  

Black femme producer, Multi-disciplinary artist, and curator, Golden Champagne Flavored Sweatshirt has announced her debut full-length record, titled “Expectant” available for preorder now, and set to release on November 20, 2020  on Oakland based imprint Ratskin Records​.  

GCFS has crafted seven songs of futuristic, electronic-based soundscapes. The tracks on “Expectant” span from psychedelic post-industrial chaos to more minimalist, hypnotic ambient soundscapes. Without ever losing focus, or a central theme of distance space, and surrealism, the sounds of “Expectant” create an unwavering investigation of distortion and sound; bringing the listener into a tense and psychedelic journey.  

GCFS’s “Expectant” makes huge strides in both concepts and feel from earlier self-released works, creating tracks that are both visceral and technically engaging, idiosyncratic and speak to layers of the collective subconscious of sound. “Expectant” shines a highly-focused yet surreal lens into the despair and desperation of an entity in chaos. 

Follow GCFS Here: Website | Instagram | Bandcamp  

Order JOEL SHANAHAN "Frozen Clock Hovering"  SECOND PRESSING on Cassette/Download Now.  

“Frozen Clock Hovering” is at once both dark and hopeful, disorienting and insightful, melancholy, and victorious. Through a meticulously idiosyncratic creative process, Shanahan has created a contemporary electronic music masterwork, bridging ambient and modern dance music. The nuance, care, and intentionality put into these compositions help solidify a psychedelic musical offering worth engaging in completely. The sounds of Frozen Clock Hovering oscillate just underneath our eyelids to sew warm beds as a temporary respite. Electronic pulses trigger huge electronic events, shooting us into space and slowly recoiling back through the cold atmosphere. plunging into the cold barren sea, leaving a faint crease in the sky, like brushes painting a sonic map to unknown futures, when you look back up into an unknown space all you can see is one, isolated Frozen Clock Hovering, " 

End Of The Year Breaths:

There will be one more release going up for preorder on October 16, 2020. We will also be launching our brand new website and web store  on that same day, but in terms of releases,  that's it for 2020. We are taking the rest of the year to reset and come back stronger with more specific intentionality around all of the projects we are working on. We are shifting into a more collective based mode with Ratskin artists Beast Nest and Wizard Apprentice running operations and content strategy as well as curation  This is a huge step for the label and all of our artists as they are two of the most brilliant minds we have ever come in contact with. To say it's an honor is a huge understatement. We have updated our mission statement and would like to share it with you here: 

and finally, we're announcing this special Ratskin Records Virtual Showcase:

Saturday October, 24th, 2020. |  8pm-11pm.   |   $5-15 Sliding Scale Ticket Link 

***Please consider buying a ticket early*** 

RATSKIN Records Presents: A Virtual Night Of Outsider Experimental Music, Sound, and Performance featuring: 

MATMOS   |   matmos.bandcamp.com 

Matmos is M. C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel. Currently based in Baltimore, the duo formed in San Francisco in the mid 1990s, and self-released their eponymous debut album in 1997. 

Marrying the conceptual tactics and noisy textures of object-based musique concrete to a rhythmic matrix rooted in electronic pop music, the two quickly are known for their highly 

unusual sound sources: amplified crayfish nerve tissue, the pages of bibles turning, water hitting copper plates, liposuction surgery, washing machines, chin implant surgery, contact microphones on human 

hair, rat cages, tanks of helium, a cow uterus, human skulls, snails, plastic objects, cards shuffling, laser eye surgery, whoopee cushions, balloons, latex fetish clothing, rhinestones, insects, life support systems, inflatable blankets, rock salt, solid silver ingots, the sound of a frozen stream thawing in the sun, a five gallon bucket of oatmeal. These raw materials are manipulated into surprisingly accessible forms, and often supplemented by traditional musical instruments played the group’s large circle of friends and collaborators. 

Dr. Drew Daniel is an associate Professor at Johns Hopkins University in the Department of English Literature and Schmidt is a homemaker. 

Their most recent album is entitled The Consuming Flame: Open Exercises in Group Form, and was released on Thrill Jockey Records  In August of 2020. It involves 99 collaborators and it’s tempo is entirely at 99 Beats per Minute and is around 3 hours long. 

WIZARD APPRENTICE   |  wizard-apprentice.com  |     wizardapprentice.bandcamp.com 

WIZARD APPRENTICE (pronouns: she and/or they) is a music producer, live performer, and video artist. As a highly sensitive introvert, her multimedia projects are strategies for managing an overwhelming world. Her music is a combination of lyrical precision, minimalistic composition, and technically-amateurish charm. She creates media that takes advantage of user-friendly technology, skipping time consuming learning curves to focus on inventing highly relatable language for subtle personal experiences. She’s not a gear-head, rather, a digital folk artist who vividly and simplistically expresses her inner world using resourcefulness and honesty. Her video work incorporates green screen graphics, digital puppetry, and compositing to produce imagery that’s cerebral, campy, and hypnotic. She combines song and video to create multimedia live performances that explore intimate emotional themes. 

“Carter’s singing harkens to that of a Catholic psalm or some sort of postmodern plainsong. Comparisons to Laurie Anderson would be appropriate. Although where Anderson confronts culture with a sideways glance, carter is entangled and entranced in the eccentric minutiae of her own psyche.” - The Wire, November 2018 

DAX PIERSON  |  daxpierson.bandcamp.com   |   ratakin.org/artists/daxpierson.html 

Dax Pierson is a musician/producer who has called the East Bay home for 20 years. He was co-founder of the bands Subtle and 13 & God, a touring member of left of center hip-hop group Themselves and an associate of the Anticon collective. In 2005 Subtle encountered black ice in the middle of the country while on tour and flipped over, leaving Dax with a spinal cord injury in the 5th and 6th vertebrae. Since his individual fingers are now paralyzed, Dax has switched to using a laptop controlled with iPad apps in order to produce. The last 12 years have been spent exploring the possibilities that technology could offer, often with time-consuming learning curves. His work is currently informed by limitations, college radio segues, hip-hop, ‘90s post-rock, odd time signatures, new techno, ambient drones, bobbing head beats and sentimentality. Dax released "Live In Oakland"  to critical acclaim on R Ratskin in2019 and has a brand new LP due out on Ratskin Records  / Dark Entries Records in early 2021.  

JEFF CAREY   |  http://jeffcarey.foundation-one.org   |   https://jeffcarey.bandcamp.com 

He is an active member of Baltimore's music scene. He organizes local concerts for touring electronic musicians and is a co-curator of the High Zero Festival for improvised and experimental music and for the Diffusion Festival for electronic multichannel music. 

CORAL REMAINS   |   coralremains.bandcamp.com 

(ritual for Jsun featuring RK & MD )  CORAL REMAINS  is a post industrial sound and sculptural installation personifying the trash island in the pacific gyre. Spawning from a hybrid of human DNA and trash, CORAL REMAINS is a dystopian, amalgamated magnification of failed civilizations, spliced rogue technologies gone awry spawning dark pulses of technological neurosis and inner psychosis . When fish put fin to sand then you'll understand, fish can carry guns. CORAL REMAINS represents the last molecule before total conversion of humans into futuristic trash receptacles. Human, your skull will be in a museum.  Continuum invoking of Jsun Alien who left this mortal coil on December 2, 2016.  

DJ HEADBOOGLE  |  headboggle.bandcamp.com 

(intro & outro) 

Derek Gedalecia, a.k.a. Headboggle, has been performing electronic keyboard-based soundscapes for several years in the Bay Area in over a hundred local performances at venues ranging from GTK to YBCA. Incorporating lowbrow with highbrow art, music, and comedy, Head Boggle’s intent is to fuse together a new ecstatic improvisational performance style with a carefully crafted musical underbed. In his formative years, Gedalecia studied classical and ragtime piano from noted ragtime composer/revivalist Dr. Brian Dykstra. . 

Streaming Links: 

youtube.com/c/proartsgalleryofficial 

youtube.com/c/ratskinrecordsofficial 

RSVP to Facebook Event 

We will also be PREMIERING a trailer for a new project we are working on the Ratskin Records Mixed Reality Festival, a VR Festival Centering Accessibility,  co produced by Tieraney Carter and Sharmi Basu.

Fall 2020 Mission Statement.   

Ratskin Records is a collective record label and archival imprint championing de colonial experimental music centered in the Bay Area. We focus on LGBTQ+, Black, Native, POC, and disabled artists who create work that is sonically and politically pushing boundaries toward liberation. We work together to create an alternative to an industry that has historically exploited and devalued artist labor and requires artists to exhaust themselves to fulfill their life’s passion. We see the work of de colonial artists as world-building activism that centers empathy and basic human needs. The crux of our work is centered in engaging the healing power of sound for communities in struggle.    

Our goal is to pay and provide material resources for artists whose work lies on the margins of mainstream consumption. Our work is multifaceted in that we take multiple avenues to address issues around accountability, accessibility, racism, transphobia, and other systems of oppression. Ratskin is curation centered in its practice and provides resources for artists to create self-determined spaces.    - Sharmi Basu, Tieraney Carter, Michael Daddona , 2020  

Thank you to everyone who pre-ordered our newest release, Joel Shanahan "Frozen Clock H\overing". The support was overwhelming and the double- cassette edition is already sold out! We were able to donate all of the pre-order proceeds to the Black Trans Travel Fund, and Survived and Punished. Make sure to click the link to find out more about both of those organizations. 

Although the cassette is sold out, you can still grab the pre-order in digital form

PREORDER "FROZEN CLOCK HOVERING" HERE. 

For the next Bandcamp Day,  September 4 we are announcing our two newest releases for pre-order. These are both brand new artist we have never worked with before, and we are really excited to share these wonderful works with you, for your help and SUPPORT allows us to continue going and releasing physical and digital media through these monumental uncertainties.  We are excited to be launching a brand new website, and online store. It's a much cleaner, more user-friendly version of the old site with a lot of improvements we're really excited about and a lot less broken links as well. 

Both of these will be extremely limited and you will prob want to preorder if you want to purchase, stay tuned tuned up with our mailing list, which is where we drop the info first.

We also have a few Custom One-Off TOTE BAGS left and a few  LP BUNDLE Starker Packs in Our Bandcamp Store. 

IT'S LIVE!  RATSKIN RECORDS is proud to announce our 84th release, JOEL SHANAHAN "Frozen Clock Hovering"  Double Cassette Album Art Edition Preorder! 

PREORDER HERE! 

We are beyond excited to be releasing this breathtakingly stunning and heart-felt work of contemporary/future electronic music from Portland-based producer Joel Shanahan (Golden Donna, Auscultation, Puritan Waste, et al.) “Frozen Clock Hovering” takes the form of two sixty-minute cassettes housed in an elaborate box-set / art-edition style packaging, as well as digital download. 

For his first release for Ratskin, Shanahan presents a prescient double full-length cassette album spanning mixed-genre electronics with heavy cinematic overtones. Fresh off his LP as Auscultation for the 100% Silk label, Shanahan's newest release under his own name, "Frozen Clock Hovering" explores the complex, esoteric rhythmic zones, sewing dense forests of electronic drones all in crescendo, heavily mixed with lush, otherworldly ambient spaces which, in harmony, act as a guide for the previously uncharted sonic journey that is "Frozen Clock Hovering". 

“Frozen Clock Hovering' was simultaneously an attempt to seek comfort through creation, as well as raise the question—"When will this all end?" Musically, this work was inspired by early intersections of jazz and electronic music—like collaborations between jazz superheroes like Joe Henderson and Herbie Hancock and legendary synth explorer Dr. Patrick Gleason. It also draws from other early electronic music and music concrete works, as well as meditative synth work, and the patient passages of folks like Andrew Chalk and Drunjus. I'm sure that to most listeners, this work will likely and rightfully pale in comparison to the aforementioned references, but this is definitely what I was listening to and feeling inspired by when I recorded this work, also Mike at Ratskin asked me to write a blurb, otherwise, I would probably say very little, as I'm usually not one for "artist statements." From an emotional standpoint, this collection was created in the shadow of lingering pain, trauma, and general futility in tandem with the heartbreak of a failing and now finished relationship with someone I was very in love with. It sits in a contemplative purgatory, as I try to figure out how to scale its towering walls and pull myself out.” - Joel Shanahan 

“Frozen Clock Hovering” is at once both dark and hopeful, disorienting and insightful, melancholy, and victorious. Through a meticulously idiosyncratic creative process, Shanahan has created a contemporary electronic music masterwork, bridging ambient and modern dance music. The nuance, care, and intentionality put into these compositions help solidify a psychedelic musical offering worth engaging in completely. The sounds of Frozen Clock Hovering oscillate just underneath our eyelids to sew warm beds as a temporary respite. Electronic pulses trigger huge electronic events, shooting us into space and slowly recoiling back through the cold atmosphere. plunging into the cold barren sea, leaving a faint crease in the sky, like brushes painting a sonic map to unknown futures, when you look back up into an unknown space all you can see is one, isolated Frozen Clock Hovering, 

Frozen Clock Hovering is available for preorder July 3rd, 2020, and released Sep 4, 2020. 

We will also be donating 50% of our sales from this entire weekend to Black Trans Travel Fund and Survived and Punished. Follow their links for more about the vital and very specific work bot of these organizations are doing for Trans centered Black Liberation as well as Abuse Survivor Liberation!

We decided to drop two  surprise releases and do a sale that's happening from right now until Sunday May 3rd on our Bandcamp Page 

RAT087: TYLER HOLMES "NOTHING" CS/DL 

For their new two song EP, “Nothing” Oakland, CA-based producer, and multi-disciplinary artist and Ratskin Records collective member Tyler Holmes offers us two brand new compositions “Nothing” and “ Rinse [Breath Play]” Through intense voice and breath manipulation backed with their minimal yet powerfully presented electronic based compositions, nodding to Holly Herndon, Xiu Xiu, and Cocorosie, Holmes offers two forcefully elegant and haunting tracks both separate from but in dialogue with their upcoming full length LP “Nightmare In Paradise” on Ratskin in Fall 2020. Holmes once again tightropes a complex web of emotion, sound and movement within their own sonic world into a pair of sonically powerful worlds. We hope you appreciate these beautiful electronic compositions as much as we do. 

RAT083: HILLBOGGLE / NERFBAU "Onyx One" CS/DL 

"Onyx Split Series One" is the first installment of the next iteration of our split single series. The first was the GOLD BOX which featured twenty artists featured across ten cassettes, all doing 2:30 tracks. The first is Hillboggle on the A-side and Nerfbau (RK/MD) lineup on the B side. This is the first new NERFBAU material since co-founder and brother Jsun Adrian McCarty tragically left this mortal coil in the ghostship fire on Dec 2, 2019. This release is for him. 

Hillboggle is the nascent "noise-grass collaboration" of San Francisco recorder Derek Gedalecia and his father David on banjo and dobro, debuted in 2013 as a cassette b-side through Derek's prolific Headboggle project. Imagined as a way to explore the elder Gedalecia's own experiments with unconventional sounds in the 60s -- Dwight Pavlovic, Crash Symbols 

Nerfbau is wrestling foam-choked streams and sunless oil-slicked oceans back into cataracts of blinding consciousness. Theorems are laid forth herein as "Error Swarms” and proofs conducted using custom sequencers, laryngopharynx, reprocessed wind instruments, guitars, sound-object graphical processors and Dow Chemical's styrofoam modified with Cyanoacrylate. - Resipiscent Records 

Use code "GUILLOTINE" for  30% off all weekend, including these new releases. We also have some special one-off items on the Bandcamp page which are very very limited so act fast if you want in on those. <3  Big official updates coming soon thanks for your patience and please stay as safe as you can.