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Nautical Almanac to Release New LP, Tour

Catherine Lewis reports:
Baltimore-based noisemakers Nautical Almanac are taking their show on the road in support of their latest album, Rooting for the Microbes, which was released last month on Load Records. The Nautical duo-- Carly Ptak and Twig Harper by name-- have carved out a home for themselves in a building that was once a doctor's office, where they've built their own studio, put on shows in a space they call Tarantula Hill, and released CDRs and VHSs of like-minded bands on a label called Heresee (my own personal favorite being the aptly-named Dorkestra). Rooting for the Microbes, like all of Nautical's releases, was recorded with Ptak and Harper's homemade instruments made of "weird alloys of plastic, leather, wire, and rubber" and is overwhelmingly noisy and brilliant all at once. Here's the tracklist:

01 Mind of Sharp Mind: Fractured/Fractions
02 Exterior Beater: Bluntly, Clumpy, Stumpy
03 Underlayment of Popuelist Skin: Bone Structure Dissolving
04 Reason: Mythology Built Upon Physicall Vortextualation: Step Side Step
05 Widdeling the Reflex Fiddle
06 Absorbing and Distorting
07 Cross Dementia
08 Cohabitation
09 1 Million Synapses Frying
10 Synhapetrols Combining
11 Axis Loop Signal: Trade Off/On
12 Internal Inate Intuition
13 Ocularis

The song titles alone should give you a hint of their sound, and if, upon listening, you think the album is brutally abrasive, then you should check out their live show. Which forms a perfect segue into their latest tour dates. It should also be noted for the record that upon the completion of this tour, Twig will go out on the road again doing sound for a hip little band known as Wolf Eyes, on a modest little tour called Lollapalooza. Dates and places:

06-04 Winston-Salem, NC - PS211
06-05 Hickory, NC - 2468 Gatlin Pl
06-06 Knoxville, TN - Pilot Light
06-07 Nashville, TN - Springwater
06-08 Atlanta, GA - Drunken Unicorn
06-09 Athens, GA - TBA
06-10 Birmingham, AL - House Party
06-11 Shreveport, LA - Joe's Tavern
06-12 Jackson, TN - TBA
06-13 St. Louis, MO - Radio Cherokee
06-14 Columbia, MO - The Ranch / Rag Tag Cinema Café
06-15 Kansas City, MO - Paragraph
06-16 Madison, WI - 23 Productions Studio Party
06-17 Milwaukee, WI - TBA
06-18 St. Paul, MN - Big V's
06-19 Chicago, IL - Camp Gay
06-20 Indianapolis, IN - TBA
06-21 Louisville, KY - TBA
06-22 Lexington, KY - Club Seal
06-23 Cincinnati, OH - The Sunflower
06-24 Detroit, MI - Detroit Arts Space
06-25 Athens, OH - The Union
06-26 Cleveland, OH - TBA
06-27 Pittsburgh, PA - Kiva Han
06-28 Rochester, NY - Bug Jar
06-29 Boston, MA - TBA
06-30 Providence, RI - AS220
07-02 New York, NY - Fort Awesome (Brooklyn)

.: Nautical Almanac: http://www.heresee.com/nauticallink.htm
.: Load Records: http://www.loadrecords.com
.: Originally published: 4 June 2004
.: Items mentioned above on Amazon.com: Rooting for the Microbes (Nautical Almanac, 2004).