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@sponge_bath

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Carrboro, NC :: admin @softer_recordings

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Excited to be hosting Richmond free-improv savants @elasticmedium on November 6! Joined this time by locals @sponge_bath and Hardface, should be a fun one! Advance tix available now!

Flyer by the amazing @audrey_dezern

#richmond #freeimprov #carrboro #carrboromusic #carrboromusicscene

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heyyyyyooo :: one more local show for the year, opening for the glorious @protomartyrband and @j_r_c_g at @catscradlenc on 11/14 -- get yur tix ✨️🏁✨️

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The Shift Change reception was perfect and it was a real treat to see/hear @verityden and @servertheband while celebrating 25 years of @orangecountysocialclub. Thanks to all who joined the party! The exhibition is on view through October 4th so make sure to check it out if you missed the reception. The remaining available works can be found on our online shop. ✨

Exhibition Statement:

Shift Change showcases art produced by some of the bar’s past and present staff. OCSC has always maintained a small, close team, made up of many local artists and musicians. As the show’s title suggests, Shift Change recognizes the exciting work these individuals are doing when they’re not on the clock at OCSC.

FEATURING:
Jamie McPhail (@jmcencaustic)
Ron Liberti (@ron.liberti)
Charles Chace (@harleshace)
Dylan Traister (@dylans_ceramics)
Harrison Haynes (@harrison___haynes)
Bart Moyers (@bvmoyers)
Laura King (@lkbroiler)
Richard Stilwell (@stilwell71)
Tallulah Cloos (@tcloos_)

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configuring in all sorts of ways for the remaining shows this year -- but this evening is a full family jam at carrboro's @peel_gallery for the fine associates of @orangecountysocialclub 6pm -9pm. 25 years is a long time to be holding this town down >> come buy some art and give thanks. our bud @stilwell71 , whose images were used for the wet glass LP artwork, will have prints for sale ⚡️see you in the back lot

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🚨ANNOUNCING🚨
Brief Being, CS, SFRC011
(Shipping Oct. 15, 2026)

When we consider New Age music and whatever it might mean in the present moment, we have to reckon with the fact that the lofty goals of its inception — e.g., vibrational up-shifts, awakening into the universal consciousness, cosmic unity, spiritual oneness, inner peace, etc. — have been largely unattainable for not only the vast majority of listeners, but also everyone. Rather than realizing the utopian ideals heralded by New Age music, we are all forced through the meat grinder of modernity, a maelstrom of anxiety, isolation, desperation, precarity, and brutality. The vibrational up-shift has revealed itself as an illusion leading to a very dark place. Any therapeutic benefit afforded by New Age music is obliterated by the horrific weight of the present.

Enter Brief Being, a four piece ensemble out of Greenville, North Carolina. They wield the gongs, bells, chimes, and rattles that have historically been used to produce the more improvisational iterations of this music. However, their eponymous first recording offers little to listeners who may expect solace or a therapeutic experience typically derived from the more saccharine New Age idioms. Instead, they give us sixty minutes of sparse instrumentation punctuated by intense, foreboding gong work, hypnotic hand drums, and portentous crescendos of alien resonance. A veiled sonic malevolence permeates this work, forcing the listener to surrender to an unknown force beckoning from the shadows of the future.

It is a New Age music that affirms the calamitous present rather than projecting itself upon some imagined utopia that has never and will never exist. If it does portend a future, there is no guarantee of something better. Only the thin assurance that the only way out is through.

We enter the unknown together.
—-———
Recorded at home on February 7–8 and May 31, 2026, in Greenville, North Carolina.

Instruments: bells, chimes, cymbals, drums, gongs, rattles, shakers, singing bowls, triangles, crystal pyramids, wave drums, dried grasses, leaves, and sticks

Caretakers: Justin, Nathan, Megan, Casey

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🚨ANNOUNCING 🚨

Zach Rowden, LP, 𝘛𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘜𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥, 𝘏𝘶𝘦𝘴 𝘜𝘯𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘯, SFRC010 (shipping Oct. 15)

A tape loop repeating, posing mundane questions to the listener: “Am I different because you are different from one moment to the next; or, am I different because I am different from myself from one moment to the next?” It is hard to tell. The ebb and flow of difference and repetition always produces a psychedelic interrogation. Where were you when you first heard me? Who were you when you first heard me? Are you still there? Are you still the same person? Breathing in and out is sort of similar. Something we do continuously as a matter of survival. One breath is not so different from the next, but each breath is also a seemingly singular event, a repetition bleeding into its own repetition. Is listening any different? One sound bleeding into the next, as if beginnings and endings fail to matter. These cycles have always existed in one way or another. All points of discontinuity are an illusion hiding a fundamental continuity that is also always different from itself. Tape loop as metaphor for Being.

Zach Rowden’s (Tongue Depressor, Red Yellow Blue Green Black, Lead Mask, Wind Scour, Crazy Doberman, et al) 𝘛𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘜𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥, 𝘏𝘶𝘦𝘴 𝘜𝘯𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘯 gestures towards these abstractions. An album of repeating fits and starts; a broken machine of repetition and difference dissolving into infinity. Moments of beauty, imperfection, and vacuity, hanging together like old friends reconnecting after a few years of separation. The friends retell the same stories and jokes over and over; each time it hits a little different. Sometimes laughter. Sometimes tears. The embodiment of a locked groove. These recordings were generated by harnessing previously made recordings from Rowden’s archive or found scraps of other people’s old tapes. Recorded from 2024-2025, it marks a particularly scathing and uncanny period of Rowden’s life. Yet, it exhibits a supreme focus and patience, reflective of his continuous practice and refinement of magnetic tape manipulations.

———————

Tapes: Zach Rowden
Mastering: Nathan Taylor
Sleeve design: Alin Cincă

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Nathan Taylor (@sponge_bath) on December 21, 2025 at Lump in Raleigh, NC. Full set on my YouTube — link in bio. #nathantaylormusic #experimentalmusic #ambientmusic #lumpgallery #chadwickarchives

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For today only, we’re waiving all shipping charges on the softer bandcamp. Additionally we made a batch order of CCNT “CCNT” SFRC003; Nathan Taylor “Life is but a Dream,” SFRC008; and Dave Public “Cladosporium Suite Parts I & II” SFRC009 sold at a discount.

Thank you for the continued support 😎🥂😎🥂

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upcoming

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saturday august 1

an evening of abstract sound presented by enmossed and Softer Recordings to herald the album 𝑷𝒂𝒓𝒆𝒊𝒅𝒐𝒍𝒊𝒂* by Jake Muir

starts 8 PM at shadowbox studio (durham, nc) ~ $15 | NOTAFLOF

live:
Jake Muir (los angeles)
doris dana
Nathan Taylor

dj:
Glyn Maier
Karl Raymar [Secret Boyfriend]

*𝑷𝒂𝒓𝒆𝒊𝒅𝒐𝒍𝒊𝒂 LPs are slated to begin shipping July 15 ~ your patience is much appreciated as we've worked through a few printing issues

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Announcing Dave Public “Cladosporium Suite Parts I & II” CS, SFRC009. Available now at softer-recordings.org

Solace is sought by many. Unfortunately only a few can be accommodated. We are always trying to make sure that nothing is overlooked. Our efforts may be tireless, but ultimately they are feeble. Nothing ever means anything. The universe is a continual propulsion and retraction.

Suroh: Alien Hitchhiker (1996)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Produced and mixed by Dave Public using source material ripped directly from his personal VHS collection.

SFRC009, Home Listening Vol. IV, the fourth iteration of an ongoing mix series by Softer Recordings affiliates. This iteration is a ninety minute mixtape of VHS ephemera, spanning forgotten trash and transcendent, unheard sonic artifacts, ~1977 through the early 2000s. Beguiling, beautiful, and fabulously distasteful.

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Some shots from the recent Nathan Taylor / Verity Den show at Brillobox

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