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A Riot Of Snowflakes

by Charity Empressa

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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    CD, Cassette, Poster, and 2 postcards.

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  • Cassette + Digital Album

    The new album on beautiful, warm cassette.

    Includes unlimited streaming of A Riot Of Snowflakes via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 2 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      $10.99 USD or more 

     

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Round, shiny, beautiful, compact disc. Just like it was 1992.

    Includes unlimited streaming of A Riot Of Snowflakes via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 2 days
    Purchasable with gift card

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1.
Wake Up Hope 02:40
2.
Red Fang 02:47
3.
4.
5.
6.
Despidida 04:10
7.
Supsudedio 03:16
8.
9.

about

It’s been two decades since Charity Empressa debuted in 2001. Indie-rock scions Eric Campuzano (Lassie Foundation, Prayer Chain, Cush) and Frank Lenz (Headphones, Starflyer 59, Richard Swift), though, decided to revisit the project for 2023’s “A Riot of Snowflakes,” a process the pair started long before the pandemic.

“It’s hard to explain why we decided to make another Charity Empressa record,” Campuzano said. “I was cleaning out my garage and found a ton of cassettes of old four-tracks of VARIOUS PROJECTS, INCLUDING CHARITY EMPRESSA.”

“On those cassettes, we found our new record that had begun 15, 20 years earlier. Who knew? We were both excited to see what would come out of it. Valhalla or the Donner Party.”

“With Charity Empressa we just have the drones on a cassette tape. We listen, try to figure out a key, and we go. Since there is no real inherent structure to the drones, we aren’t tied to anything traditional, just our own limitations. Hence, the process is a bit more esoteric, and happenstance.” For instance, on ‘Riot of Snowflakes,’ I asked Frank to play harmonica over the drone. It was fun to watch him almost pass out. Then it was, let’s try some banjo, then some bluegrass on the acoustic. All the jams are like this. Let’s have some fun and hear what happens.”

At the end of the day, Charity Empressa took a twenty-year hiatus, a twenty-year old four track, a shitty Maxell cassette tape; with a sound, with a note, with a chord and made a new soundtrack. None of this would have been done without the collaborators: Domo Domoracki, Tess Shapiro (Tess & Dave), David Vandervelde (Father John Misty), Wayne Everett (Lassie Foundation) Eli Thomson (Father John Misty, Everest, Richard Swift), Travis Trevisan (Tape Deck Mountain), Josh Hagquist (The Beautiful Mistake), and Scott Huckabey for the aforementioned bluegrass flair on the title track.

Produced and engineered by the band, the album was mixed and mastered by Christopher Colbert with artwork by Jamey Bozeman

credits

released March 23, 2023

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Charity Empressa California

Eric Campuzano and Frank Lenz get together to create magic based on guitar drones.

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