Latest Uvulittle Releases

If you are a Maestro Subgum and the Whole fan and/or fond of the musical programming in the mid 90s at the Lunar Cabaret in Chicago , this new release is a treat...

A Three Disc Set!

ANIMAL ENERGY: the *(until now) unreleased recordings of Beau O'Reilly and Miki Greenberg's Hidden Chronicles.

In 1996,Beau and Miki recorded a couple of dozen songs after Maestro Subgum ended its run ...Only half of those tracks were released on an album ...the rest of those studio tracks, recorded by new music aficionado jeff Kowalkoski, sat in a closet , unlistened to, until earlier this year . Mixed by Ralph Loza and producer Beau,the recordings, in addition to Miki's piano and Beau's vocals, featuring Carrie Biolo on vibes, Jeb Bishop on trombone, Vernon Tonge on pedal steel, Jim Becker on guitar, Damon Short on drums, Colm O'Reilly on keyboard, make up the first disc of unreleased takes and songs.

The second and third disc is taken from five shows recorded on Dat tape by Colm at the Lunar Cabaret, featuring all of the above artists with special guests Orchestra Atypica on two tracks, Paul Leisen on cello on two tracks, Maestro Subgums final grouping: Beau, Miki, Jenny Magnus, Ned Folkerth and Liz Payne on one unreleased song and Jeff Kowalkoski joining Miki on a four handed Hammer with Jenny and Kate O'Reilly jumping in on harmonies.

Many of these songs had multiple live takes to choose from but others, particularly the Maestro ''covers'', were only done once or twice ...in choosing the tracks, we went with great performances or rare songs, Beau's wraps were always improvised and have never been collected anywhere. Three discs, a lovely cover by Barry Lohman and Julia Williams, a nice ribbon, 25 dollars.

"These songs can suggest the lost fragments of some great, eccentric stage musical written at the revelatory intersection of two seemingly opposing styles. Indeed, by the time O'Reilly and Greenberg are heard offering an impromptu onstage explanation of their unique, mutually autonomous collaborative process, the listener has already intuited their music to be the product of two creative intelligences with very different sensibilities coming productively together." - Ira S. Murfin

"If Queen, Cole Porter, and Elvis Costello teamed up to write a 21st century music hall revue, it might sound a lot like this..." - Justin Hayford

"I found myself imagining some hyper-evolved version of cabaret music in Weimar Germany." - Amy England

These tracks are part of a larger show called (Not) Another Day, a sung play about process and the ends of things, produced by The Curious Theatre Branch in September/October of 2018 at Prop Thtr in Chicago. In the live performance they were sung by the cast: Paul Brennan, Leo Brun, Brook Celeste, T-Roy Martin, Beau O'Reilly, Vicki Walden, and Julia Williams. These are versions I made to teach the songs to the cast.

All musics by Jenny Magnus.

Engineering and mastering with Ralph Loza at Experimental Sound Studio.

Third release by Chicago's The Crooked Mouth.

Sharp, confident and rollicking. LoveloveloveloveSTOPlovelovelove shows off the band's new line-up to good effect. The songs are focused, intelligent and funny. The musicianship tasteful and just slightly off-kilter. The arrangements show off a playfulness that only comes with the confidence gained from hundreds and hundreds of gigs. As always, Crooked Mouth displays a strong theatrical bent as they mash up old-timer string band sounds with the drama of cabaret.

This 2 Disc album is a live concert from Juicy John Pink's, one of the premier acoustic music venues in the Chicago area during the mid 70's. Susan and RIchard Thomas were a husband and wife duo who were known and loved for the beauty of Susan's singing and songwriting, Richard's exquisite guitar work, and the wonderful way in which their voices blended and harmonized.

This is the second in our "Juicy John Pink's" series. Volume 1 is a compilation of many artists, all recorded live at Juicy John Pink's.

Channeling the lo-fi garage rock vibe from Velvet Underground to Beat Happening, Ladyscissors mixes in a healthy dose of doo-wop vocals to create their debut album, Glitterbox.

Lorrie Hurckes - guitar, vox
Brent George - guitar
Anne Bull - bass, vox
Stephanie Rearick - drums, vox

Hometown: Madison, WI

This is the 2nd solo release by Barry Bennett.

Tribal/ambient/space/punk! Electro-organic timelines. Outer space haiku. Rock -n- roll howls. Sub woofer mattress pads. A mello-tronic caress. A psychedelic cab ride through Chennai.

Stephanie Rearick Jr. - on casio, voice, loops and trumpet. Stephanie Rearick takes her classical/cabaret/pop in a beatier, bouncier direction.

"Like her previous work, Dreamworld presents colliding genre influences, eclectic covers, and whimsical notions. The difference is that Rearick sticks mostly to voice and cheap keyboards. She revels in the latter's goofy vibrato and tinny percussion sounds, relying on loops to flesh out the songs... while every track uses Casios, the album makes them sound warm and charming rather than chintzy." - MadTracks, thedailypage.com

This collection of "Rares" from the Maestro Subgum and the Whole catalog spans their entire run, 1980 - 1995. Consisting of live and studio recordings, the sound quality varies but the creativity, beauty and humor remains high. In choosing the songs we prioritized songs that never made it onto one of the official releases and kept a lookout for the amazing.

Produced by Jon Hain and Beau O'Reilly.

The pinnacle of the band's recording career was Lost Lost Lost, both because of the variety of writers and singers and the size and tightness of the ensemble. The writing was still strong, but the horn and vocal arrangements had reached a new, fantastically satisfying level.

It was recorded at Acme Studios and mixed at C.M.C. Recorders, where mixer Joe DeLeonardis had a huge influence on the flow of the record. Bobby Ray led the horn section with new trombonist Mark Hollman (Mark Ray, the Squirmin' German), while still employing Blare on some songs, as well as Stan Jacobson. New mother Sister Kate's appearances had scaled back and she would soon leave the band, but she contributed two beautiful lead vocals and her usual sparkling harmonies.

The subject of one tune, Rising Like Steam, was Eddie Balchowski, who'd played on the Soft Fist sessions. As was often the case, there was also a Greg Brown song, Downtown, a rocker from the 80s version of Maestro, now reshaped with Colm and Beau's lead vocals and the horns. Band friend and sound engineer Spencer Sundell (Mr. Electricity) also contributed to the disc on electric guitar, as did John Shaw on acoustic guitar, and Eddie Carlson on bass.

The set list for Maestro's reunion concerts draw heavily from this disc.

Originally released in 1991, this 2013 re-master sparkles and shines. We were able to go back to the original reel-to-reel masters and are certain that fans - old and new - will be impressed.

The touring version of Maestro Subgum and the Whole bopped around the Midwest and the east coast and points in between (and even across the ocean) as the band continued adding to its extensive original catalog. The 8-song EP, Jiggle The Constable, originally released only on vinyl, is a dance album and a fan pleaser. Updated versions of mid-80s stalwarts 'Life Outa Wack' and 'Misty Mountain' highlight the set, along with Jenny's Skit Skit Skat, celebrating the Maestro haunt Club Lower Links.

Re-mastered using the original 1/4 inch master tapes, this version shimmers and shines.

Originally released in 1991.

Essentially the soundtrack for one of the first scripted Maestro shows written by Jenny Magnus and Beau O'Reilly, A Soft Fist In A Hard Place features the writers on all the lead vocals with a band lead by pianist Michael Greenberg. Davy, the show's title song Careening Is A Skill, and Darkness, Darkness are among the most enduring tracks here. Originally released on cassette, it is now available to all a ya's on CD.

Originally released in 1988.

In the late 80s, after years of gigging, personnel changes, and demo tapes, the Chicago-based, Beau O'Reilly-led Maestro finally recorded a cassette designed for sale to the public. Recorded at James Bond's home studio, the first official Maestro Subgum and the Whole full-length album, A Diamond In The Dumpster, featured songs and players from all over the Maestro history. Musical guests included youthful vocalist Colm O'Reilly, Paul Amandes on banjo, Josh Huppert on violin, and Pat Fleming on guitar. Steve Hashimoto made important contributions, as did former drummer Johnny Machine, but Joe Tech was the only player who actually played live with the band. Several songs also featured Jenny Magnus, who had moved down from Madison, on vocals (and one on flute), though she was not yet a regular performing member of the band.

Available now for the first time on disc, A Diamond In The Dumpster features a band in transition, but the songs are strong, and many of them survived well into future iterations of the Whole. Chamber songs, rock songs, music hall songs - they're all here.

Originally released in 1987.

The archive contains concerts and un-released studio sessions. We will continue adding material as long as stuff keeps turning up.

Purchase a year long subscription and stream Maestro 24/7.

Up The Wall, is a return to form, four years in the making after 2007's Democracy. Side A is the political and economic side, side B gets personal. Part rock and roll, part sweeping beauty with some quirky ditties and jazzy piano numbers mixed in, Up The Wall is another remarkably original and fresh offering from Rearick. While primarily original songs, the covers here come from Dusty Springfield, Nina Simone and Yoko Ono.

Piano driven songs range from simplistic melodies to complex layers of looped trumpet, vocals and keyboards.

For the last decade Barry Bennett's been best known as leader of the iconic group MiLkBabY, whose alien world music made them a fixture of Chicago's left of center music scene. He's also a frequent creator of soundscapes and scores for Theatre and dance. His music has been heard at The Goodman, 16th Street Theater, CBDC, Chicago Moving Company, Chicago Dramatists, and with his own improvisational performance group The Impending Behavior Orchestra. Through it all, Bennett's music has been strange, exciting, fierce, and hypnotizing with "fiendish percussion chops and otherworldly vocalese. (Chicago Reader)"

Bennett has now decided to go it alone and is releasing his first solo CD, Death to Death! and Other Tales of Uneasy Harmony.

Why a solo album, now? This sends Bennett rolling a bit when asked directly. "I struggled with that actually, when I first realized I was making an album and not creating random pieces of music."

This is certainly not 'random pieces of music.'

Death to Death incorporates some of the ambient tribal feel of MiLkBabY and adds more song structure giving us melodies that churn through our minds, turning and folding and eventually informing our dreams. Bells, chimes, haunting piano lines, occasional Bride of Chucky vocals, some heartache, some profound beauty...

Death to Death is an exceptional work which we are proud to help bring to the world.

For fans of Dead Can Dance, Nurse with Wound and Peter Gabriel

Jenny Magnus, described by the Chicago Tribune as "Everything a performance artist should be: subversive, personal, stimulating, a little scary and simply amazing," is a Chicago-based performer, writer, director, producer and teacher.

Songs From Shows is a collection of 23 songs written over quite a few years, but used in performances and plays in the last 8 years or so. All the songs were used in ways that songs do not tend to be used in "musicals", meaning, they didn't necessarily come out of the mouths of the performers; they didn't necessarily forward the action; and they weren't necessarily about the inner state of the characters. Rather, the songs were used as a way of re-creating the idea of music in performance, not as background, or emotional manipulation (the way much music in films in used), but as meta-narratives that co-exist with the narrative texts but don't reiterate them.

Magnus has contributed to cultural life in Chicago for 13 years as a founding member of The Curious Theatre Branch, The Lunar Cabaret and the Curious School, and as a longtime member of Maestro Subgum and the Whole. Magnus produces her original work (most recently Nowhow, The Strange), produces and contributes to the annual Rhino Theater Festival, and tours her work internationally. She has performed recently at the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Chicago Cultural Center and in Jeff Ryner's American Parade at the Lunar Cabaret.

From the liner notes: The style of the songs is consistent in its inconsistency; the non-virtuostic use of available instruments, multi-tracked voices, and narrative sounds like toothbrushes, zippers, and crockery, all utilized in the interests of contingency and immediacy. Going into the studio, wherever it may happen to be, with an engineer, whoever he (for I have only worked with male engineers) may happen to be, and bringing only a song, and things to try out, has been my method for a long time. I go into the studio whenever I can afford it, whenever I can possibly organize it, and I experience the spontaneity of arranging the songs with a kind of ecstatic excitement, never know what is going to happen. Sometimes things donaEU(tm)t work and I leave the session feeling humiliated and frustrated. Most of the time I come out clutching the CD with a feeling of having gotten away with something yet again, having tricked the gods of Achievement and having made something out of nothing.

Usually I start with a click track, looking for a way to provide a steady underpinning- I had to learn this the hard way, I am not and have never been a rock steady drummer. I sing a capella to the click track, creating a scratch vocal that then serves as a basis for the arrangement. Since my theatrical method is often to use backing tracks sans the lead vocal and singing to that live, sometimes the lead on the recording is still the scratch vocal. Then I put in percussion or beats of some kind over the click track, then usually harmonies, then more beats or sounds, then support music like a piano or sung counter-melodies. All of this is like building a scaffolding on which the song can climb and hang, sometimes leaving a lot of space and letting the lyrics stand out starkly against a minimal arrangement, and sometimes building many layers of sounds until the lyric is the least interesting thing happening. There is no set way of doing it, though; I let the song, the session, the feel of the moment, the mood of the engineer, the state of my voice, influence the process. I am so open to the moment, I have let things like something falling in the background or an errant conversation inexplicably recorded be included and made intentional. The fragile balances between craft and expediency, perfectionism and fuckit-ism, and ability and aspiration, are my teetertottering parameters; I just try to work within them.

Democracy, Rearick's fourth solo CD, is dark piano-driven experimental pop music. It is her most political work to date -- fiercely critical while shining rays of hope into the rubble of 21st century scorched-earth politics. Democracy was recorded and produced by Rearick (piano, vocals and trumpet) with assistance from Edward Reardon (Coma Savant producer) and Jon Hain.

"You hear intimate confessions that balance winsome and anguished singing in an ongoing dialogue with her keyboard, which alternates rock 'n' roll drive, boogie-woogie bounce and a dark severity that recalls classical etudes and the brooding fire of avant-garde jazz master Cecil Taylor...

Rearick's balance of "happy accidents" and deliberate form shows artistic maturity, even as she grows increasingly expressive. She has shorn some precious techno-baroque effects and cranked up emotional resonance...

Her protective weapon is music, loaded with creative energy, vision and hope." - Capital Times

"Like Elliott Smith, Rearick can take piano chords and turn them into a dream. Her mastery of the keyboard isn't just technical, it's emotional...

She conjures otherworldly feelings right from the start of Democracy. The opening track, "Flyboy," is pure childhood innocence, wrapped in the whirling excitement of carnival music. From there the album gets edgy and nervous, referencing the macho arrogance of the president: "And if you had a market for a category hurricane, you'd rev up the motorcade and show 'em what you've got...

Democracy is good enough to stand in the company of the best independent music being made right now. By all measures, it deserves to find its way to Pitchfork and to Seattle's tastemaking KEXP radio." -Isthmus

"Rearick's a genre-bounding vocalist, keyboard player and trumpeter who takes great care bringing together things indie with her classical and art-music influences." - The Isthmus

Stephanie Rearick has been performing and recording since 1993, as frontwoman for Your Mom, Your Mom SRO, and the Coma Savants, occasional side-musician, silent film composer and accompanist, and solo artist.

"Star Belly, the oddly titled third album by a singer/songwriter who succinctly describes her sound as "piano-based classical/cabaret/pop," opens with what might be the prettiest four minutes and eight seconds of music I've heard all year. Stephanie Rearick's angelic (and layered) voice blends with a simple piano melody on "Hymn" for a surreal, mesmerizing and prayerful effect that actually gives me chills every time I hear it." - Sea Of Tranquility

Rearick's work is often dark piano-driven classical/cabaret/pop. In addition to piano, Rearick sings, plays trumpet, and builds pieces with various sound sources live on a Boss Loopstation.

Voted "Best Unique Album 2005" in the Madison Area Music Awards.

This is a one-of-a-kind collectors' item. We only made 250 copies and they are all numbered. Also, each one has different artwork inside. The packaging is a cloth pouch that is made from the long streamers used in The Eating Machine video so what you get may not quite look like the one pictured here.

This is an enhanced CD -- it will play in your stereo and if you pop it in a computer you can access the videos. Also, there is a folder on the disc with various mp3s. It is really quite a nice package and has some stuff you won't get elsewhere.

Pascal was on the very first CD that Uvulittle released, 1996's Live at Mother Fool's so we are extremely excited to be releasing his debut CD. The sound is raw and beautiful -- acoustic punk ballads.

The Nashville Rage says, "...sounds something like Will Oldham and Beck drunk on Robitussin (in other words, dark, weird, creepy and really cool.)"

Sea of Tranquility says, "Take Violent Femmes frontman Gordon Gano, lock him in a cushioned cell with Beck and invite David Byrne circa the early-1980s for a visit, and you'll get some idea of what punk folkie balladeer Pascal is all about... Pascal's eclectic music, his distinct voice and bizarre stories will warm your ears while they chill your blood."
Madison's Isthmus says, "...the energtic punk folkie gets a career boost from his new CD. He's likable, periodically vicious, and ready for bigger things..."

The Long Picnic was recorded in Madison and Chicago using acoustic piano and (sometimes layered) vocals to create a 10-song journey that is by simultaneously engaging, disturbing, and soothing.

"[Rearick] has sharper instrumental skills than most... she's not afraid to shut up and play an instrumental. The Man Who Stole Tomorrow is almost too lovely -- but her writing also displays a grim loopiness she'd do well to cultivate, and on Not Another Minute she sounds like the love child of Tori Amos and Robyn Hitchcock." -- The Chicago Reader

"...perfectly organic..., a mixture of folk, classical music and experimental pop that glides smoothly into the deepest waters we know -- the mysteries of death." -- Cleveland Free Times

Rearick's solo writing tends to incorporate more classical elements and leans toward a more melancholy feel. She uses dissonance and unusual harmonies to create new and interesting soundscapes which are complemented by her flexible and warm-sounding vocals and thoughtful, literate lyrics ("Elegy", "Wading", "The Man Who Stole Tomorrow"). Her solo work also includes a number of instrumental piano compositions ("Folk Tune", "Bagatelle", "Cosmic"). The Long Picnic includes two cover songs -- a beautiful rendition of "Morpha Too" by Alex Chilton (from Big Star's "Radio City") and "Boating" by Bela Bartok -- which exemplify the range of Rearick's musical influences.

The talented Stephanie Rearick is captured her in live concert. A great set of piano and voice compositions that span classical, cabaret, pop and rock.

Music of Madison's Outdoor Festivals

During the summer of 1997, Studio Earth Remote Recording spent many hours recording as many performances as possible at Madison's outdoor festivals. After many frantic weeks of mixing and re-mixing and gathering imput from bands, the final selections were made. The result is "Under The Sun" a CD sampler that shows off many of the diverse sounds of Madison's music scene as presented publicly that year. Due to limitations of tape and schedules, some great performances were missed but this gives a nice snapshot.

Released jointly by Uvulittle and FishEye Records.