We are proud to present the debut 7″ vinyl release (‘Take Your Time (With Me)’ b/w ‘Never Seen Snow’) from West Palm Beach’s Guy Harvey. The record is limited to 100 copies in black vinyl with individually-screened sleeve art by the band. We have rubber stamped our corallimorph logo onto the b-side of the center-sticker and stamped/ numbered the a-side.

To celebrate The Vagabond is hosting the 7″ release party this Friday the 13th with sponsorship by Sweat Records and the live sounds of Guy Harvey and The Jameses. We will have the record for sale for $7 at the show; see you there!

For those who wish to purchase the Guy Harvey 7″ online, please see the Discosoma Records site.

Click play to check out the a-side, ‘Take Your Time (With Me)’.

Special thanks to Lolo from Sweat Records for facilitating the event and Brian Butler from www.theupperhandart.com for the awesome poster design, which interpolates images from our natural history film, ‘Transmission’.

On Saturday April 17th, we projected two video loops during ‘Sweatstock’; a free, all-day, all-ages block party in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood celebrating Sweat Records 5-year anniversary.  For No Age (Sub Pop), Sweatstock’s headliner, we projected the neon green mouth of a Fungia sp. coral that actively ‘smiled’ over the energetic performance and enthusiastic audience, as seen in the video above.

Prior to No Age, we displayed an undulating, double-mouthed Ricordea florida polyp for Otto von Schirach‘s swamp-freak take on Miami Bass electronica (below).

We are proud to have helped contribute to what we consider was the best music festival Miami has seen in recent memory. Congrats and thanks to Lolo and Sweat Records for an awesome 5 years of organizing and promoting our Miami music scene; the Magic City would be a lot less magical without your hard work and drive.

4 color fluorescent ink silk screened 18′ X 23′  poster by Iron Forge Press, incorporating our ‘Crab Fashion‘ image. Photo shot in darkness with ultraviolet lighting.

West Palm Beach’s Surfer Blood will play The Vagabond in downtown Miami the night of Friday, December 18th with fellow Floridians Holiday Shores. This show falls in the wake of Surfer Blood’s massive national tour and precedes their highly anticipated debut album, Astro Coast, out via Brooklyn’s Kanine Records January 19, 2010.

‘Neighbour Riffs’
Music by Surfer Blood
Pachyclavularia violacea VS. Briareum sp.
Video and Aquarium
2009 Morphologic Studios

Surfer Blood is an up and coming South Floridian band. This video is for the instrumental track ‘Neighbour Riffs’, off their forthcoming debut LP, Astro Coast, out in January via Brooklyn’s Kanine Records.

The aquarium set used has been a two-year experiment involving two species of ‘star polyp’ encrusting soft coral. The dominant species is an ultra fluorescent green form of Briareum sp. originally from the Indo-Pacific. However, this particular morph has been in continuous aquaculture here in Miami for at least the past decade due to its desirable color and long flowing tentacles. Clones of these green star polyps can likely be found in scores of aquariums across Florida (and likely far beyond). The other species is Pachyclavularia violacea (brown star polyps), identifiable by the large white ‘star-like’ centers.  This morph has also been aquacultured here in Florida for nearly a decade as well. During the first year of this aquarium’s existence, Pachyclavularia was the dominant species, overgrowing the Briareum and quickly colonizing the aquarium glass.  However, in the past year the green Briareum has gained the upper hand and now comprises 3/4 of the colonized territory.  It demonstrates how competition for real estate on the coral reef is a dynamic process where an advantage over a neighbor can be fleeting.

Awesome New Republic’s Rational Geographic Volume 1 compact disc art.

ANR has asked us to contribute artwork to their trilogy of Rational Geographic releases for 2009. The image above is a Discosoma sp. corallimorph from Indonesia, and is featured live in our Discosoma 2.0 aquarium at Sweat Records in Miami, Florida.

Download Rational Geographic Volume 1 for FREE via Zip File or Official Torrent.

Rational Geographic Volume 1 cover art.

Erik DeLuca, composer of the incredible sonic experience The Deep Seascape, visited our lab last Friday with a hydrophone (underwater microphone) in tow.  We placed the hydrophone in the aquarium cubicle above and threw in some pellets of food for the harlequin serpent stars to get excited about. The sounds that are heard in the recording below are of the stars racing towards and devouring the food.

From the press release:

Interdisciplinary artist and composer Erik DeLuca, FIU Music graduate
student, collected underwater sounds using hydrophones, underwater
microphones, to create a reenactment of the waters off the coast of
Miami, creating a “seascape.”

The experience will showcase two pieces including a sound immersion
and performance that interprets the sounds of the sea through a
two-tier surround sound system that acoustically reconfigures the
concert hall into an aural sea.

Shrimp, fish, crabs, dolphins, cruise ships, manatees, wind, and rain
all contribute to the symphony of the sea and will be represented in
this unique presentation.  Audiences will be immersed in this normally
hidden, mysterious, musical, underwater sound environment.

We will be there, and we shall report back.

In the meantime, Erik has been kind enough to provide us with a small sample of some of his aquatic recordings.  Here is an audio recording, taken at night right off of the docks in nearby Coconut Grove.   The sounds, which are most likely of crustaceans (especially shrimp) and even fish rasping algae off of the dock pilings, were recorded with very sensitive hydrophones in about 2-6 feet of water.  According to Erik,  he “used a hydrophone with a very substantial signal to noise ratio that allowed the high amplitude clicks to not distort. Ocean ambiance was almost eliminated because of this signal to noise ratio.”  Listen on…

If you live in or around Miami, come out for this multi-media sound performance at the Herbert and Nicole Wertheim Performing Arts Center at FIU on Saturday, March 21st 2009 at 8pm.  It is FREE.