The three proprietors of the SPINSTER imprint began the endeavor in the Winter of 2018 in an effort to support a diverse range of musicians who move in orbits both traditional and radical. Steeped in music, folklore, and art, the founding mothers of SPINSTER – Sarah Henson, Emily Hilliard, and Sally Anne Morgan – have created something magical: a place for adventurous sounds to call home.
Quilt of the Universe aims to evoke the earthly and the extraterrestrial. Key touchpoints are NASA’s Voyager Golden Record and a “Solar System Quilt” stitched in rural Iowa by science teacher Ellen Harding Baker in the 1800s. This juxtaposition of the heavenly and the terrestrial is immediately apparent in the evocative throbs emanating from Baltimore musician Ami Dang’s “Unstruck Sound (Santu Man Pavnai Sukh Baniaa)”. The singer’s mellifluous vocal stands out amidst a constellation of percussion and clouds of synth. The multiple layers of Emmalee Hunnicutt’s plucked and bowed cello similarly rise and sway skyward in wafting clouds of tone. Guitarist Ilyas Ahmed offers a skeletal acoustic guitar piece that is as nimble as it is inwardly focused.
There are also some raucous and quite experimental tracks featured on Quilt of the Universe. The spaced-out version of 90s club grinder “Return of the Mack” features vocals that are almost percussive in their rapid-fire delivery, laid down over a wash of synth. The noisy poetry reading “I Saw God” sounds like it was lifted from Glands of External Secretions’ Reverse Atheism. The track is supplied by Michelle Dove and Brian Howe, who describe their work as “an electropoetic séance”, which is an apt description for this uncanny piece. Fitness Womxn’s “Creatures” is a new wave raver, while Slut Pill’s “Catcall” features a Dinosaur Jr.-esque guitar intro and a message that damns (rightfully so) moronic displays of toxic masculinity.
Each of the fifteen tracks on offer is threaded into the overarching theme of Quilt of the Universe, and the intersectional feminist ethos of the SPINSTER label itself. The cassette is part of a larger in-house crowdfunding campaign by the imprint, with a trio of original t-shirts also on offer with designs by Durham artist Julienne Alexander (Elizabeth Cotten), D.C. illustrator Elizabeth Graeber (Pauline Oliveros), and the Portland-based Ilyas Ahmed (Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou). Head over to the SPINSTER Bandcamp and snatch up some of their wares.
