Chaikin Records, Brooklyn, NY (2026)

08/27/2026

Katherine Young, BIOMES (CKR 021)
with Yarn/Wire Olivia Block Timothy Daisy and Brian Chase
Artwork images by Jordan martins
Design and layout by Sonnenzimmer

Releases September 18th
Pre-order now on Chaikin Records Bandcamp featuring a beautiful limited edition chapbook

Record release concert Roulette Intermedium September 17th

BIOMES is the first official release of composer Katherine Young’s longterm Biomes project. The project investigates various ecosystems of North America and adapts the research into music scores, sonic landscapes, and frameworks for collective composition and improvisation.

Katherine Young Katherine Young makes electroacoustic music and sonic art using expressive noises, curious timbres, and kinetic structures. A noted bassoonist and composer, her work has been recognized by awards and fellowships including a Fromm Foundation at Harvard University Commission and the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in Music Composition. She has worked closely with Yarn/Wire, Wet Ink Ensemble, LAPhil, Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNOW, Third Coast Percussion, Jessica Pavone and many more. As an educator, Young taught composition, electronic music, and improvisation at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Berklee College of Music before joining the faculty of Emory University.

05/01/2026

JON CATLER, THE YOUNG MOUNTAIN OF THE EAST. CKR 020. Releases May 22nd. Available on LP, CD and digital file formats. Album artwork by Jung Hee Choi.

Jon Catler is a guitarist, composer, author, educator and instrument designer working in microtonal tuning systems. For over 30 years he has performed with legendary composer La Monte Young in a variety of Young’s ensembles including the Forever Bad Blues Band and the Just Alap Raga Ensemble. Taking inspiration from Young’s groundbreaking piece The Well-Tuned Piano, Catler’s composition The Young Mountain of the East dives deep into the ocean of harmonic tuning. The instrumentation for this piece consists of eight electric guitars arranged as a double quartet.

Jung Hee Choi works in video, performance, sound, drawing and multi-media installations. Choi’s work has been presented in the U.S., Europe and Asia at numerous galleries, festivals and arts spaces including Dia Art Foundation, Guggenheim Museum, FRAC Franche-Comté, Korea Experimental Arts Festival and MELA Foundation Dream House.

The Young Mountain of the East is now available for pre-order on Bandcamp at chaikinrecords.bandcamp.com

Xo💖
CkR

PS Instagram is not reproducing the colors of the artwork accurately. Many efforts were made to work around it but the artwork kept undermining the system. The photo on the Bandcamp page is a better representation. Thank you!

12/23/2024

The latest release on CkR, Michael Schumacher’s Living Room Pieces, a sound installation designed for living spaces, inspired many thoughtful reviews. Thank you dearly to the journalists who spent time with the installation (a substantial task for this one) and used it as a springboard for insightful writing 💛 A brief selection which hopefully conveys a glimpse into LRP:
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Living Room Pieces defamiliarize and animate spaces with their unpredictable algorithmic presence.
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As the days went on, I started to anticipate these new sounds, and caught myself sitting in silence, consciously waiting for them to show up so I could do the equivalent of cloud-gazing... But most of all, and most to my surprise, I enjoyed this mode of listening, which seemed to upturn everything I expect from music: It was intentional but not deliberate, organized but decentralized, individual but communal, composed but set free. Turning my living room into a temporary habitat for Schumacher’s stray sounds changed my relationship to the space entirely. Lately I’ve been leaving the windows open just to listen. Cage would be proud.
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Living with a sound work is a phenomenological experience, altering our attunement to our quotidian soundscape.
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Schumacher’s influences are clear: musique concrète, indeterminacy, Marcel Duchamp… John Cage’s silence (Schumacher told me, “Silence is the basis of the whole thing”), and Living Room Pieces… moves them laterally from the art gallery or concert hall to the home…

In my brief conversation with Schumacher, the composer told me he was most interested in how coincidental occurrence offers itself up to meaning-making. My week bears that out; it took only a few seconds of listening to start personifying the sounds… This is its own source of delight.
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Seeking out the full articles from which these excerpts are drawn is highly recommended.
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Please visit chaikinrecords.com/livingroompieces for full info on the installation.
Xoxoxo, CkR

12/20/2024

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10/31/2024

New on Chaikin Records: Living Room Pieces by composer and sound designer Michael J. Schumacher.

Living Room Pieces is a sound installation for living spaces. It consists of a small custom-etched metal box housing a Raspberry Pi computer. LRP is designed to integrate seamlessly within one’s home and reframe the sonic environment.

LRP, compositionally, is structured according to a seven day cycle. Each individual day expresses a different sonic character. After seven days, the structural cycle repeats yet with newly generated content and patterning. The audio of LRP is drawn from a sound bank of over 7000 sounds. These sounds, as a whole, comprise a vast and immensely diverse range of musical shapes, textures, colors and collages. This audio undergoes live processing in real time (due to Schumacher’s programming of the installation’s built-in computer) to provide an ever-changing listening experience.

Essential to the installation’s composition is its ample use of silence. The silence here functions as a type of reoccurring ‘blank canvas’ upon which sounds arise and fade. It is this use of silence which allows the installation to integrate itself so effectively into the home setting.

And, on the lighter side, LRP is often fun, quirky and surprising; it is an amazing way to enrich one’s living space and provide some unexpected talking points :)

Living Room Pieces releases officially on November 15th. A listening party is being held on November 12th, hosted and organized by . Please come!

Visit www.chaikinrecords.com/livingroompieces for more info. Further details will be announced closer to release date.

Thank you!
Xoxo
CkR

Photo of Schumacher by

10/31/2024

New on Chaikin Records: Living Room Pieces by composer and sound designer Michael J. Schumacher.

LRP is a sound installation designed for living spaces. It consists of a small custom-etched metal box housing a Raspberry Pi computer. LRP is intended to integrate seamlessly within one’s home and be interactive within one’s sonic environment.

LRP, compositionally, is structured according to a seven day cycle. Each individual day expresses a different sonic character. After seven days, the structural cycle repeats yet with newly generated content and patterning. The audio of LRP is drawn from a sound bank of over 7000 sounds. These sounds, as a whole, comprise a vast and immensely diverse range of musical shapes, textures, colors and collages. This audio undergoes live processing in real time (due to Schumacher’s programming of the computer) to provide an ever-changing listening experience.

Essential to the installation’s composition is its ample use of silence. The silence here functions as a type of reoccurring ‘blank canvas’ upon which sounds arise and then fade. It is this use of silence which allows the installation to integrate itself so effectively into the home setting.

And, on the lighter side, LRP is often fun, quirky and surprising; it is an amazing way to enrich one’s living space and provide some unexpected talking points :)

Living Room Pieces releases officially on November 15th. A listening party is being held on November 12th, hosted and organized by . Please come!

Visit www.chaikinrecords.com/livingroompieces for more info. Further details will be announced closer to release date.

Thank you!
Xoxo
CkR

Photo of Schumacher by

05/10/2024

Skylighght by Gelsey Bell & Erin Rogers is out now!

✨ “The liminal space between notes and breath…”, Connie Li on Skylighght for I CARE IF YOU LISTEN. This beautiful phrase reflects much of the album’s vibe.

✨ Artwork is by Leah Asher . The LP is expertly mastered for vinyl by Carl Rowatti. Mixing by Ryan Streber. Recording by Ryan and Zach Herchen.

✨ Record release shows May 15 and 16 catacombs! Two sets each night at 6:30 and 8:30.

✨ Order Skylighght now via chaikinrecords.bandcamp.com or chaikinrecords.com

CKR 017

04/03/2024

✨SKYLIGHGHT by GELSEY BELL & ERIN ROGERS (CKR 017) ✨ New album on Chaikin Records releasing May 10th✨ Preorder NOW on Bandcamp✨

Skylighght is the duo project of vocalist Gelsey Bell and Erin Rogers . It cultivates a minimal music built primarily on the shared organic vibrations of interlaced resonances. New performative techniques and compositional strategies have been developed to create these pieces. They are constructed from an emphasis on mutual sensitivity, awareness of sonic environment and deep listening. The title for the project takes inspiration from the one-word poetry of Adam Saroyan.

Bell and Rogers, both longterm and active members of the NYC arts community, have performed and worked together for over a decade, largely as part of new music collective thingNY. They began their Skylighght project in 2019 which premiered in May of that year. Album release concerts for Skylighght are set for MAY 15 and 16 at the catacombs of Green-Wood Cemetary.

Skylighght is available now for preorder! The LP features artwork by Leah Asher and is mastered and cut for vinyl by Carl Rowatti.

In Skylighght, evocations of stillness and dissonance swell and subside as acoustic resonances combine, rebound and unite in interlocked play✨🪄🎶

💛CkR

chaikinrecords.bandcamp.com
chaikinrecords.com

Photo of Bell and Rogers by

12/15/2023

🌟OUT NOW: NYC LIMINAL SERIES, Vol. 4: Trumpet featuring
(CKR 018)
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The NYCLS spotlights NYC’s improvised/experimental community. Each edition focuses on four players of a single type of instrument. All performances are solos.
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The physical format is a cassette limited to 50 copies. All production and manufacturing was a DIY effort: audio was recorded and produced either by the artists or the label, and the mixing, mastering, artwork, layout, printing, cassette duplication and assembly was all done by the label.
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NYCLS, Vol. 4: Trumpet is available on Chaikin Records’s bandcamp page and also chaikinrecords.com
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Visit the CkR bandcamp or website for the earlier editions of the NYCLS - Vol. 1: Bass, Vol. 2: Cello and Vol. 3: Drums
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THANK YOU!!
With love
💛CkR

12/10/2023

LACE by Zeena Parkins || Boxset of GRAPHIC SCORES, LP and much more.
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Just announced: a limited edition folder of only the printed material included in the boxset: three graphic scores, notes for the performance of the scores, interview booklet with Parkins and arts critic Jen Joy poem by Downtown NYC fixture Steve Dalachinsky, album credits and notes. Purchase of the LACE folder includes a digital download of full album audio.
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LACE is a project which began in 2008 as a commission for the Merce Cunningham Dance company. Since then, the LACE project has expanded considerably. This album and collection of materials serves as major documentation for this fascinating series of performative compositions.
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LACE features renowned performers William Winant (percussion), TILT BRASS Sextet , James Fei ._fei (electronics), Maggie Parkins .parkins (cello) and Zeena Parkins (conductor)
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Available at chaikinrecords.bandcamp.com and chaikinrecords.com

PS Special thanks to for the invaluable assistance with this release

Chaikin Records

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