Doug Kaplan and Max Allison formed Hausu Mountain together in Chicago in 2012, initially as an outlet to release the music of their projects Good Willsmith (along with Natalie Chami aka TALsounds) and The Big Ship (co-led with Kaplan by guitarist Aeron Small). Over the next ten years, the label spiraled outward to encompass dozens of artists and over 125 distinct releases. Kaplan and Allison approach the label with the goal to highlight the work of dear friends devoted to evolving their own practices and chasing new ideas and sounds that continue to keep listeners equally challenged and entertained. This ethos carries on the spirit of forebears and direct influences including Ralph Records, Editions Mego, the music and culture surrounding the Grateful Dead, and the diaspora of underground experimental music writ large, carried across short-run physical editions and DIY practices, that has manifested across the US and beyond. Often featuring dense pixel-art collages designed by Allison, or else similarly surreal cover art and packaging designed by like-minded artists or the musicians themselves, Hausu Mountain releases carry a signature visual style that thematically aligns with the character of the label and its founders: knowingly goofy, yet seriously devoted to expanding minds and branching into new artistic territories; tie-dyed and gaudy in appearance and spirit, yet always aiming to defy boundaries and challenge tastes and expectations.
On the occasion of Hausu Mountain’s tenth anniversary, Kaplan and Allison have selected six albums, all long-since unavailable on the cassette format, that represent the deep-seated relationships that have come to define key tenets of the label as a whole. Three of the five artists who appear among these reissues — Moth Cock, M. Geddes Gengras, and RXM Reality — have each released new albums in the catalog as recently as this year. The other two projects, Eartheater and Good Willsmith, occupy foundational roles in the label’s initial development and serve as keystones to unlocking the essence of Hausu Mountain as we have come to know it today. The reissues bear the new tenth anniversary insignia designed by Elliot Bech, the artist behind the label’s redesigned logo that premiered in 2020.
The six albums reissued in honor of Hausu Mountain’s tenth anniversary are:
Good Willsmith – Is the Food Your Family Eats Slowly (HAUSMO2, 2012)
The very first cassette issued by Hausu Mountain, the album catches the then-Chicago-based trio of Natalie Chami and HausMo co-founders Doug Kaplan and Max Allison in one of their earliest incarnations as a free-improv unit. ItFYFES contains the seeds of many branches of what would come to be the Good Willsmith sound, including slow-building drones, synths, stringed instruments, and voices that overlap onto each other through loop-pedal layering, cosmic electronic zones, and hints of distortion that approach the realm of metal. Recorded live from their sprawling tables of analog electronics in a single session and presented without overdubs, the album embodies the philosophies that would come to define the band and many other live-music-oriented artists in the Hausu Mountain catalog — as well as serving as a launching point for each band member’s then-developing, now long-running solo practices: Chami as TALsounds, Kaplan as MrDougDoug, and Allison as Mukqs.
Moth Cock – Twofer Tuesday (HAUSMO18, 2014)
The first project outside of Kaplan’s and Allison’s own that joined the Hausu Mountain catalog, Moth Cock (Kent, OH’s Doug Gent and Pat Modugno) have been a flagship presence in the label’s history, notching six releases over ten years including a three-tape boxset of new material in 2022. Twofer Tuesday, the duo’s second HausMo release, demonstrates the confounding and unpredictable music that Gent and Modugno can conjure from their stripped-down rig of clarinet (later saxophone), trumpet, and loop and effects pedals. Floating somewhere between the realms of noise, free-jazz, and carnivalesque electronic wonkery, the two ~20 minute sessions of Twofer Tuesday provide an early example of Hausu Mountain’s penchant for releasing long-form improvised music that could only have stemmed from the unique, often baffling talents and interests that its creators bring to the table.
Eartheater – Metalepsis (HAUSMO25, 2015)
Eartheater – RIP Chrysalis (HAUSMO38, 2015)
With her project Eartheater, New York-based artist Alexandra Drewchin channels her breathtaking vocals and intense lyricism into reality-distorting music built over her own productions. Threading acoustic instrumentation and electronics together into alternately pop-adjacent and collage-like tapestries, Drewchin’s work sits at a high watermark of contemporary experimental songcraft. Both released within the same calendar year, Metalepsis and RIP Chrysalis represent massive strides forward for Hausu Mountain in terms of both the expansion of the styles and genres encompassed in the catalog and the instant affect that her music has on listeners far outside of the confines of the “noise underground.” In the seven years since these two albums were released, Drewchin has ascended to new heights with her musical and multimedia output, her extensive touring, her role as a model in the high-fashion universe, and her expanding practice as a proprietor of her own label Chemical X.
M. Geddes Gengras – I Am The Last of That Green and Warm-Hued World (HAUSMO88, 2019)
An influence himself on Hausu Mountain’s inception with his output as a member of mind-altering experimental projects like Sun Araw, Duppy Gun, and Akron/Family (among many others), upstate New York-based artist M. Geddes Gengras’s music has come to occupy a cornerstone of the contemporary output of the label since his first release: 2019’s I Am The Last […]. While MGG’s catalog has always cross-pollinated influences ranging from kosmische synth music to dub to noise to drone, I Am The Last… finds him building landscapes in the idiom of long-form ambient topography. The durational work tested the time limits of the single-cassette format with its initial release, to the point that the label’s manufacturer claimed that it would be the last tape capable of being produced at such a length due to constraints of magnetic tape availability — though years down the line, the format persists and domestic manufacturing technologies have caught up to demand. Given that space to spread out, Gengras leads us through gorgeous spreads of layered synth and textural detail, crafting a sci-fi odyssey inspired by the passing of his father and the fantasies brought to life by Stephen King in his series The Dark Tower.
RXM Reality – DEViL WORLD WiDE (HAUSMO91, 2019)
With four releases to date with Hausu Mountain, and hopefully many more to come, Mike Meegan’s music under the name RXM Reality remains a key presence in the catalog that both moves HausMo towards the vanguard of contemporary electronic production and ties the label to the local ecosystem of Chicago’s underground music. While many artists in the HausMo catalog that used to be based in Chicago have migrated elsewhere, Meegan holds it down as a prolific Chicago artist and live performer capable of fitting into the spirit and the genre genetics of any bill that he joins. DEViL WORLD WiDE, Meegan’s second release under the HausMo banner, represents a major leap forward in his practice towards an omni-digital vision that ropes influences from noise, grime, techno, dubstep, and more, into hybridized compositions bursting with vibrant detail. While Meegan’s music in both live and recorded form has expanded along both noisier and more pop-friendly trajectories (including his evolving role as a vocalist over his own production with 2022’s sick for you), DWW finds him building a cohesive song cycle that highlights his talents for complex beat programming and nuanced textural sculpting.
