{"id":7688,"date":"2026-08-31T18:58:01","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T18:58:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/?page_id=7688"},"modified":"2026-08-31T18:58:01","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T18:58:01","slug":"crying-laughing-talking-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/?page_id=7688","title":{"rendered":"Crying Laughing &#8211; Talking"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Crying-Laughing-Talking-FINAL-DIGI-cover-1500x1500x300.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-7665\" src=\"https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Crying-Laughing-Talking-FINAL-DIGI-cover-1500x1500x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1500\" height=\"1500\" srcset=\"https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Crying-Laughing-Talking-FINAL-DIGI-cover-1500x1500x300.jpg 1500w, https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Crying-Laughing-Talking-FINAL-DIGI-cover-1500x1500x300-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Crying-Laughing-Talking-FINAL-DIGI-cover-1500x1500x300-1024x1024.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Crying-Laughing-Talking-FINAL-DIGI-cover-1500x1500x300-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Crying-Laughing-Talking-FINAL-DIGI-cover-1500x1500x300-768x768.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px\" \/><\/a><\/h1>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ffffff;\">&#8211;<\/span><\/p>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">To be released on Tape and CD on September 10th, 2026. C30 &#8211; red and white split cassette with black imprints packaged with a 2-sided 4-panel J-Card. CD packaged in 4-panel gatefold digipak. This is the catalog page with album information and artwork. To purchase, head to our <a href=\"http:\/\/hausumountain.bandcamp.com\/\">Bandcamp page<\/a>.<\/h1>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ffffff;\">&#8211;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe style=\"border: 0; width: 400px; height: 120px;\" src=\"https:\/\/bandcamp.com\/EmbeddedPlayer\/album=3634761573\/size=large\/bgcol=ffffff\/linkcol=0687f5\/artwork=small\/transparent=true\/tracklist=false\/tracks=994169591\/esig=90248dc2e89cf865320a1982b8be0ec7\/\" seamless=\"\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cryinglaughing.bandcamp.com\/album\/talking-2\">Talking by Crying Laughing<\/a><\/iframe><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #ffffff;\">&#8211;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Baltimore-based quintet <\/span><strong>Crying Laughing<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> joins the Hausu Mountain family with the release of their debut album <\/span><em><strong>Talking<\/strong><\/em><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The lineup of longtime participants in Baltimore\u2019s vibrant experimental underground got together in 2024 with a clear vision for their new band: a fusion of saxophone-led polymetric composition in the Reich\/Glass\/Riley school of minimalism with the energy and groove of post-punk and the rhythmic sensibilities of Moondog\u2019s street recordings; head music as much as body music. Saxophonist <\/span><strong>Christian Best<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2019s and drummer <\/span><strong>Jen Kirby<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2019s collaboration in the band <\/span><strong>Smoke Bellow<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (who released LPs on labels like Trouble in Mind and Moon Glyph before ending in 2024<\/span><b>) <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">formed the nucleus of <\/span><strong>Crying Laughing<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. <\/span><strong>Steve Strohmeier<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> plays keyboards, and has toured or recorded with a slew of Baltimore luminaries including <\/span><strong>Beach House, Dan Deacon<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><strong>Daniel Higgs<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, and <\/span><strong>Lower Dens<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Bassist <\/span><strong>Marc Miller<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> formed the math-punk band <\/span><strong>OXES<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in 1998 and the ever-shifting experimental ensemble <\/span><strong>Microkingdom<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in 2006. Saxophonist <\/span><strong>Rose Hammer Burt<\/strong> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">participates in Baltimore musical collectives that orbit the legendary experimental venue <\/span><strong>The Red Room<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and its associated improvised music festival <\/span><em><strong>High Zero<\/strong><\/em><b>.<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> With the freewheeling nature of the band members\u2019 omnivorous menu of projects in mind, the laser focus of <\/span><strong>Crying Laughing<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2019s music, with its meticulously juxtaposed dual saxophone leads and lock-groove rhythm section, might initially come as a surprise. Contrary to many bands who start off struggling to clarify a sound or find time to play together for the many hours required to gel, <\/span><strong>Crying Laughing<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> exploit the fact that they all live within walking distance of each other in Baltimore to woodshed their ideas until they crystallize into pored-over final forms. Though <\/span><em><strong>Talking<\/strong><\/em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> highlights precise arrangements and tight transitions ironed out through endless rehearsals, aligning more closely with the songwriting and performance strategies of a new music ensemble instead of a traditional \u201crock band,\u201d the album\u2019s live-in-the-studio takes sidestep academic pomposity and seek out the surreal and supercharged potential of a group of close friends playing their handmade music in a room together.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Christian Best<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2019s and <\/span><strong>Rose Hammer Burt<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2019s swooning tandem sax melodies trace atypical scales and burst with dramatic motifs that wouldn\u2019t sound out of place on an early-70s Pharoah Sanders record. The two saxes take on a role akin to vocalists, often trading momentary bursts in hocketing phrases or jittering together through short recursive leads until one of them launches into a solo that cascades over the band in ecstatic curlicues. <\/span><strong>Jen Kirby<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> describes her atypical drumming style as \u201ca response to the people I\u2019m playing with and my natural technical limitations due to total hackery of technique,\u201d yet that self-taught idiosyncrasy charges <\/span><em><strong>Talking<\/strong><\/em> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">with the key confluence of robotic exactitude and post-punk mania that any situation requires. Kirby\u2019s performances on a modified kit with a tiny snare and rototoms with distinctly tuned pitches place her drums in a particular mid-to-upper register in the mix &#8211; creating ambiguous near-melodies in the rhythms akin to Moondog\u2019s street recordings with his amalgam of strikable objects. The drum patterns she latches into leave plenty of space to fill in for her band members, who frequently join the grid with auxiliary percussion parts of their own. <\/span><strong>Marc Miller<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is all restraint, deploying his bass surges in the perfect gaps in <\/span><strong>Crying Laughing<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2019s criss-crossing arrangements to maintain the groove. When he takes the lead role with a galloping bassline, we hear every fine-grain detail of his low end tone as he prods his comrades up into higher peaks of intensity. Threading between the two polarities of the saxophones and the rhythm section, <\/span><strong>Steve Strohmeier<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2019s sampled keyboard instruments color in the open space with lush harmonies and walls of texture. His harmonium imbues their music with moments of reverence, discovering meditative near-ambient oases within tumultuous surroundings, while his clattered piano and ping-ponging marimba lines take the opposite tactic by stacking even more layers onto the busy rhythms.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Crying Laughing<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> recorded <\/span><em><strong>Talking<\/strong><\/em> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">in one day in a basement studio outside of Baltimore, tracking each take as a live performance into a network of strategically placed microphones and quasi-isolation booths devised by engineer Chris Freeland. The \u201clive in the basement\u201d approach of that day\u2019s sessions gives the album a fly-on-the-wall viewpoint into what one of the band\u2019s weekly rehearsals might sound like &#8211; when they reach the point when they\u2019ve finished workshopping any given song and they agree, \u201cOK, we can call that one done.\u201d While <\/span><em><strong>Talking<\/strong><\/em> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">shifts from tight polymetric lattices of melody to headbobbing groove passages to broader landscapes of moody and melted harmonies, every atmosphere reflects <\/span><strong>Crying Laughing<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2019s collaborative compositional mindset. As saxophonist <strong>Christian Best<\/strong> explains: \u201cEach song begins its life as a seed of an idea: a whole arrangement, specific rhythms, melodies, or sometimes just a theory of interaction. The band then collaboratively expands and later condenses those ideas down into their most concise form. Compositionally we aim to not encroach on each instrument&#8217;s space. All of us contribute to the overall rhythm and melody of each piece, trading roles and interweaving with each other.\u201d With the live takes captured on <\/span><em><strong>Talking<\/strong><\/em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> as a testament, <\/span><strong>Crying Laughing<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> has already achieved a collective melding of minds and hands in their relatively short existence as a band &#8211; one that can only deepen into who-knows-what forms as they keep exploring sound together.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h5><\/h5>\n<h5 style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8212;<\/h5>\n<h5 style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #ffffff;\">&#8212;<a href=\"https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Crying-Laughing-Car-by-Josh-Sisk.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-7671\" src=\"https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Crying-Laughing-Car-by-Josh-Sisk.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1600\" height=\"1143\" srcset=\"https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Crying-Laughing-Car-by-Josh-Sisk.jpg 1600w, https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Crying-Laughing-Car-by-Josh-Sisk-300x214.jpg 300w, https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Crying-Laughing-Car-by-Josh-Sisk-1024x732.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Crying-Laughing-Car-by-Josh-Sisk-768x549.jpg 768w, https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Crying-Laughing-Car-by-Josh-Sisk-1536x1097.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Crying-Laughing-Car-by-Josh-Sisk-420x300.jpg 420w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\" \/><\/a><\/span><\/h5>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Tape-Front-and-Spine-Large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-7667\" src=\"https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Tape-Front-and-Spine-Large.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/CD-Array-scaled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-7668\" src=\"https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/CD-Array-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/CD-Array-scaled.jpg 2560w, https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/CD-Array-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/CD-Array-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/CD-Array-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/CD-Array-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/CD-Array-2048x1536.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/CD-Array-400x300.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/shirt-on-hanger.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-7669\" src=\"https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/shirt-on-hanger.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/shirt-on-hanger.png 2000w, https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/shirt-on-hanger-300x300.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Crying-Laughing-Stoop-by-Josh-Sisk.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-7673\" src=\"https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Crying-Laughing-Stoop-by-Josh-Sisk.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1066\" height=\"1600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Crying-Laughing-Stoop-by-Josh-Sisk.jpg 1066w, https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Crying-Laughing-Stoop-by-Josh-Sisk-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Crying-Laughing-Stoop-by-Josh-Sisk-682x1024.jpg 682w, https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Crying-Laughing-Stoop-by-Josh-Sisk-768x1153.jpg 768w, https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Crying-Laughing-Stoop-by-Josh-Sisk-1023x1536.jpg 1023w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1066px) 100vw, 1066px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8211; To be released on Tape and CD on September 10th, 2026. C30 &#8211; red and white split cassette with black imprints packaged with a 2-sided 4-panel J-Card. CD packaged in 4-panel gatefold digipak. This is the catalog page with &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/?page_id=7688\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":678,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-7688","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7688"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7723,"href":"https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7688\/revisions\/7723"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hausumountain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}