Memory

Animal Hospital is Kevin Micka's one-man musical recording and performance entity. Burying himself in a pile of electronics - shelves of effects, mixing consoles, amps and delay units - Memory is Kevin's latest venture into layered, processed guitar composition. Although composed in this experimental fashion, Memory is a completely realized recording - a beautiful soundscape of shiny guitar tones, vocal washes, and dramatic build-ups, all of which cohere into a single musical vision. Memory is about as deliberate a title as you can get, and rightfully so. Recorded in an old bank in western Virginia, an antiquated movie theater lobby, apartments, studios, and Cape Cod, the album's realization is similar to a personal recollection of the past; a layered, non-linear, and often vague familiarity of places, things, people, known and unknown in our minds.

Fueled by coffee and heartache, Memory serves as a highly personal account of its creator manifested into an amalgamation of musical themes, both delicate and brutal. Most notable about Memory is its intimacy - the emotional thread tying his vast compositional approaches together. As an effort to connect Kevin's memories with ours and even to engage in one another's wanderings - psychic exchanges between composer and listener - Kevin searches out raw beauty within his repertoire of sounds. He performs guitar, drums, vocals, music boxes, and other gadgets with meticulous care; a detail for precision often discarded by experimental recordings.