Insound Staff Pick - 2009! This is the fourth album by Casiotone for the Painfully Alone. Owen Ashworth, still one of the most talented songwriters working in independent music today, and his intimate character studies are finally getting the production they deserve. Instead of limiting the arrangements to battery powered electronics and the occasional contributions from friends, Ashworth has expanded his bedroom recording project into a small orchestra of pianos, organs, strings, flutes, pedal stee   [ read more ]

CD $15.99

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RESTOCK. Casiotone for the Painfully Alone (CFTPA) rocks the world! CFTPA makes songs made up, sung, and played by Owen Ashworth. His first release on Tomlab, "Pocket Symphonies for Lonesome Subway Cars," gained a lot of attention in the alternative press with references including Moldy Peaches, Mountain Goats, Smog, Silver Jews, Young Marble Giants, and Will Oldham. CFTPA's self-released debut album, "Answering Machine Music," which has been hard to find, is now available in an expanded version and feature   [ read more ]

CD $12.99

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Insound Staff Pick - 2009! Hot on the heels of the recently released singles and rarities compilation Advance Base Battery Life comes Vs. Children, the fifth album proper by Casiotone For The Painfully Alone. Vs. Children continues the trajectory of 2006's Etiquette, which showed singer/songwriter Owen Ashworth straying from the strictly electronic instrumentation of his earlier recordings. In fact, Vs. Children is an album decidedly absent of the battery-powered k   [ read more ]

CD $13.99

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From Kraftwerk to Leonard Cohen, The Smiths to Suicide, and Pet Shop Boys to Smog, Chicago's one-man musical army Owen Ashworth - a.k.a. Casiotone for the Painfully Alone - has been bracketed with all manner of illustrious names in the course of his eleven year career. But in collecting the 7-inch split-singles and compilation tracks he released from 2004-7 (all but two of them on CD for the first time), Advance Base Battery Life provides compelling evidence of the singular nature of this industrious   [ read more ]

CD $12.99

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This is the soundtrack to artist and photographer Laurel Nakadate's debut feature film, "Stay the Same Never Change". It consists of thirteen short instrumental pieces, book-ended by two vocal tracks. The instrumentals are all previously released, but were re-constructed and blended with a number of new pieces to create a cohesive score specifically for the project. Built from the sounds of electric pianos, organs, Casio keyboards, a primitive monophonic sequencer/drum machine, and spring reverb, the music    [ read more ]

CDep $8.99

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Second single from Etiquette recorded with a full band incl. members of The Papercuts and even cello! A much fuller, nearly "classic rock" sound for CFTPA of which Owen is rightfully proud! CDS is backed with 4 Exclusive live tracks recorded with The Donkeys as Owen's backing band. All b-sides exclusive to their format.

CDep $7.99

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Casiotone's third album finds the promise of Owen Ashworth's earlier work paying off ever more in spades. Despite a higher profile and a series of concert tours, he's not changing around the basic approach yet -- it's him, his trusty keyboards and machine beats, a guest appearance or two, and his own gift for sweet, murky, and involving songs. His gift for personal details -- an X marked on one's hand for a show, 'driving all night for no reason. . .until the tape's done' -- gets further reflection in   [ read more ]

CD $15.18

CD $7.58

Having released enough singles and compilation tracks to warrant a collection of them, Owen Ashworth pulls them together on the enjoyable Advance Base Battery Life, pure catnip for committed fans but not without interest to those unfamiliar with Casiotone for the Painfully Alone's way around understated, enveloping electronic pop. A slew of covers toward the end shows Ashworth's interest in a variety of approaches -- on the one hand there are two covers each of Bruce Springsteen and {$Paul Si   [ read more ]

CD $15.18

CD $15.18