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Carta blends all of the elements we at Silber loved about indie bands from the 1990s like Low, Tindersticks, Hood, & Piano Magic.  Slowcore.  Post rock.  Shoegaze.  They’re all & none of these things.  They’re Carta. ~ Brian John Mitchell, Silber Records

a brief history of Carta:

Carta originally formed in 2002 as a studio project having a revolving membership around Kyle Monday & Jason Perez.  In 2005 they recorded The Glass Bottom Boat with the band drifting into hiatus during a two-year search for a label (eventually released by Resonant in 2007).  By that time, the band had undergone a complete transformation, with all former members gone except for Kyle Monday & Ray Welter they regrouped with Oakland drummer Raj Ojha (who had just left electro-post-rock band Run Return) & bassist/guitarist Sacha Galvagna (Charles Atlas).  The new version of Carta began to write entirely new material rather than trying to re-work the old songs.

Originally planning two separate albums (one song-focused & another made up of more ambient experimental tracks), An Index of Birds emerged as a cohesive body of work from the disparate sessions recorded at different times & studios.  Cellist Alex Kort (ex-Subtle) returned to work on several of the songs & Lorealle Bishop took up the mantle as the band’s new female vocalist.  Former Continental drummer & Christopher Willits-collaborator Gabriel Coan mixed several tracks on the album, & eventually became Carta’s dedicated drummer.

Recorded & mixed by Carta, Sean Coleman, & Eli Crews (Deerhoof, Why?, Citay) & following the direction to ‘make things sound like they have been recovered from a sunken ship’, the result is an album that recalls the debut in feel but has both a more pastoral & more sinister tone.  Placing more importance on vocals this time out, “An Index Of Birds” was a dedicated attempt to move beyond the stereotyped post-rock idioms & investigate textures & composition.  Tiny electronic landscapes, soundtrack bombast, krautrock-inspired psychedelia, & brooding melodrama all find a home on an album you might hear on an ambulance ride that could end in salvation be it life or death.

Current news: Sacha Galvagna can also be heard with Charles Atlas on the  Up in the Air soundtrack, & Raj Ojha can also be heard playing drums with Howlin' Rain.
 

Carta Discography
Carta: An Index of Birds An Index of Birds
CD 2010 | Silber 077
13 tracks, 58 minutes
$12 ($18 international, $5 download (256 kbps, ~119 megs))
This is truly an album to cherish during those quiet moments when you need to relax after a troubling day, or just want to stare at the sunset or walk through the snowfall & reminisce about the times of your life when everything was alright with the world....
~ Jeff Penczak, Foxy Digitalis

A welcome new addition to the Silber family.  Carta reminds us of a ton of stuff we like from Low to Six by Seven to Plumerai to Charles Atlas & are in the tradition of all the mid 1990s moody pop/slowcore/indie rock/post rock bands we came of age to.

: Listen to the track Building Bridges
: Press release
: Reviews
Carta: The Glass Bottom Boat The Glass Bottom Boat
CD 2007 | Resonant 026
10 tracks, 56 minutes
$12 ($18 international)
The debut effort by San Francisco's Carta, led by guitarist Kyle Monday (writer or co-writer of all the songs, and the only original bandmember left at the time of its release), finds the group well established in working in the realm of contemplative atmospherics. This isn't to say The Glass Bottom Boat is diaphanous new age or the like; rather, like many fine bands before it -- Joy Division, Low, Mogwai among others -- Carta seeks to use rock band instrumentation to emphasize reflective mood rather than simply traditional performance.
~ Ned Raggett, All Music Guide

This is the album where Carta first attracted our attention.

Carta Links
Carta on MySpace