click here if you are having troubles navigating on our site  
   


It should come as no surprise that Small Life Form (aka Brian John Mitchell, head of Silber Records) is the distillation of everything Silber has stood for since its birth nearly two decades ago: stripped down, unadulterated sound exploration. - Nathan Amundson, Rivulets

About Small Life Form

Small Life Form is about nothing if not sound. Sound as escape from life. Sound as a medium to penetrate and affect the human body. Sound as both creation & destruction. Sound as an entity meant to be concentrated on, not casually listened to.

Small Life Form's process, theory and sound draw from influences of the post-WWII avant-garde. In this way, Small Life Form and Silber offer us another bridge between post-rock music & serious experimental composition, equal influences Gyorgy Ligeti & Cindytalk.

Recordings started in 1998 & Small Life Form's debut album One was released in late 2003 on Silber. All tracks on One are meant to be played simultaneously and looped continuously.

Since 2007 Small Life Form has predominantly become a live project touring throughout the american south & recording an album in a nuclear cooling tower in the pacific north west with a scattering of releases & compilation appearances.

Small Life Form discography
Small Life Form - Fragments Small Life Form - Fragments
MP3 Album 2018 | Silber 260
10 tracks, 80 minutes
$5 download
Listen on Silber | Listen on Bandcamp | Listen on Spotify
Small Life Form started as a studio project of sound exploration in 1998 & became a live project in 2007 focusing on electro-acoustics & super simple synthesizers. Fragments collects studio recordings from 2012-2014 dominated by the live rig of the era complimented by a few computer sound sculptures ("slow silence", "so sincere", "BPM65", "fluorescent", "buzz"). The stage is set with "something organic to service the machine" inspired by Harlan Ellison's short story "I Have No Mouth, & I Must Scream" for a slab of post-apocalyptic sci-fi doom drone. After mankind has fallen, sound still needs to be explored.

: Listen to the track Forgotten Summer
: Press Release
: Reviews

Small Life Form - First Recordings Small Life Form - First Recordings
MP3 EP 2017 | Silber 247
18 tracks, 25 minutes
$2 download

Listen on Silber | Listen on Bandcamp | Listen on Spotify
Small Life Form started in 1998 as seeing how sound could be shaped & manipulated on a computer using ideas inspired by the works of George Crumb & Gyorgy Ligeti. Sound experimentation with limitations forcing creativity & these are the results from before the project even had a name.

: Listen to the track mouthed
: Press Release
: Reviews
Small Life Form - Late Small Life Form - Late
MP3 EP 2016 | Silber 238
3 tracks, 30 minutes
$1 download
Listen on Silber | Listen on Bandcamp | Listen on Spotify
Small Life Form returns for Christmas with an EP of electroacoustics & cheap synths built into sonic walls. The first two pieces ("Days Late" & "A Ride Home") are built from a concept Small Life Form has been trying to bring to fruition for four years, using an optical theremin & Christmas tree lights. Why did it take four years? Because the Christmas tree lights were making the theremin make an unpleasantly high-pitched noise & it took a long time to figure out how to change that. In the end the answer was putting pieces of a broken beer bottle over the optical sensor. "Days Late" takes the theremin & layers on cheap synths to make a piece typical of the Small Life Form live set while "A Ride Home" takes just the theremin & slows it down as something to something meditative. "A Request from Dad" is a piece written at the request of Bryce Eiman for 919Noise's Christmas Showcase based on some recent shows featuring music boxes & the only sound sources are music boxes run through SLF's standard effect rig. So sit back & let the aggressive ambient ring in your holidays.

: Listen to the track Days Late
: Press Release
: Reviews

Small Life Form - It Is Not Safe But It Is Warm It Is Not Safe But It Is Warm
MP3 EP 2015 | Silber 205
1 track, 12 minutes
$1 download
This is, quite simply, a damn fine power noise/harsh drone record that conveys a feeling that a narrative arc couldn’t.
~ Forestpunk

Just in time for Christmas, Small Life Form delivers a pure slab of aggressive ambient drone. Just like home, it is not safe but it is warm. Jesus is coming to love & destroy us all.

: Listen to the track It Is Not Safe But It Is Warm
: Press Release
: Reviews
: Prefer to listen on Bandcamp?
: Prefer to listen on Youtube?
: Prefer to listen on Spotify?

Small Life Form - Parts for Holiday Projects Parts for Holiday Projects
MP3 EP 2014 | Silber 173
4 tracks, 14 minutes
$1 download
In truth sounds like the third programme of the spin cycle on an Indesit washing machine....
~ Mark Barton, The Sunday Experience

Small Life Form explores the secret sounds of jingle bells.

: Listen to the track It's Not All Milk & Cookies
: Press Release
: Reviews
: Prefer to listen on Bandcamp?

Small Life Form - We Shall Be One We Shall Be One
MP3 EP 2013 | Silber 145
5 tracks, 5 minutes
$1 download
Through the process of evolution the sounds merge to build a larger greater creature.
~ Beach Sloth

Small Life Form returns with a feedback driven quest for sleep & the destruction of self.

: Listen to the track we shall be one
: Press Release
: Reviews

Small Life Form: voice in the sky voice in the sky
MP3 Album 2012 | Silber 116
1 track, 45 minutes
$5 download

listen on Silber
This is one of the most sedated pieces I’ve heard for a long time. Listen to it late at night with little distraction. It’ll gently lull you to sleep.
~ Beach Sloth

A 45 minute electro-acoustic drone piece from Small Life Form built from voice, melodica, copper pipe, optical theremin, super simple synthesizer, feedback, & aircraft lock.


: Listen to the track voice in the sky (excerpt)
: Press Release
: Reviews


Small Life Form: Satsop Satsop
CD Album 2012 | Blondena Music 020
2 tracks, 39 minutes
Order physical copies through Blondena ($5 download through Silber (320kbps, ~92 megs))
Well it took a while for the rights to be sorted out, but finally released are the Small Life Form recordings from inside of a nuclear cooling tower in the pacific north west.
: Listen to the track A Year Is A Day
: Press Release

CD Release Improvisational Event CD Release Improvisational Event
MP3 Album 2012 | Blondena Music
4 tracks, 65 minutes

available through Blondena Music Bandcamp

2012 Blondena Music release party recorded including a 23 minute collaboration between Brian John Mitchell (Small Life Form), Bryce Clayton Eiman (Weather Machine), & Scott Berrier (Powercloud).
Lost Kisses DVD - My Life is Sad & Funny Lost Kisses DVD - My Life is Sad & Funny
DVD 2009 | Silber 073
10 cartoons (plus three bonus bits), about an hour
$12
This is true & funny material in a day & age when the two worst adjectives your work can have are "true" & "funny."
~ Dave Sim, Cerebus/Glamourpuss

Well, it's finally here, a collection of cartoon versions of the first ten issues of Lost Kisses.  It even includes a special making of thing & cartoons of Worms #1 & XO #1.  The DVD includes a psychonautic electro-acoustic drone soundtrack of new music by Small Life Form.  Lost Kisses tells snarky stories of life's perils with self -deprecating humor.  So check it out & spread the word.

: Press Release
: Reviews


Lost Kisses DVD - My Life is Sad & Funny Small Life Form
Lost Kisses Soundtrack
MP3 Album 2009 | Silber 081
16 tracks, 68 minutes
download zip file | Archive.org page

When the time came to make a soundtrack to the Lost Kisses cartoons, Small Life Form’s brand of electro acoustics & aggressive ambient seemed like a great fit for the stories. The music is loop driven & sometimes barely noticed & at other times feels like a laser beam straight to the brain threatening to completely wash it clean. The soundtrack to an emotional acid trip - not necessarily positive or negative or menacing or soothing, but very physically present.
The instruments used are the standards of the recent live Small Life Form shows including copper pipe, triangles, melodica, pitch pipe, harmonica, microphone feedback, & voice all washed & sculpted with distortion, reverb, & delay.
Some of the pieces are shorter or longer than on the Lost Kisses DVD (adjusted for the length of the cartoons) & also included are the pieces for the menu pages that were eventually cut from the release.
If you dig the soundtrack make sure to check out the DVD to get the rest of the story.
small life form: alive alive
MP3 EP 2008 | Silber 071
3 tracks, 21 minutes
download zip file | Archive.org page

2007 marked Small Life Form’s live debut & over the next year the style refined, abandoning real horns for a piece of copper pipe, replacing organs with melodica, & vocals with feedback manipulation. Alive is collected from two live recordings in 2008.  They are massive structures built from scratch using a loop pedal, distortion pedals, & reverb units.


one
CD Album 2003 | Silber 030
7 tracks, 48 minutes
$12 ($18 international, $5 download (256kbps, ~92 megs))
: Listen to the track Horns
: Press Release
: Reviews

Compilation Appearances

Small Life Form links

Small Life Form on MySpace
Small Life Form on Facebook

Remora
Vlor
Contact