12 Essential Hausu Mountain Releases
Hausu Mountain is both label and tight-knit family.
The fiercely DIY “out”-music label cofounded by Chicago pals Doug Kaplan and Max Allison has established itself as one of the consistently best experimental underground record labels out there while staking its claim as an ever-burgeoning and vibrant community of wildly adventurous, fun-loving, style-transcending sonic explorers and heady noisemakers who are seemingly one big freakish happy family.
The pair chalk up inspiration to a variety of trailblazing labels who’ve led the way. Of course, their hometown Chicago imprints Drag City and Thrill Jockey proved instrumental to HM’s trajectory with Kaplan even learning the ropes at the latter early on. Allison credits a couple of other crucial labels as well.
“Ralph Records, the label run by the people behind the band The Residents, is a huge one for us for many reasons, he explains. “First of all, of course, the music—which is challenging, experimental, hilarious, bizarre, hard to parse, and unique. Much of their output was overtly carnivalesque and zany but still contained freaked out undertones and high-falutin concepts. The Ralph Records visual style, spearheaded by Residents mastermind Homer Flynn, is a huge influence on Hausu too—just take a look at any collection of their album covers, show posters, advertisements, etc., and you’ll see the lineage.”
Allison continues giving props. “Another label that we loved early on and continue to love and draw inspiration from is Aaron Dilloway’s label Hanson Records. Similar to Ralph, Dilloway keeps a sense of humor about everything even when he’s releasing harsh noise or experimental music that might be considered ~serious business~, and we love his curation of a catalog that plumbs the weirdest depths of the U.S. noise underground and beyond.”
What was first launched as an outlet for Kaplan and Allison’s own band Good Willsmith and The Big Ship in 2012, Hausu Mountain ultimately blossomed into a label, like Ralph Records, that brings an overarching communal vibe and avant-garde carnival-like aesthetic. That is manifested by its eclectic roster (just check out HM O.G. Moth Cock and brand new signee Cocojoey), the trademark kaleidoscopic album art and the mind-bending video game-inspired imagery for a bulk of its releases (designed by Allison himself) and, vitally, the dedicated artists who’ve stayed with HM for the long haul.
“Our label roster is incredibly autobiographical,” says Kaplan. “We strive to only work with people that we have fostered strong personal relationships with. Early in the label’s history, the roster basically reads like a list of artists that shared bills with our band Good Willsmith. Later, we moved onto working with people that we met through the internet, but cultivated a deeper friendship with over the years. We’re incredibly proud to be around 150 albums deep into the catalog and have many artists that we’ve worked with on three, four, five, six or seven albums. There is no greater compliment than an artist wanting to work with us again.”
It’s mid-2025 and Hausu Mountain is busy as ever with a flurry of new wax. They’ve already dropped must-have records by Dustin Wong, Erica Eso and Cocojoey and a live record from the Bill Orcutt Quartet (as part of its HausLive series). Plus albums by Mondo Lava, Pulse Emitter and HM newcomer Jetski are imminent, and the label just announced a new album from Melvin Gibbs. It’s a good time for Hausu Mountain and that welcoming family vibe.
“We absolutely aim for the family vibe with the label, and love it when artists continue to make amazing music over the years and trust us to do justice to it and release it with love, time and time again,” says Allison.
“It’s so much fun to see how artists’ craft evolves over time, and to give our listeners a breadcrumb trail to continue to follow over years. It feels much more fulfilling to release music by our friends who we’ve worked with forever rather than source stuff for the HausMo catalog from cold call demos. Even if the music we get from that kind of submission is amazing and fits right into what we like to release, it takes a lot for us to make the jump to work with someone we don’t know personally. It’s like, there’s so much more uncertainty there, and it feels like we have to do some ‘homework’ to get to know the person before it starts to feel as meaningful as it could when working with our long-term friends. Clearly that approach is ‘working’ to some extent because you picked up on the welcoming and familial vibe, so that’s great to hear.”
Read on for our look at touchstones and soon-to-be-classics from the Hausu canon. – Brad Cohan
Body Meπa – Prayer in Dub (2024)
Considering the avant- and post-everything all-star-level pedigree of Body Meπa, one would expect nothing less than transcendent music making and the headiest of explorations. And they deliver the goods on their outstanding second record, Prayer in Dub. Featuring the heavyweight guitar tandem of Grey McMurray (Tyondai Braxton, Alarm Will Sound) and Sasha Frere-Jones (Ui) and the godlike rhythm section of Melvin Gibbs (Harriet Tubman) and Greg Fox (Liturgy, Guardian Alien), Body Meπa pulls off sonic miracles in that they mold meticulously crafted, head-spinningly complex patterns and structures that ultimately transform into a free-floating and light-as-air maelstrom. On their all-instrumental soundscapes, each player sounds as if they are traversing their own cosmic path but somehow there’s revelatory points in time where all the separate pieces of jazz, prog, space-rock, dub and ambient music converge and catharsis is achieved in rich and flying colors. – Brad Cohan
Listen: Bandcamp
Cocojoey – STARS (2025)
Cocojoey is the nom de plume of mad sound scientist Joey Meland, a multifaceted flamethrower who sprays out a hodgepodge of styles that culminates in orgiastic and melodic sonic mayhem. On STARS, Cocojoey’s Hausu Mountain debut and the label’s first new signing in several years, this composer, producer, vocalist and multi-instrumental wunderkind—somehow, someway—assembles a jigsaw puzzle-like pastiche in which pieces of hyperpop, hip-hop, rap, experimental pop, jazz, synthwave, death metal (and just about every other genre that comes to mind) fit ever-so-neatly, causing heads to spontaneously explode with pure delight. The candied crush of STARS is sheer joy and epic fucked-up-ness on every conceivable level. A surefire AOTY contender in a just world. – Brad Cohan
Listen: Bandcamp
Dreamcrusher – Suicide Deluxe (2014)
How many noise albums slap like this? One of the earlier releases in the HM catalog, Suicide Deluxe by Brooklyn producer Dreamcrusher will perhaps test how sensitive your ears really are via its walls of static and piercing high-end frequencies. But it’s also not an album of noise for its own sake either; there are rhythms, even hooks within these bombardments of distortion and screech, and Dreamcrusher rewards your investment in sonic annihilation with moments like the title opener, which develops into a strangely beautiful slice of melodic IDM in spite of its outward antagonism, or the breakbeat mayhem of “Godless Chic,” or the scorched, bass-throbbing bitpop of “Dracula Meets the Lorelei.” It’s dance music at its most hostile—but it’s still dance music. – Jeff Terich
Listen: Bandcamp
Eartheater – RIP Chrysalis (2015)
An outlier among Hausu Mountain’s larger body of work in that it skews more toward folk than ambient or electronic music, the sophomore album by Eartheater nonetheless fits right in with the label’s loosely defined aesthetic. On RIP Chrysalis‘ leadoff track, “Utterfly FX,” Alexandra Drewchin juxtaposes pitch-shifted voices with lurching electronic beats, echoing voices and otherworldly twinkles. It’s a beautiful and strange introduction to her sound world, which comprises everything from beautifully haunting folk compositions to mesmerizing sound collage and psychedelic electronics. A moment like “Wetware,” submerged in dreamy layers of guitar, Eartheater even evokes the early darkwave of Cocteau Twins, suggesting that an eerie sense of beauty rather than genre is the center of gravity here. – Jeff Terich
Listen: Bandcamp
Erica Eso – Songs In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand (2025)
Intrepid composer, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Weston Minissali has been recording as Erica Eso since 2015, improbably intersecting electronic music, the avant-garde and synth-pop with not just deep-thinking aplomb but a remarkable affinity for melody. After records for Ramp Local and NNA Tapes, 2022’s 192 marked Erica Eso’s Hausu Mountain debut, setting him on his path towards the intricately designed avant-pop virtuosity realized on Songs In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand. The feathery songcraft Minissali navigates over the album’s ten blissed-out compositions, illuminated by his oh-so-dreamy voice, induces the headiest of vibes. They blip and beep with an angular momentum and a synth hooks-laden catchiness that will have you humming and singing along. Not many blend knotty structures with a purely melodious framework as sublime as Erica Eso does on the fittingly titled—and unfairly overlooked—Songs In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand. – Brad Cohan
Listen: Bandcamp
Fire-Toolz – Eternal Home (2021)
It’s somehow both curious and entirely logical that Fire-Toolz ended up being one of the best-known artists to have made Hausu Mountain their home for a time. On the one hand, Angel Marcloid’s blend of black metal vocals with prog electronics is an unusual blend, certainly, yet on the other, a release like Eternal Home—even in its four-part, 77-minute sprawl—contains a wealth of eclectic and unusually accessible material. These aren’t pop songs in the conventional sense of the word, but a track like the one-minute prog metal freakout of “guardian angel bear” leaves an immediate impression nonetheless, melodic and rich even in its brief runtime. Elsewhere, Marcloid’s forays into new age like “softly*chewing*quiet*stars” or a soaring metalgaze anthem in “Thick_flowy_glowy_sparkly_stingy_pain.mpeg” or glitchy electronics in “Outside =^..^= Bears” show just how far-reaching and eclectic Fire-Toolz’s strange, fascinating and beautiful world truly is. – Jeff Terich
Listen: Bandcamp
M. Geddes Gengras – I Am the Last of That Green and Warm-Hued World (2019)
New York-based M. Geddes Gengras is both prolific and entrepreneurial, having founded Duppy Gun Productions with fellow mind- and pitch-bender Sun Araw, with whom he’s also collaborated. He’s also left his mark on the Hausu Mountain discography, particularly with this warmly otherworldly set of ambient and drone sounds. Comprising a hefty 79 minutes (nowhere near the longest on HM, it should be noted), I Am the Last is a journey at once soothing and psychedelic, strange and unusually inviting. There’s both an animated and meditative quality to “Zoltan,” while the dronescapes of “The Pump at the Way Station” contain more haunting and alien terrain. A curious and thoroughly rewarding cross section of accessibility and mystery. – Jeff Terich
Listen: Bandcamp
Kill Alters – Armed To The Teeth L.M.O.M.M. (2022)
As a solo artist and in Prolaps, Bonnie Baxter (f/k/a Shadowbox) has been a pioneering experimental force and HM fixture in driving the label to stuff of underground legend status. Kill Alters, an integral cog of the HM roster, has been spewing out gloriously off-the-rails electro-punk noise fuckery since 2013. On Armed To The Teeth L.M.O.M.M., Baxter, with kindred sonic spirits Nicos Kennedy and drummer Hisham Bharoocha (Soft Circle, Black Dice, Lightning Bolt), unleash a chaotic and unyielding cyber attack of incandescent beats and percussion, speak-sing transmissions piped in from outer space, spliced, diced and warped electronics and grinding techno wacks and thwacks. Kill Alters’ freak-outs are designed to scramble brains on a hot frying pan. At the heart of Baxter’s bat-crazy vision a familial foundation is laid: the bandleader incorporates bits and pieces from decades-old childhood tapes where you’re able to peep inside the composer’s early family life. – Brad Cohan
Listen: Bandcamp
Moth Cock – Whipped Stream and Other Earthly Delights (2022)
Without the ingeniously freakazoid contributions of Moth Cock, Hausu Mountain as a label might not have gotten off the ground and blossomed into the far-out behemoth it is today. The eccentric minds behind Moth Cock—Doug Gent and Pat Modugno—were instrumental in helping put HM on the map back in 2012 with their blown-out sonic soup which mixes up free jazz, psych, noise, drone, electronics, techno and ambient music. The sprawling, three-hour-plus marathon the duo titled Whipped Stream and Other Earthly Delights stands as a monumental statement of their singularity in both their output and in HM’s. Unlike 2024’s horn-squawking and squealing live document HausLive 3: Chicago Twofer, Whipped Stream is a cascading stream of psychedelic drone goodness. For a life-affirming three-and-a-half-hours (!), Gent and Modugno set in motion an electronics-powered swirl of ethereal tones and timbres that will send you rocketing to another stratosphere. -Brad Cohan
Listen: Bandcamp
Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet – HausLive 4 (2025)
It’s not so surprising that the first release from experimental guitarist Bill Orcutt on Hausu Mountain would end up being a winner—it’s practically written in the stars that a partnership such as this would bear such marvelous fruit. A live performance of a quartet performance featuring Orcutt, Wendy Eisenberg, Ava Mendoza and Shane Parish, it’s at once denser and more accessible than Orcutt’s more exploratory intersections of noise and American primitivism. While opener “A Different View” carries an almost post-punk like sense of syncopated jerk, moments like “In the Rain” and “At a Distance” display a masterful sense of grace and majesty. Though there is an Orcutt solo performance here, specifically “Bill solo>”, as well as a couple of moments of banter, this 54-minute set is a showcase for a quartet of guitarists all locked into the same psychic frequency. – Jeff Terich
Listen: Bandcamp
Pulse Emitter – Dusk (2022)
Whether recording under his own name, Daryl Groetsch, or the Pulse Emitter moniker, this much is certain: you’ll be lulled into a hypnotic state, entranced by the synthesizer-driven zoners that this Portland, Oregon-based sound artist so majestically crafts. A classically-trained composer, Groetsch’s heady amalgam of New Age-style radiance, hallucinogenic drone fields, interstellar melodies and rumbling electronics is the perfect escape mechanism to drift off and tune out the world. Dusk is all that and more, the perfect balance of spaced-out shapeshifters and atmospheric bangers that will soothe your soul. Good news on the Pulse Emitter front: a new record, titled Tide Pools, will be dropping on HM on September 26th. – Brad Cohan
Listen: Bandcamp
Dustin Wong – Gloria (2025)
The kaleidoscopic forms and patterns that Dustin Wong surveys with his guitar and effects pedals achieve such an instantly recognizable sound canvas that it belongs to him and him only. Wong has been perfecting his intensely visual soundscaping for a decade-and-a-half or so; Gloria is, arguably, the fullest realization of that expansive vision that sees him rendering such vivid and compelling vistas, it’s akin to skimming through a family photo album and reminiscing about memories. That is the impetus behind Wong’s introspective and shimmering Gloria. A sonic travelogue of sorts, Gloria is a deeply moving tribute to the album title’s namesake, Wong’s grandmother Gloria Violet Lee Wong, who passed away in January of 2024 at 95 years old. Its all-instrumental meditations bend, loop and throb in such gorgeously colorful ways that are so full of life and vigor, thus manifesting the deep bond he shared with his beloved grandmother. – Brad Cohan
Listen: Bandcamp
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