Kickstarter

The Experimental Sound Studio and Creative Audio Archive house the audio collection of Malachi Ritscher, who diligently recorded live music in Chicago between 1981 and 2006. He documented a wide variety of music styles giving particular attention to Chicago's vibrant experimental and improvised music scene. This collection consists of over 1,000 unique recordings in various formats. These recordings are in danger of being lost due to aging and deteriorating storage materials and formats.

This is truly unique material that we hope to raise funds for. The money raised will be used to purchase hard drives and resources to properly back up and save these recordings and preserve an important piece of Chicago's history.  Our intent is to take these recordings all over the city of Chicago in the form of pop up listening stations.  We will provide the finding aid for this collection on e-readers in order to maintain portability and to prevent paper waste.

At the end of this transfer process we will host a Malachi Ritscher Collection showcase hosted at Experimental Sound Studio. Here those who donated will have the opportunity to hear the recordings, either at listening stations or in the main live room of the studio.  Our goal is to engage others in the Chicago arts community to celebrate the preservation of this vital audio collection. After this event, we will partner up with various locations throughout the city and create pop-up listening stations centering around the Malachi Ristcher Collection.  It is our hope that these events will generate a greater awareness of the collection.

Here is a sample of artists on the DAT's we will be transferring:

• Vandermark 5
• Peter Brötzmann
• Jeb Bishop
• Hamid Drake
• Josh Abrams
• Xiu Xiu
• Kent Kessler
• Caffeine
• Jim Baker
• Tortoise
• Joe McPhee
• Kevin Drumm
• Michael Zerang
• Cheer Accident