Healamonster & Tarsier

Healamonster & Tarsier are a Brooklyn production duo (Burgess Tomlinson and Rona Rapadas) who combine elements of ambient pop with experimental electronics and acoustic psychedelia. They specialize in moody, textural, sprawling, unconscious music pulled from cellos, acoustic guitars, dolphin conversations, programmed beats, magic mountains and thunderstorms. Harmonious and haunting he/she vocals ride alongside elastic, mostly midtempo, beats, though at times instrumental tracks can peddle up and over 140 bpm.

Their current EP, The heart of a blue whale is the size of a small car, was co-produced with Mitch Osias, a New York film/tv soundtrack composer whom they first met at Brooklyn venue, Southpaw, while opening for The Sneaker Pimps. The six-track mini album continues along the similar storyboard of their debut EP, 00:00:01 (One Second), and is chock full of atmospheric arrangements, subterranean cellos, abstract synths, broken guitar fuzz, programmed percussion, and crystalline vocal harmonies.


Healamonster & Tarsier have released tracks on independent record compilations from San Francisco and New York, including the abstract trip hop-focused, Live At The Complex Compilations I, II & III (Entartete Kunst), All That Glitters Isn't Platinum Volume 1 (Amoeba/Hip Hop Slam), Are Friends Electric (Seizmic Records NY), Bread & Roses (Entartete Kunst), Amoeba Music Compilation Volume IV (Amoeba/Hip Hop Slam). They recently completed a remix of "Inch Inch" from Neotropic's White Rabbits LP (Mush). Tarsier also collaborated with mc/production maestro, Alias, from Oakland's anticon collective on a full album entitled, "Brookland/Oaklyn" to be released May 2006 on anticon.

Healamonster's first, solo, dub-experimental album, Underwater Hunter sold over 500 copies from indie-retail giant, Amoeba Records. Gavin Magazine said, "Fans of dark, sparse beats take note. This release features eerie noises that click and gurgle?essential for tripped out headphone adventures...laced with spoken word and fat beats?adventurous college stations will eat it up." Healamonster began writing with Tarsier in New York where they recorded their debut album, 00:00:01 (One Second), an aural snapshot of a dream, combining erratic beats, with everything from alien homeless man samples to frogs, cinematic synth lines, melancholic tubas, Manhattan subway trains, eastern ceetaurs, and rapturous vocals. The Onion New York wrote: "00:00:01 floats nicely between icy IDM and fractured bedroom pop." CMJ described it as "a psychedelic fantasy land created with delicate vocals, light piano, a harshly-fuzzed out drum machine and mischievous electronic sounds."


H&T are most inspired by argyle socks, wall-to-wall carpet, the smell of new cassettes, sunshine on snow, post-it notes, patch bays, wet hair and morning coffee, sharpies, mini-trampolines, spliffs and yellowtail shiraz, egg sandwiches, pant pockets full of wishlists, chapstick and cashed paychecks

Their songs are timeless anesthetic for a straight-lined, fast and fickle world.