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Press

"Memory" made it on to a few lists of top records of 2009.
Here are some links:

2 top albums of 2009 Staff Lists at Coke Machine Glow.
http://www.cokemachineglow.com/feature/5083/top5009-stafflists

# 32 on Boomkat's Top 100 albums of 2009.
http://www.boomkat.com/charts.cfm?id=516&gID=10

# 7 on Mitch's Top 25 Albums of 2009 at OMG Vinyl.
http://www.omgvinyl.com/2010/01/04/mitchs-top-25-albums-of-2009/

# 9 on the top 20 albums of 2009 at The School of Unthink.
http://theschoolofunthink.com/uncategorized/top-twenty-2009

# 4 on the Top 25 Albums Covers of 2009 at Tiny Mix Tapes.
http://www.tinymixtapes.com/2009-Top-25-Album-Covers-of-2009

# 2 of the Top 30 Ambient/ Experimental/ Noise/ Drone Releases of 2009 at I'd Rather be Fat Than Be Confused Blog.
http://fatandconfused.blogspot.com/2010/01/top-30-ambient-exprimental-noise-drone.html

In the top 30-something of 2009 at the Fire Escape in the Sky Blog.
http://nonotnyet.blogspot.com/2010/01/top-36-of-2009.html

# 23 on Borxes top 180 releases of 2009
http://akteon.blogspot.com/2009/12/borxes-top-180-releases-of-2009.html

Track Review on Pitchfork 3.26.09

"A Safe Place"
[Barge]
"...Micka's music is no trick-- patient and carefully detailed, his instrumentals rarely sound flashy or gimmicky. Often starting with a bare skeleton of a song, he adds skin and muscle until it becomes a full, dense soundscape, in a process that feels more like sculpture than songcraft."

Self Titled Magazine

"We get a lot of crap CDs at the self-titled offices. But once in a while, a pleasant surprise slips into our promo stack. HereÕs a recent delivery that knocked the s/t staff on its collective ass."

Click here for more

From the Big Takeover

"Part experimentation and part rigid discipline, he gradually builds a multi-layered weave of textures and melodies, incorporating guitar, drums, homemade percussion, voice and electronics. Of the three pieces he did, the first and especially the last resonated with me,.."

Textura.org 2009

Review of Memory from nothingatall.net 3.12.2009

"Memory hits you in the face, then lets you go again and drops you back down, and all the while you quite simply can't comprehend something that feels so very personal without wanting to listen again and again and again. Micka has thrilled me with this, as have Barge. You couldn't really ask for a more eccentric and beautiful body of work on one CD. This one is special stuff that words really can not define without missing the point totally. Like I have probably done here. Excellent stuff indeed."

Album of the week on Boomkat - 3.03.2009

"Memory" is a record that engages with familiar techniques and proceeds to completely f*ck with the programme." "...it has all these different, wildly incompatible ideas that somehow come together and merge into eachother,.... It's the realisation of one man's messed up vision, held together by things that shouldnt work but somehow really do. Just awesome."

Interview in Foxy Digitalis 3.03.2009

By: Peter Taylor
"After a number of weeks digesting the forthcoming album "Memory", I have rediscovered a passion for his sprawling, yet introspective world, and have never felt so close. "

Article in the Boston Phoenix - February 25, 2009

"Me time"

Animal Hospital has achieved a hermetic place in the city's musical landscape.
By Matt Parish

SOLO FLIGHT: Micka's music unfolds at a natural, emotional clip that's more primal incantation than one-man-band gimmickry.

It's a lazy weekday afternoon, and we're finishing breakfast at Kevin MickaÕs house in Jamaica Plain. The kitchen table is spread with drafts of liner notes. Micka, the beard and glasses behind Animal Hospital, has added a song to his new album, Good or Plenty, Streets + Avenues, since he first wrote the notes, and now he's trying to figure out where to fit it."

Review of "Memory" on Forest Gospel

Memory
(03.2009, Barge)
I think that the very best new music being produced is often the kind that is near impossible to define. You know, the kind of music that avoids easy categorization and somehow overturns all preconceived notions about what an album should be. Animal Hospital's Memory is shining example of that kind of album."

Click here for the full review

A write up in the Washington City Paper

June 2nd 2008
Monday, June 2, at Velvet Lounge
By Matthew A. Stern
Posted: May 28, 2008

There's a lot of creative potential to be found in the deceptively simple act of repetition. Under the moniker of Animal Hospital, Kevin Micka explores this with little more than an arsenal of effects pedals and other assorted guitar gear. Micka's methodÑadding layers of loops on top of one another until a song emergesÑresembles in concept a Facebook-era Frippertronics. But the songs that Animal Hospital crafts are hospitable enough so as not to require a deep technical knowledge of their experimental underpinnings. Micka's sonic surges, usually summed up under that broad umbrella term of post-rock, range from thunderous, crushing, doom-drenched blasts to spacey, twinkling soundscapes to light, mathy riffs running in rings of recurrence. Whatever atmosphere they reflect, Animal Hospital's songs are always evocative. Animal Hospital performs with Insect Factory and Corpus Callosum at 9:30 p.m. at the Velvet Lounge, 915 U St. NW. $7. (202) 462-3213.

Excerpt from a review in The Boston Globe

By James Parker | February 20, 2005

"Thus far, the evening had been a complete success: We had seen a chivalric duel fought with swords by the light of a disco ball, and watched in wonder as a bearded young man calling himself Animal Hospital sat in a nest of drums, guitars, mixers, and recording equipment and constructed, track by looped track, a multi-instrumental jam of considerable beauty."

From Aquarius Records

ANIMAL HOSPITAL s/t (Mr. Records) cd 12.98
Loop-based one man band Animal Hospital (Kevin Micka) creates a mesmerizing and lush soundworld on this debut self-titled release. Chock full of post rock delights, warm swelling soundscapes, hypnotic arpeggiated guitar lines, pounding crunchy drum beats... And what's super cool is that he is able to replicate all of this live, all by himself! Armed with only a guitar, a drum kit and a shitload of loop pedals and effect processors, he builds these tracks from a single loop into a dense and triumphantly heavy postrock jam. Droney and dirgey and dreamily melancholy, Mr. Micka has produced an album that is at once angular and technical while maintaining a vibe of lonesome sadness, which ends up being pretty damn powerful and at moments, straight up beautiful. The actual recording is amazing as well (his engineering is on par with his soundcraft), producing a warm and glistening sound. Great rainy day post rock!

Review of the Self Titled Release from SF Station

By Matt Forsman 12.16.06
Animal Hospital - Animal Hospital
Released on Mister Records
By Matt Forsman

Click here to read the review

January 2005 interview in the Weekly Dig

By Michael Brodeur. Issue 7.01
Wed, January 05, 2005

Self-contained and Really Heavy
Indie townies who care not for their delicate little ear bones are certainly familiar with Kevin Micka's full-band project The Common Cold. Their distinctive grinding of reliable post-rocky song-mapping against old-skooly, loose-cannon chimp rock has made them local faves over the years, and this approach to organized noise serves as a unique premise for Micka's beautifully spiraling departures as Animal Hospital.
The morning after Christmas brings a nasty snowstorm-the first big dumping of the season-and it's just enough to make me wimp out on trekking 9-to-39-style out to J.P. to see Micka off as he departs for his second national Animal Hospital tour. Adding to this feeling of wimpiness is hearing Micka discuss this tour's hectic schedule in detail.
Over the next four blurry weeks, he will see three corners of the country (nuts to you, Florida), a wide variety of basements and, hopefully, some repeat attendees anxious to get another look at his unique twist on one-man-bandmanship.

Click here for ful interview with Kevin