Cougar
Law (Layered Music)

Cougar was formed in 2003 in a cold Madison, Wisconsin basement, and has been secretly crafting beautiful music ever since. The secret’s out.

Members have been involved in the progressive music community for years, including ensembles like the internationally renowned YoungBlood Brass Band.

Cougar is the culmination of what began as informal
compositional/rhetorical gatherings. These sessions brought together a core group of musicians committed to careful meditation and refinement. This ethos pushed the group to constantly examine and breakdown their approach. The group began exploring the idea of the “hook” as an institution that occurs within all beautiful music; be that hip-hop, punk, electronic, classical, improvised, all- or none-of-the-above.

Cougar describes its music as “Emergency Rock”. Emergency Rock is not wordplay; it is a literal description. It captures the model of neutrality/purpose/ efficiency that defines emergency procedure and extends it to music. Each song is a collage of voices constantly interacting and evolving one another. Shape shifting melodies, vast sonic canvases, dense, raw, electronic, organic, found-percussion and driven sounds resonate throughout. Cougar is passionate, powerful, unabashedly epic instrumental music. The band’s sound has become anthemic to rescue-culture aficionados everywhere.

No small part of Cougar’s extraordinary aesthetic is also
attributed to the visionary design/photography team of Scott Pauli and Peter Streicher, whose images capture perfectly the marriage between organic/synthetic and electronic/acoustic elements in the music. It can be said that Cougar’s double-sided fascination with density and space is represented in stark images’ matter and emptiness, or better, nature v. architecture.

Law was recorded at Layered Studios in Madison.
Additional recording was done by experimental music
luminary John McEntire (Tortoise/The Sea and Cake) at Soma Electronic Music Studios in Chicago. John also mixed the record. After a successful European/UK tour last winter, Cougar is ready to make waves in the states with their landmark debut. Thanks for listening.

Layered Music is part of Layered Arts Collective,
a community-based group of artists, teachers,
musicians and writers in Madison, Wisconsin who
are dedicated to progress. Layered sponsors youth
workshops, educational events, concerts, and is
responsible for a publishing house and record label. The label functions behind the collective ideology that it embodies a cause rather than just a brand-name. Layered’s extended family of artists, while diverse in sound, are consistent in this: the desire to make music that has not yet been made.

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