Kramer

Mark Kramer (born November 30, 1958, in New York City, United States), known professionally as Kramer, is a musician, composer, record producer and founder of the New York City record label Shimmy-Disc. He was a full-time member of the bands New York Gong, Shockabilly, B.A.L.L. and Bongwater; has played on tour (usually on bass guitar) with bands such as Butthole Surfers, Ween, Half Japanese and The Fugs (1984 reunion tour); and has performed regularly with John Zorn and other improvising musicians of New York City's "downtown scene" of the 1980s.

Kramer's work as a producer has been with bands such as Galaxie 500 (whose entire oeuvre he produced), Low (whom he discovered and produced), Half Japanese, White Zombie, Gwar, King Missile, Danielson Familie, Will Oldham, Daniel Johnston, and Urge Overkill, including their hit cover of "Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon".

Early music career Kramer's first experience in the New York music scene came when he played in the band New York Gong, led by Daevid Allen, in 1979 and 1980. Kramer played organ on one song on their 1979 album About Time.

In 1980, Kramer joined the band The Chadbournes, led by Eugene Chadbourne, which also included David Licht, Tom Cora and John Zorn. They played together until Chadbourne, Kramer and Licht formed the band Shockabilly, which toured internationally from 1982 until 1985.

Production and studio After touring, Kramer took over a New York recording studio named Noise New York, using a loan of $5,000 from an uncle.

From 2003 to 2023, Kramer operated a private CD/LP mastering and mixing studio in Florida. In 2006, he announced the return of his record company under the name Second-Shimmy. The debut release in October 2006 was I Killed the Monster - 21 Artists Performing the Songs by Daniel Johnston, featuring performances by Dot Allison, Fair & Kramer, Daniel Smith & Sufjan Stevens, Kimya Dawson, R. Stevie Moore, Major Matt Mason USA, Jeff Lewis, Mike Watt, and many others. The label released five CDs and ceased operations.

In 2006, Kramer produced Exaltation of Larks, a solo release from Dot Allison for which he acted as arranger and played most of the instruments. The LP was released in September 2007 on Cooking Vinyl in the UK and P-Vine in Japan.

Kramer premiered his composition "Things to Come" in Tokyo in 2007. Hoping to perform the piece annually, he performed it in Tel Aviv in 2008, Melbourne in 2009 and Paris in 2010. In January 2008, Kramer toured 14 cities in 14 days in Japan with Mike Watt and Samm Bennett in a dueling bass trio named Brother's Sister's Daughter.

In 2012 Kramer released The Brill Building on John Zorn's Tzadik label, an album of cover songs written in the Brill Building in the early 1960s. In 2017, Tzadik followed that release with Kramer's The Brill Building, Book Two, featuring guitar performances by Bill Frisell.

In January 2020, Kramer was named one of the 12 curators of the Joyful Noise Recordings White Label Series, with David Lynch, Lydia Lunch, Son Lux and others. On April 29, 2020, Joyful Noise Recordings also named Kramer its 2020 Artist-in-Residence, and simultaneously announced a new partnership with Kramer for the rebirth of his Shimmy-Disc label. The first release by the label was from Let It Come Down, Kramer's recording project with U.K. vocalist Xan Tyler. Their debut LP, titled Songs We Sang in Our Dreams, was released on June 12, 2020. The A.I.R. series culminated in a five-LP box set of Kramer projects.

The A.I.R. box also includes Words and Music, Kramer's spoken-word LP in which he sets music to the voices of poets and writers as diverse as Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Terry Southern, Tina May Hall, Christine Schutt, Scott McClanahan and others, and his first full-length 'ambient cinema' releases, Music for Pianos and Sunflowers, and Music for Films Edited by Moths, collaborating with Dutch multi-disciplinary artist Tinca Veerman on a series of videos for each piece of music. Another collaboration with Tinca Veerman followed in 2024, when he was commissioned by her to compose the music for her Amsterdam installation at De Hallen, "We Are Passengers".

In November 2021, Kramer released And The Wind Blew It All Away (his first solo LP of original songs since 1998's Songs From The Pink Death). All of the performances were recorded alone in his Florida studio.

In 2022, Kramer re-mixed the first demos recorded in 1994 by Josh Haden for his band Spain, and released them on Shimmy-Disc as World Of Blue, featuring many of the songs eventually included on Spain's debut LP, The Blue Moods of Spain.

As a filmmaker, Kramer has created over 60 music videos and short films he refers to as 'Ambient-Cinema', following his lifelong quest to bring quiet music and cinema into a single artform.

, Kramer lives in a small town near Asheville, North Carolina, where he continues his activities as a composer/producer and maintains a modest recording/mixing/mastering facility in his home.

Discography

The Guilt Trip (1992) The Secret of Comedy (1994) Let Me Explain Something to You About Art (1998) Songs from the Pink Death (1998) The Greenberg Variations (2003) The Brill Building (2012) The Brill Building, Book Two (2017), with Bill Frisell Songs We Sang In Our Dreams (2020), with Let It Come Down Music for Pianos and Sunflowers (2021) Words and Music (2021) And The Wind Blew It All Away (2021) Music for Films Edited by Moths (2022) Interior of an Edifice Under the Sea (2025), with Pan American ...And the Crimson Moon Whispers Goodbye (2025) They Came Like Swallows– Seven Requiems for the Children of Gaza (2026), with Thurston Moore