A small sign donning the space’s name, address and occult-looking logo identifies it from its exterior.
However, inside, the décor fits its proprietors’ experimental leanings.
A series of abstract cubist paintings by Pendra Gon, one of Auris Apothecary’s founders, lines the walls.
In one corner, a skull and an unsolved Rubik’s Cube share space atop a side-turned milk crate.
Across the space, a set of antlers hangs over a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade console, and, a few feet away, there’s a display of cassette tapes and cases arranged in the shape of an inverted cross.
Physical media formats, like cassette tapes, are not relegated just to wall art for Auris Apothecary. Six-and-a-half years ago, the label put out its first release, Unholy Triforce’s “The Ghost House,” on quarter-inch reel-to-reel tape.
Since then, it’s put out more than 100 releases, many on unconventional formats. Dante Augustus Scarlatti, who co-founded the label with Pendra Gon and Ancient Pine and who now handles most of its operations, said the label started as an absurd experiment — “a record label that you couldn’t hear or buy the music to” — and morphed into something more.
“I guess we didn’t realize how burgeoning the DIY cassette-label microlabel scene was — we didn’t know anything about it when we started,” Scarlatti, 29, said. “After a couple of years we realized that there was a huge community and so we started releasing more and more people who got a hold of us or people we found.”
As Auris Apothecary grew, the list of its unconventional formats expanded.
The label’s website lets visitors sort releases by format, with options including floppy disks, lathe cut records and “anti-releases,” musical recordings built into seemingly unplayable art objects with the goal that the listener will find a way to play them.
“Digital,” meanwhile, sits at the bottom of the list.
Scarlatti said his fascination with these formats goes back to his youth.
He said he got into vintage audio-video gear as a young teenager, and he came of age at a time when physical media was changing drastically.
“I was just at that age point where I remember using tapes, I remember using VHS, but I also distinctly remember thinking, ‘These are worthless,’” he said. “It’s kind of like I’ve had my foot in both worlds, and the point of Auris was to do these things, have these weird formats, so the people who never got to experience them or who think they’re just purely outdated use them and appreciate the characteristics.”
Scarlatti’s work also extends to artwork and packaging for the label’s releases.
Those aspects are as varied as the media formats themselves: a booth in the Artifex Guild displays several Auris releases, and the shapes and sizes of those releases rarely repeat.
He said he makes an effort to never repeat packaging designs for multiple releases, and he often works with bands on the artistic direction. He also has no formal arts training.
“When I was 15, I learned how to do websites for my first punk band,” said Scarlatti, who also works in a print shop and does freelance web design and video editing. “When I needed to design posters for shows I booked, I learned Photoshop. It all just sort of came of a natural desire to be doing this stuff.”
In recent years, Auris Apothecary’s DIY operations have expanded past releases.
In the next few months — Scarlatti is eyeing New Year’s Day — they’ll launch deathwave.tv, a website dedicated to video content such as show recordings, live streams and interviews.
The Artifex Guild is another operation. In May, Scarlatti opened the space to a group of eight close friends. Now, they all book shows there, and he said he estimates they’ve hosted more shows in the past four months than in the two years prior.
“This is all ages,” he said. “We don’t care if people drink, smoke ... It’s sort of, like the label, no limit.”
But even a glance at Auris Apothecary’s release schedule reveals their expanding sphere of influence.
Later this month they’ll put out records from both an IU alumnus — Joey Molinaro, who applies black metal and grindcore conventions to violin — and an Australian black metal band, Alder Glade.
Scarlatti said all these developments go toward promoting dark and experimental music and maintaining the sense of absurdity that led to the label’s founding.
“The future of Auris, much like Auris (itself), is very mired in fog,” he said. “I kind of know where it’s heading, but I never know how I’m going to get there, so I just sort of let it drag me, and what happens, happens, and on the way we’re going to release a lot of weird shit.”
