New Haven, CT based artist Stefan Christensen’s work is known for its contemplative and melancholic mood; always filtered through a home-recorded, DIY dirge that hits a wide range of sounds; from gentle acoustic work and long form drone, to wiry post punk songwriting, freakout psychedelia and beyond.

In 2007, after years of playing in hardcore and punk outfits, Christensen formed his best known act, avant-punk quartet Estrogen Highs. The band released numerous full lengths and EP’s, and toured extensively before parting in 2015. Christensen himself moved swiftly into solo work at that time and has since been releasing a steady stream of music, as well as touring in the US and Europe. As a solo artist Christensen incorporates a 4-track home-recording style, somber tone and skirts the line between song and noise, often blurring said line. A collage of textures and tones land his work somewhere in the realm of the much heralded Xpressesway, Siltbreeze and Twisted Village labels. Christensen has released numerous albums, EP’s and cassettes on labels from around the world since moving to solo work. And his 2021 “Cheap Things” album was released on London’s World Of Echo to critical acclaim.

Christensen is also a frequent collaborator in the fertile New Haven free rock underground. He plays guitar for psych heavyweights Headroom (Trouble In Mind Records), as well as being a member of guitar improv trio Center. He also runs C/Site Recordings, a label that serves not only to release music from his New Haven cohort but the world at large.

PRESS
”But Christensen doesn’t just make music that sounds like the records he likes. He draws into his sources’ strengths and molds songs that are just as misshapen, stubborn, and undeniable. He plugs his jack into their ungrounded outlets and noises just as jagged and acrid smoke out of his amp. He sounds just as dismayed with the world around him as his inspirations did, and as the music spools it becomes apparent that he, like his sources, is standing on the outside of human industry, wishing he could escape and knowing that he can’t because he’s human, too. The Upcoming Flame mines a still-rich vein of ore. It could be that as long as the world of humans doesn’t make sense, music like this will.”
-Dusted

"Like a one-legged Crazy Horse sort of walking on the Xpressway towards the Twisted Village and stopping by Columbus, Ohio for a minute... ranging from Galbraithian over-before-it-began cassette-folk to V-3 like smutty, downer rock, accidently scratching a few Precious Metal lathe cuts in-between. Christensen manoeuvres the 4-track recorder like there is no tomorrow, mixing down dirge but at the same time oddly uplifting and smashing songs that are just as immediate as they are life-affirming somewhere in all their distorted and tape-saturated gloom." 
-I Dischi Del Barone

“Christensen’s delivery sounds almost desperately insistent, as if through repetition and willpower he’ll enact the chorus’ alchemical transformation. It also suggests a sense of simmering frustration, imminent collapse. [It] suggests an array of influences, including the homespun and punk-adjacent undergrounds of 1970s Midwest and 1980s New Zealand, though it surges into the present nonetheless.” 
-Impose

2017 Artist Of The Year
-Terminal Boredom


LINKS
stefanchristensen.bandcamp.com
csiterecordings.com
csiterecordings.bandcamp.com


Discography