Chilly Mortal
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $8.00
Matthew’s parents’ neighbor Joan came over for a drink during the 2023 Christmas period and at one point admitted, “I guess I’ll just have to face the prospect of ginormous bills this winter. I have to have the heating on, see. I’m a chilly mortal.” All of the voice recordings on Chilly Mortal that aren’t Greg’s grandad Charlie talking about a car he used to own in the 1920s come from Matthew and Lila’s neighbor Bob, who, during one of his daily tea-over-the-fence meet-ups with Matthew, revealed that in the late ‘80s he used to go to Sneinton Market to buy used tapes to record over, but “kept the ones of interest.” Lucky for us, Bob’s fields of interest include weird voice messages. Guest appearance by Theo of Territorial Gobbing just to offset the purely old person vibes. Edition of 60
God With Stripes
(Chocolate Monk - choc.492) CDR $6.75
Lila Matsumoto and Mathew Hamblin (aka Cloth) hook up once more with the reclusive guitarist Greg Thomas (Helhesten), last seen terrifying discombobulated tourists at the foot of Leith Walk with his “spare any change / pay me to stop” drone und strang meditations. This, their follow-up to their 2018 Monk disk Vetch, heads deeper into the wilds searching for their I AM Presence with musical ears attuned to deep listening. Get grounded, have empathy, enjoy the visuals. Edition of 60
Vetch
(Chocolate Monk - choc.411) CDR $8.00
Lila Matsumoto, Matthew Hamblin and Greg Thomas’s engrossing follow-up to their Animal Work cassette (Beartown Records 2017) pulses, drones, scrapes and baffles — a strange sedative to help you cover that attitude of cynical indifference. Somebody once said, “Vetch is a food made out of flowers. The violin is made of mouths. The computer is also eating the food. Hens roused and goaded to tumors, the monk is known to write nonsense. Moping at doofus, the violent node of edam is shut for maintenance. Everything will be played backwards. Sprawling peyote limbs and bees. There will be a guitar, pills and bream enacting Cnut. Everything will be played at once. Chocolate slipping into pugs, spume of rats. Tunnocks cantering at veal. There will be a sampler. Shy and numb, the tulips and goats eloped.” So keep that in mind. Numbered edition of 60