Baited Area #9
(Baited Area) Magazine $25.00
Interviews with Longmont Potion Castle, Chino Amobi, Jordan Sullivan, Fran Ilich, Maggie Lee, S. Glass. Art and text by Graham Irvin, Joe Roberts, Bri Cene, Nick Vyssotsky, Negashi Armada, Meg McCarville, Luis Clériga, Shawn Hollins, Jeff Cook. 106 pages.
Poking a Hole in a Bag of Tears
(Minimum Table Stacks) LP $19.86
The dogged stomp of Columbus, Ohio, group’s drumming, the lingering melody of the guitars, the buzz and the momentum — it has to do with that faded croon, a kind of singing that makes the worst story you ever heard just kind of drift past you.
Plough Thru The Rust
(Wormwood Grasshopper) LP $20.00
DIY ramshackle energy with the group’s songwriting taking a more introspective and personal path, drawing things closer, finding the charm within the scaled back honesty and rawness.
Everything Disappears
(Siltbreeze) LP $20.00
John Howard, Martha Hamilton and Andy Fox churn out solid, hook-laden, bullseye-pop gems by the bushel. Must be something in DC’s Potomac water supply, because Everything Disappears delivers in a way that evokes the lost wryness of Tru Fax And The Insaniacs matched with the going-for-it gusto of Iridescence-era Half Japanese.
Feel I’m Slipping Away Now
(Minimum Table Stacks) LP $20.00
Together this long-running UK DIY band navigates Studio One rhythms, obvious rockabilly riffs repeated metronomically to the point of oblivion, ’60s psych covers, chopped-up tapes of previous bands, improvised chaos, and even tender ballads. A raw quartet screaming and begging to be let out of the walls of their self-imposed prison. This “most fantastic blurt,” as described by Tom Lax of Siltbreeze, heralds a “Spitfire parade across the skies above their street level hacienda,” “The shimmering roar reverberating a gleeful din, sending tremors of bewildering euphoria into the enthusiastic gaggle of lugholes below. The winsome cover of Red Krayola’s ‘Victory Garden’ alone sounds like Spacemen 3 trapped inside a funhouse mirror.” Includes 16pp zine.
Live Inside
(Siltbreeze) LP $20.00
Lewis Carroll-meets-David Cronenberg ambience established The Stones Are Watching And They Can Be A Handful is still in play, but relegated to the corners. Much like The Raincoats’ Odyshape, or The Shadow Ring's Put The Music In Its Coffin, Live Inside exudes a higher level of mettle to match their singularity.
Son of Drib Against the Wind
(Minimum Table Stacks) LP $20.00
The twelve songs of scuzzed-out garage pop on the second LP from this trio (now expanded to a quartet) take you from Beat Happening to the Warsaw demos to the first Strokes LP, then right back home to Columbus, OH, where they hold their own with like-minded predecessors like Cheater Slicks, Times New Viking, Great Plains, Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments and so on. Two songs were included in the soundtrack to Poser (which made its debut at the Tribeca Film Festival).
The Stones Are Watching And They Can Be A Handful
(Siltbreeze) LP $16.00
Audio levitation by Arielle McCuaig (Hairnet, Janitor Scum, Vacuum Rebuilders) and Kayla MacNeill (Singing Lawn Chair, Vacuum Rebuilders) who conjure up their extraordinary odds bodkins out of Calgary, Alberta. This fetching melange of art-damaged hoopla sounds like it might’ve taken a spin around the Amos & Sara / It’s War Boys universe and is further realized than on their debut cassette, It’s Called Punk, Are You Stupid? Includes 11 x 17 insert. Edition of 250
Weird Scene
(Minimum Table Stacks) LP $20.00
NYC comp with tracks by Adam Green, Kyp Malone, Tchotchke, Tommy Volume, Toni Lynn, Rossmondo, Whispering Matt McAuley, Headfooter, Willis Willis, Josephine Network, First Preseident of Japan, Maya Luz.
Cozinha Mágica Electrônica
(Chocolate Monk - choc.625) CDR $8.00
A psychedelic wormhole unravels on the fourth floor of an apartment complex. Kitchen jams are made with utensils, synths, beatboxes, folk harp, vocals, recorder. The balcony doors open wide and spew improvisational prayer, from the strange to the ridiculous within the shadows of Quarry Hill. If your foot refuses to get muddy, then cut it off. Numbered edition of 60
REBECCA MAHAY / RUSSELL WALKER
Have You Ever Seen Me in the Spring?
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $8.00
Weirdo concrete spoken word pieces pulled from the confusing emotional wreckage of a previous era that hold up a funhouse mirror to self-important monologues and self-deprecating goof, while also touching on alienation and existential themes with subtle humor. Edition of 60
Voice Paintings
(Chocolate Monk) 3-inch CDR $8.00
Mr Insect Factory’s ideas presented in the raw, prior to study and refinement. The audio sources on Barsky’s eight-minute postcard span more than a decade; he shares it as a love letter to being alive, a thank-you note to the trees, a prayer to the moon. Edition of 60
96 Tapes of Revenge
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $8.00
Let the tapes dream. The whole ferric coil works like time — it’s all there at once. Sensors and action receive and hear a second per second. Like different animals in time, tape is metabolized at different speeds. Dragged across the head. Music as a thing in itself. Music from a world despite people. Too low fidelity for commercialism. Too analogue for mechanical reproduction. Too off-putting to unite people in interesting times. Removing human intent and authorship. Turning avant-slop automatic sounds into CD through curation alone. All gone horribly wrong. The freedom in indeterminacy equalizes; it denies hierarchy and sounds as static repetitions. Reliability for automatous ends. Repetition is an arrogant human dominance of sound and art. A spreadsheet is reliable. A spreadsheet is consistent. No overdubs. No re-takes. There is no player. Edition of 60
Live at Bar Chitei
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $8.00
In August 2025, Tokyo’s mecca for noise and avant-garde sounds hosted Slug Tapes’ Operation Doomsday vol.1 live event, where the ex-Gauze and the Incapacitant — usually seen together in the trio Nomuzu with Yoshio Otani — stepped into the hot stink of an eager crowd of sweating noise nerds and hardcore goons. Mikawa ladles out the electronic belch’n’ heave while Hiko gets on the clatter’n’thwack feverishly, all frisky and visceral. A real thought embargo. Reports have it that the bar was propped up by a lone suave gent in a bespoke 1930s style Okisaka designer suit (three-piece), who had one sleeve rolled up, and his arm submerged in a giant jar of Big Dills for the duration of their set. Raw, no budget, straight to device capture. Edition of 75
The Blue Shirt of Simon
(Chocolate Monk - choc.521) CDR $7.00
The Pheromoans’ main lunk and one half of The Teleporters was originally going to present a short chapbook of wanton sleaze, but felt the great unwashed were not quite ready for it yet, and instead submitted a piece of “noir crime fiction” in audio book fashion. It is set in a fictional West London town called Simon, taking place over two weeks in February 2021. All characters are fictional and any resemblance they have to persons alive or dead is coincidental. Aye, riiiiight. “I really liked it,” said someone somewhere at some point in time, “even though it sounds like a man of the edge of some sort of breakdown.” Edition of 60
Nature
(Chocolate Monk - choc.594) CDR $8.00
Guitar and tape maestro Jeff Barsky wants you to talk to the trees. Talk to yourself when you’re around the trees. Let the sun devour you and bake your skin. Lie under the stars and let the constellations cool you down. Know that you belong to them. Perceive that the grass is even greener at night. Let the impossible light touch your internal organs. Peel off your old skin. And breathe. Again, a little slower. Surrender to everything. A few years in the making, Nature is beautiful meditative throb of Frippy guitar and cassette scuttle that blossoms and stays ripe. Howard Stelzer contributes his ferric finery to a couple of tracks for added whumpf. Numbered edition of 50