Sewer Telepathy
(Chocolate Monk) Magazine + 3-inch CDR $13.00
Raw art scrawls fresh from the claw of the crapped-out mind of Michigan’s finest low-brow outlaw, plus a slimy mini soundtrack of creep vignettes. Full-color cognitive dissonance packaged up in a handy street vendor size. They say trolls lick eyeballs. Introduction by Cary Loren. 36pp book. Edition of 50
Tour’d & Flailing
(Chocolate Monk) Magazine + CDR $13.00 (Out-of-stock)
Crude utopia blooms once again as the non-fidelity master sets foot outside. Rubber bands, found metals, a box spring, and an ancient missive. Gorge, friend. 16pp book. Edition of 50
Not Quite Good Enough
(Therapy Tapes) 7-inch (lathe cut) $10.00
One track from The Modern World (Chocolate Monk, forthcoming). Edition of 50
Beavers And Moire!
(Butte County Free Music Society) CDR $10.00
The Ensemble’s interpretive / reimagining spwahaohao, while not nearly as nasty or perennial as fermented mustard water, yet aspiring to the spice level of same, delivers multiple dark gruntings in that realm on their first full album of new material in about a year. Pick or get picked, depending on your psych profile: Lindy Lettuce’s booming rendish of Amanda Lear’s autobiographical call to decadence from the height of hot-for-teacher disco era; a posh and robotic reading of the obscure “Thinking Fellers Theme”; a monologue from Ghostbusters by Dino Nuggie, squeezed in during the Professor’s researches into the effects of vaping Canadian cough syrup; Tom Chimpson and Jimmy The Baptist’s asynchronous duet on “You Played on My Piano” by mid-century rock’n’roll proto goob Hardrock Gunter; and The Red Dragonfly’s defeated crawl through the opposite of the national anthem. The near constant apocalyptica on Beavers And Moire! — literal, metaphorical, and sociological — will surely gnaw the bark off the sleep-deprived skull of even the most well-prepared mutants among us, right down to the sheaf. Excerpts from sessions at Musiclandria with Viper and The Affable Chap provide jingle, rumble, and roar worthy of Tennessee Ernie having gastrointestinal issues in the Wabash dining car. An aspiring Know-It-All Paul might confidently assert that the glitchy radio noise on the 15-minute “Scurf” is the unmistakable handiwork of the legendary Larry Crane. Such a claim would be nothing more than a grave error — one easily made but not by the same person twice. The epic sprawl of such a track can scarcely contain the debut of newcomer Johnny Mac, otherwise known up and down the peninsula as the guitarist and musical director of Petaluma-based visionary theater troupe Grawlix. Lacie Pound anchors the backend of the album with furball beats and ululations in tandem with Ustad Anwar Khan Manganiyar and with Ratchester Bastard having a conniption fit about a Yes guitar solo on the Noisextra podcast. Over an hour. Eleven tracks of peculiarama.
Greenlandia
(l’Esprit de l’Escalier) CDR $10.00
Dull scrape is valorized on the opening track “Pelvic Bowl of the Common Hippo,” recorded live on the air at KZSU, Stanford, where amplified cabbage strafes a listless murk that overflows with pulverized calcium. “Please Vote Lexi Carter Thump Queen” milks the subconscious panic and despair from rural beauty contests and replaces them with psyops yoga. “All String, No Pearls” is a new soundtrack for student performance art duo Maria Callous’s recently unearthed script, the writing of which was triggered 45 years ago by psylocibin and the paddle-ball barker in the 1953 horror film House of Wax, while “Original Soundtrack Recording to PJ Cramer’s Meet Me At Agnew’s Grave,” despite a title that references a non-existent movie, is an anthem for all territories that cannot be colonized or annexed. Closing out the ordeal is a kind of secular exorcism, or what dry drunks call “a Burmese meltdown” — judgmental, shrill, loaded with blurry resentment. Wicked fine. Edition of 75
Succes De Scandale
(Advaita) CD $21.00 (Out-of-stock)
COMING SOON. Nihilistic clamor. Part I includes excerpts from a previously unreleased performance at Morden Tower in 1984. Sleeve notes by Toshiji Mikawa (Hijo Kaidan / Incapacitants). Each copy includes a unique “artwork.” Edition of 200
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.
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.
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
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).