Card Funk
(Cardboard Club) LP $17.25
The debut full-length LP by RRS aka The Cardboard Prince, after countless cassettes and CDRs (and a seven). Get your card hard with the bedroom sermons of an outsider funk snack master. Lo-fi, lurid, lyrical and life-affirming stuff.
Former January Ending Through 52 Weeks
(Sophomore Lounge) LP $19.00
The inner logic in People Skills, beyond a cloud of ambiguity, is a remarkable balance between the shattered plaster electronics and Jesse Delow’s melodious chording. The blunted-ass casio beats and the haunted lonerman vox riding tremble alongside make it perfect. The encased-in-dust-for-a-few-winters production value is just gravy. Includes DL card
Cardboard Sane
(Chocolate Monk - choc.476) CDR $6.25
Our beloved Cardboard Prince returns with corrugated heart worn firmly on sleeve. Deep takes from an outsider looking in, who “wanted to make an album that was more specific about really suicidal mental health from my experience with it in the past,” admits RRS. “I wanted to crack fewer jokes in the first half and be honest about how bad it can get, but I also wanted part of it to be about how much of a party it can be when u have survived hell and u keep it card x.” Edition of 50
Unintentionally Marginalized
(Chocolate Monk - choc.480) CDR $6.25
The return of one of Chocolate Monk’s more musical family members who, as always, brings strumming and sonorous sound to ease the pain. “These days,” says the man himself, “Being marginalized is like getting a gold star in some segments of society. It’s a social boost that gives some people more clout in some circles. People want attention. So much so that everyone is scrambling to out-marginalize each other…. And I know I am insignificant in the greater scheme of things. I wish more people realized this about all of us…. Unintentionally Marginalized is an instrumental album of songs recorded by myself at home about living with extreme mental illness. A lot of people claim marginalization just for social bonus points, but I just want to be normal….” Edition of 50
Untitled
(Chocolate Monk - choc.478) CDR $6.25
Jameson Sweiger of Maths Balance Volumes beams forth further transmissions from his mysterious bunker out in Mankato, Minnesota. The weird warble of the tapes and the Chopinesque throat burbles are all present and correct, but is he telling us of the seven plagues of the petrochemical age or informing us of the fact that the internet is an alien life form? Whatever the answer, just be sure to keep your sick room windows closed while you try to decipher. Edition of 60
No One Cares About The Drama Queen’s Potassium Intake
(Chocolate Monk - choc.479) CDR $6.25
Churning and honking like a couple of white apes in a suntan lotion sento, Nyoukis and Glass bromance the mud for a solid uninterrupted half hour. They manipulate field recordings, befoul sound effects recordings, loot audio thrift store cassettes, violate the public domain, and contaminate domestic objects. Auntie Pearl clinks and coughs and laughs and listens to Led Zeppelin. Duncan Harrison tries to teach Ms. Elkka how to ollie in a Hastings train station after a day getting pissed with Steve Underwood, because life skills. It’s just a good long wallow in ghostly moon flatch, something you look like you could use right about now. Allow the duo’s ballet-dancing electronic bendables to pirhouette and plié through your skull. A little equilibrium-challenged DNA, splatters of tube-squeezed murk, and descending plasmatic crud are the universal pick-me-up. If not yourself, do it for the plague babies. Edition of 60
Ultra Fluff
(Chocolate Monk - choc.477) CDR $6.25
In the late summer of 2019, Graeme Hopper and Joe Murray met up on Saturday afternoons to jam. After a few sessions, a pattern emerged. Chlorine’s deconstructed percussion / electronics set up and Posset’s Dictaphones, megaphone, and vocal jaxx started in a hectic, everything-playing-at-once ecstasy, an overload of sensory information with the emphasis on texture and rhythm. After some time, busy layers sloped off, colors became clearer, and the vigorous back-and-forth of frantic improvisation settled into a steady psychic pulse. These raw jams were further messed with, looped, sliced and taped back together. Expect lightning-quick “v- vas-h” and elongated “whumm.” Climb inside a seashell to appreciate the tight, creamy crenulations. Feel the air get sucked out the room by the electric pressure blowing out your speakers. This marriage of real live-room jam and abstracted studio-sweat is not unique. But the light hand on the tiller and hurling the moral compass into the frothing waves just might be. Edition of 60