Snake Code
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.404) CDR $8.00
Detroit’s demented noise chess-master lays his first cracked egg for Chocolate Monk and it is the out-and-out mind-melter you would hope for. Cracked electronics sit alongside blown out-tape damage. Electric insect skitter and life-affirming creep pulse also make appearances. A heavy-on-the-hiss classic that will scribble your mystic center. Strange zones await unexplored. Numbered edition of 75.
Gone All To The Down
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.405) CDR $8.00
No-fi abstract crunk merchants Steve Clarke and Julian Bradley shuffled out of Birmingham in the 1990s before evaporating. Bradley resurfaced in Vibra Cathedral Orchestra etc., while Clarke teamed up with Sean Conway of Plastic Hooligans and UFO Antler Band to further confuse as The Gas Shepherds before disappearing again. He returns under The Negative kite moniker and serves up more than 40 minutes dollop of solipsistic sound compost. Is he the only one here? Or is that you? Numbered edition of 75.
Half-Time 1916
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.406) CDR $8.00
Hitchin’s finest scruff about the square Russell Walker (The Teleporters, Lloyd Pack, Pheromoans, etc.) reads from his upcoming novel, the follow-up to his poorly selling When New Towns Act Tough. James Tranmer adds tech yes/no beat crud and Tom James Scott more of a loopy drone mumph vibe. Come feel the mundane mumble, friend.
Life On Bob-Lo Island
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.407) CDR $8.00
Your man inside Coaxial Arts in Los Angeles remains an outsider lurking in the dreams of discarded mannequins. This concept album, about an abandoned amusement park outside of Detroit, Michigan — with its wooden rollercoasters, funhouse, drunk clowns, buzzing taffy machines, identical twins on the boardwalk, poisoned water slides — which became a hobo squat, a decrepit kingdom where strange men lurked, a sort of island of the dammed, cloaks Detroit darkness in a clown’s shroud. Holes puncture a laughing reality as a mask of spinning dice reveals the corroded dream: children playing in yellow haze, black corn swaying to the machines, families disappearing into the night like Polaroids developing in reverse, dogs conspiring with the shadows, machine laugher trapped in the bog, a UFO made of straw slowly crashing into a black swamp, abandoned vacations vacated by lost men. Give one an offering and maybe he’ll tell you a story.
Scintilla
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.408) CDR $8.00
Life-affirming sound wonk by Tim Alexander of LAFMS and Points Of Friction. Burbling and oozing broadcasts from the mind flap of a madman / maestro. Alexander tries “to find just the right perfume for each robot…, to allow the ghosts in the instruments to haunt the soundscape,” and “balance … intentional and unintentional elements.... The sounds are generated by the improvised playing of objects and mostly broken or prepared instruments, field recordings, and other sources…. Multi-track looping, digital tape effects, sampling and pedal effects add new sounds, and take us into their cobbly worlds.” With guest appearance by the late Damian Bisciglia. Numbered edition of 75