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Hardworking Spirals - Standard Pub Music  CDr £5

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Lovely anti-music from two of the UKs most bent out of shape gents. Tom Bench (Hardworking Familes) brings guitar, coffee machine, electronics and ghosts. While Joe Baldwin (Hello Spiral) settles for guitar, data corruption, taking out the bins and Casio VL-Tone.

"A hardworking pub is a family. A unit. If a hardworking pub cannot work together as a family unit everything spirals from there, hello! The magpies know, ask them. You are too cowardly to ask them but that’s ok, they know what you’re going to ask anyway and answer accordingly. Here, have some coffee while they reply. It’s proper coffee, I brewed it in Denmark! Oh! Yeah sorry, you’re not allowed to share with me what they told you. Try it, see what happens. Yeah it’s a nice sound, distant trains passing. It reminds me of that time, you know the one. I must take out my recycling! I am waiting for this computer to finish doing its thing, so much corrupted data, there should be a use for it all, what a waste! Oh! I mean, who doesn’t want ghosts in their machine? Anyway, as I was saying (I’ll get back to it when I return from the bins, free of my recycling) a hardworking pub is a family, a unit! It’s what the people want, to know there is an enmeshed team behind their steady supply of pints and salty snacks and standard pub music. If a hardworking pub cannot work together as a family unit everything spirals from there, goodbye!"



Edition of 60

Max Julian Eastman - An Event In 4.75 Time  CDr £5

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Further mystery noise from the always ripe Mr Eastman. An Event In 4.75 Time was recorded live in the Garden State, originally broadcast on WFMU Excerpts from this broadcast were previously released as “An Event In 4.75 Time I” and “An Event In 4.75 Time II” on The Glamorous Life (Throne Heap cassette, 2024). The reworking here is guaranteed to have green smoke puff from your ears. Stick to the left and elevate.



Edition of 60

Noiserist - Cochon  CDr £5

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Glorious Saxophone heavy strangeness from Noiserist aka Claude Spenlehauer of French weirdos micro_penis. Ten toe tappers with an abundance of heady blurt and saucy wheeze that will ease your delirium, or your money back.

"Cochon was recorded at an art school called Maison des Arts near Strasbourg France with analog material especially the mixing machine with my mate DJ Bouto who is a sound engineer based now in South of France. But at this time we worked together at the same art school. It was recorded in 2015. So it has an history. The set up was Two man, one baryton saxophone, reeds, and a looper, just one take for all the pieces everything improvised. The idea was to do something new for both of us and totally crazy and weird." - CP 



Edition of 60

Sam Gas Can - Live In Japan  CDr £5

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"It was a bloodshot Friday morning when I first got wind of Sam “Gas Can” and his ill-fated comedy tour of Japan. A man whose name was already infamous in the back alleys of New Jersey comedy clubs for his erratic, unpredictable style — but even I couldn’t imagine the disaster he was about to unleash on the proud, orderly streets of Tokyo.
Sam was a thing of legend. Half comedian, half performance art disaster. He would saunter onto any stage, face flushed red from whatever concoction he’d been drinking, and start doing whatever insane thing popped into his head. There was no script, no rhyme, no reason. He didn’t even tell jokes, at least not in the traditional sense. No, Sam had something far stranger up his sleeve: when the audience didn’t laugh or didn’t understand him, he’d just… speak in tongues. Full-blown, sweaty, gibberish-heavy rants that came out in wild spurts, his voice rising and falling like some deranged preacher at a revival meeting. The audience, confused and horrified, would sit in stunned silence, unsure whether to leave or call an exorcist. But no, Sam had no intention of stopping. He was on a mission, and by God, he was going to complete it.
Tokyo was his first stop — and from the moment he stepped on stage, the wheels of disaster began to turn. His words barely connected with the crowd; they had no idea what he was on about. This wasn’t the kind of comedy you could translate with subtitles, not by a long shot. No, this was pure, uncut nonsense. Sam, sensing the palpable confusion in the air, would not be deterred. With a grimace and a wild gleam in his eye, he’d shift tactics. If the language barrier wasn’t going to let him connect, then by God, he was going to cook his way into their hearts.
“Alright,” Sam barked, slapping the microphone with the kind of aggression you’d reserve for a caged animal. “I’m gonna tell you about Cowboy Stew.”
The Japanese audience sat there, blinking in collective confusion, as Sam launched into an anecdote about this so-called “Cowboy Stew,” a recipe he insisted was “the most American thing you could put in your gut.”
He began, as if to explain the meaning of life itself, “Alright, you get a can of chili with beans, you throw in a pound of ground beef, and then you add some baked beans — none of that fancy stuff, just the good ol' original, maybe barbecue if you're feeling bold. Chop up some onions, throw ‘em in there. Then you let that simmer. But the secret? You gotta top it off with shredded cheddar cheese and crushed Fritos. Yeah. Fritos. It’s like heaven in a bowl, people. Makes four servings. Four! Goddamn, this stuff’s better than any of that sushi bullshit you’re always eating.”
I’ve got no idea whether Sam even knew what he was saying at this point, but there he was, standing center stage in a Tokyo comedy club, passionately describing the most American dish you could possibly imagine to a room of silent, bewildered patrons who probably had never heard of Fritos in their life. He went on for ten minutes about Cowboy Stew, outlining every single step, the rhythm of his voice building, escalating with each mention of “cheddar” and “crushed Fritos.” He believed in this stew, in the same way a cult leader believes in their own divine mission. If you couldn’t understand the language, then by God, he’d make you understand the concept of Cowboy Stew.
The audience, unsure of what to make of this, began to nod politely. Some started taking notes — probably hoping this was some kind of exotic American cultural thing they could later tell their friends about. Others simply stared, frozen, mouths agape in the awkward silence of pure incomprehension.
By the time Sam wrapped up the recipe, he had somehow become possessed by the spirit of the Cowboy Stew. He’d rambled into the night, not about the stew anymore, but about how it was “the essence of America” — the same America that, in his view, had birthed everything worth anything. The absurdity of it all was too much. He didn’t have an act. He had a vortex. A tornado of confusion, punctuated by nonsense about chili, Fritos, and “real” American comfort food.
The worst part? Sam didn’t even notice the body language of the crowd, slowly shifting from curiosity to discomfort to full-on retreat. They were backing away, mentally and physically. Tokyo was a city that demanded discipline, respect for structure — and Sam Gas Can had none of that. There was no joke, no punchline, just a desperate attempt to connect through food — a horrible, yet oddly poetic, symbol of his floundering effort to bridge two entirely different worlds.
By the time the show ended, the club manager stood in the back, wringing his hands, unsure of whether to kick the lunatic out or offer him another set of beers to calm down. Sam had done it — he'd managed to alienate an entire room full of people, all while evangelizing the virtues of a canned chili stew.
They never booked him again, of course. Sam Gas Can’s “Cowboy Stew Chronicles” would go down in history as one of the most bizarre, incomprehensible comedy disasters ever to hit Japan. But, knowing Sam, he probably wouldn’t have remembered it anyway. He was just one step away from the next wild tangent — wherever that might take him." - Charlie Ward (Stomach Ache Records)



Edition of 60

Shadow Pattern - Underthought  CDr £5

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"Far from the court jester of the new Canadian Confusion Sound our man Nate is the master crafter of the disorienting, almost meditative experience. Lowkey field recordings and warm tape hiss lick lobes. His sound is like the musical equivalent of a photocopy — distorted, grainy, and slightly out of focus, yet undeniably present. It has the same uncanny quality of a reproduction, where the original source feels just beyond reach, blurred and fragmented by the process of duplication. Like staring at a photocopy of a face and knowing it’s familiar, but never quite being able to place it. The unsettling lowkey vibe comes from this sense of duplication, where nothing is wholly real, but the distortion of it all holds you in a state of weird, suspended discomfort." - Wilma Bones



Edition of 60

Panic Boner - Psychic Hygiene  CDr £5

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Mangled pop loops squirm in and out of the stereo field like a million thoughts drifting through your mind in the midst of a hot shower.  Vocal chants greet you with the ethereal charm of a fine seaweed face mask (I wouldn't take a bite if I were you though).  Synth textures possess a smooth quality that is not far off from a freshly shaven face.  For a moment, pure bliss; the work day is over, the outside world no longer exists behind this closed door...
Until you cut yourself shaving; blood drips from your face.  The drums begin picking up.  Horns that serenaded you earlier are now blaring at volumes far beyond "discomfort zone."
"Was that zit on my face there before?"
"Did somebody turn the volume down, or did I just forget to clean my ears?"
"Is this the same track as before? Was I always this hideous?"
"Whatever happened to relaxing?"

This is the duplicity of Psychic Hygiene. What Panic Boner presents here is no different from the age of self-care that envelopes us all today. Equal parts ugly and transcendental; this is a record for the listener that understands the high risk/high reward nature of improvisational music. Things might get messy, but boy will you feel like a million bucks by the end." - Ken Geiger



Edition of 60

Dylan Nyoukis - Peasant Swill  Cassette £7

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Crude experiments for voice, tape, electronics and field recordings. Side A blurts and sputters brown-out vocals followed by some slowing loop meditation. Fidelity be damned. Side B invites to join the lower viibration of reality that is Brighton's Theatre district. Ding Ding!


Numbered edition of 28. Each cover is individually hand collaged and rubber stamped.

SOLD OUT

Cody Brant & Andy Heck Boyd - Green Glass  CDr £5

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Further broadcasts from these two champions of true-brow/street level sound art or is it a imageless art movie for your ears? either way belief makes real.

"Green Glass starring Cody Brant directed by Andy Heck Boyd album premiere at Chocolate Monk everywhere. He walks to the left, he walks to the right, they are watching him on their surveillance tv as he walks around the city, he stops by a liquor store, he goes in and he comes out with a bottle of 7-up." - AHB

"Think: Critters 3 vs. Gremlins 2 with DiCaprio playing a huge church organ but thinking he's playing drums with a Beatles tribute band at Tall Man's funeral home wondering how and when the 8th installment of Critters is gonna be made" - Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson



Edition of 60

Food People - Chilly Mortal  CDr £5

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"Chilly Mortal was put together with help from two elderly neighbours. The name comes from a phrase used by Matthew’s parents’ neighbour Joan when she came over for a drink during the 2023 Christmas period: ‘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 that aren’t Greg's grandad Charlie talking about a car he used to own in the 1920s, come from Matthew and Lila’s neighbour 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’. Luckily Bob finds weird voice messages interesting. We asked Theo (Territorial Gobbing) to sing for us so that it wasn’t purely old person vibes. It was luverleeeeee having him onboard" - Food People


Edition of 60

Matt Atkins - Beginners Mind  CDr & Booklet £9

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"Recordings and paintings made during summer 2024. Tapes, contact mics, loop pedals, objects, Yamaha PSS-50 keyboard, percussion and field recordings

The 'Haiku paintings' were made by exploring the parameters of minimalism, with just a red circle and single black stroke allowed for each one. The Gouache paint gives a distinctive and delicate texture to each untitled piece.

These tracks were put together during summer 2024 and were informed by the paintings. The sounds and textures flow together in a spirit of meditative minimalism, with each element given space the breathe and unfold, much like the strokes in the pictures." - M.Atkins


24 page A5 booklet in full colour. Comes in hand stamped enevelope.

Edition of 60

Ypsmael - Akystret  CDr £5 LP £20

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In parts soothing and interspersed with claustrophobic fogfall, Akystret contains some new sounds by Ypsmael alongside material from 2011/12, parallel to when Box of Black was recorded. A dear friend's old Fostex 4-track was used for manipulating a Brightonese baritone guitar + layered fx and sounds of wind rustling in dissolving foliage, among other things. Almost all of these tracks are based on live recordings into one mic, made during Ypsmael live shows around East Anglia and in a sullen boxroom turned home during a prolonged episode of insomnia. The title Akystret is mere sound, a one-word extract of leaving a digital handheld recording device running when trying to find sleep, recording own somniloquist mumblings during short and nightmare-ridden patches of sleep from the same period as when the tracks were recorded. A kind of onomatopoeic mystery resonating from a voice and in a language other than one's own. Or perhaps of one's own but from a place only to be accessed in a state of nausea and exhaustion, to an extent that unconscious speech meanders its way from the meaningless cosmos of the mind into a vacant vessel for sound, much akin to what Ypsmael is.


Edition of 60 white vinyl LP and Edition of 60 CDr

IF IN THE EU PLEASE ORDER DIRECT FROM YPSMAEL

FOR POSTAGE IF ORDERING THE LP PLEASE COUNT AS 12 DISKS

T.Jervell & Co - Duos  CDr £5

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Norwegian sound explorer T.Jervell cooks up a delightful bunch of short, skittering improvisations with a selection of his pals (Felix Nussbaumer, Saul Rayson, Raoul P, Tripp Nasty, Julius Menard, Raoul van Herpen & Chester Winoweicki). Come hear the glorious aural smelting of trumpet & ether deerhorn, drums and sampler, wooden flute & weevil, bells & deerhorn, shruti & phashi, gitarre & kraakdoos, trumpet & board chirper, bansuri & weevil, harmonium & gibber, drums & fingetrap and bass & chirper. Sonic vignettes to float autumnal brains.

“I like to constrain myself. Making  rules, dogmas. For this album I wanted to work freely. No rules. So I wanted to make an album based on free improvisation and I did but I didn’t manage to do it without a few useful constraints and a lot of help from my friends!! An album of duos. Acoustic. Electronic.”


Edition of 60

Jason Kahn & Tim Olive - Level Limb (The Shadow of The Wizard)  CDr £5

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Third release from the JK/TO duo. Two of the pieces are studio-recorded (Kobe) vocal/magnetic pickup journeys into, if not the heart, then perhaps the liver, of what seems to be some sort of semi-darkness. The intervening piece (using synthesizer/magnetic pickups) was recorded live in Osaka, and somehow channels the conflict and majesty of the battle section of By-Tor and the Snow Dog. All pieces have been edited/layered/structured for maximum (melo)drama.


Edition of 60

Insects Waiting - Nonsense Codes Vol.3  CDr £5

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Transatlantic duo INSECTS WAITING first conjoined for a one-off gig alongside the mighty Usurper in 2012. After many years of hibernation, their erratic long distance communications have resumed for the third volume of "Nonsense Codes". Edinburgh lifer Euan Currie (Dead Labour Process, Muscletusk, etc) and Albany NY's Eric Hardiman (Rambutan, Sky Furrows, Spiral Wave Nomads, etc) continue their murky and perplexing excursion into the unknown sonic mumbo jumbo undergrowth. Voltages are stroked, tones are mangled. Collaged via the wonders of file transfer services circa 2023/24.


Edition of 60

Evil Moisture - All Bone Shockers  CDr £5

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Bolus spurts out some of his best crude electronic and tape wizen. Woozy double vision noise throb and hiss filled smear globs conjure up that giddy day-glo bile vibe that you all know and love. Some parts recorded at the apparently haunted castle Chateau de Ligore are likely to give your granny the willies. Crank loud and levitate.


Edition of 60

Neil Campbell & Rebecca Mahay - Cozinha Mágica Electrônica  CDr £5

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A psychedelic wormhole unravels on the 4th floor of an apartment complex. Kitchen jams can be heard made with utensils, synths, beatboxes, FOLK HARP, vocals, recorder.
The balcony doors wide open spewing the 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.


Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

TVE - Innermost Dwelling  Booklet & CDr £8

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Seamus R. Williams of Worcester, Massachusetts is the master of homebrewed no-fi concrète nothingness, but the truth is much more than the birds may say, take your ears and lend them over to the audio scurvy. There is hidden tracks within tracks. The accompanying A5 booklet (24 pages, heavy card) showcases the goons unwavering eye when it comes to collage and demento xerox optic psych. Hand stamped envelope, vintage stamp, soon to be collectors item etc. Scratch some letraset onto your brain and ride a gripe swan!


PLEASE COUNT AS THREE CDRs FOR POSTAGE PURPOSES


Edition of 60

Yurii Samson - Stone Curl  CDr £5

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Ukrainian musician, composer & writer Yurii Samson is the founder of several projects of electroacoustic, noise, industrial music (Starless, Kadaitcha etc.). Stone Curl is a sculpted exploration into weird locations featuring blooming electronics, loops, voice, amplified objects etc. A fine Eastern European creeper and hangover smasher.

"In the final, chilling palette – a procession of shadows, thin black shadows; within the bounds of an existential panorama – lights over the decaying marshes; once mad, forever mad, barely hearing the voice of infinite power in the abyss of the entropic cyber-swamps ...and now an avalanche of fragile sculptural elements pours into the violet void; like the petrified tears of Thanatos." - Kinky John


Edition of 60

Cody Brant & Carl Kruger - Smoke Detail  CDr £5

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Our Yank brothers crank out another piece of marvellous noise musicality. Like Tom Recchion with a hard-on.
Description sequence. Location: Mexican restaurant. Coordinates: 100 miles north of primary residence. *Food status: Suboptimal. Journey status: Optimal. * Each travel event: transforms into raw data processing. Route: winding, lesser-known roads. Reality distortion detected. Key object: Mucho Burrito. Symbolic significance: minimal. Twilight detection: active. Driving duration: hours. Burrito quality: average. Ritual status: enhances journey experience. Event log: Night drive. Data received: initial tracks from Cody. Output: Smoke Detail. Krautrock framework: raw, minimalist. Album synthesis: rapid, seamless. Recommended use: reflective open-road journeys. Reality-dream boundary: blurred.


Edition of 60

Spencer & Andy Heck Boyd - This Is Not A Tape  CDr £5

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Part split, part collaboration of audio diary gubbins. First we have Spencer turning their back on their usual "sound artsy" style and embracing the joy of a new tape player, framing everyday domestic nonsense with ferricobalt and asking us to come graze on the shubbery of failure. Andy Heck Boyd responds with some insights from his digs out west which includes a rare appearance by Uncle Dog & The Sickos. The disk ends with a 12 minute collaboration that shines a spotlight on the "special relationship", sweet trans-atlantic hiss and wonk. God save the beans.


Numbered edition of 60

Robert Ridley-Shackleton - Card Mango #3  Zine & CDr £8

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"You may be wondering where your latest issue of card mango had got to, for it did not arrive through your letterbox during this past frightful winter. Fear not as issue 3 is coming to gonk city aka chocolate monk, but not just like before, oh no,for this is a Boxing Barnies special edition

But Whats so special about it ? Well not only is it in full colour but it also comes with a bonus disc of the hottest video game of the year Boxing Barnies. But whats so special about it? Well not only is it in full colour but it also comes with a bonus disc of the hottest video game of the year Boxing Barnies.

Woweee, we r so lucky to be the first people to experience the number one fighting game, street fighter, mortal kombat. get yourselves in the bin cuz 1991 is the year that the boxing barnies rain supreme." - RRS

PLEASE COUNT AS TWO DISKS FOR POSTAGE PURPOSES


Numbered edition of 60

Psanck - III  CDr £5

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Of the bucolic-uncanny / leaving things in the sun, Psanck III swings like an ADHD Necks. Careful listening but none too reverent. Horns, strings, electronic flotsam and, dare I say, jetsam. Psanck are an improvising band but more in the sense of sounding like field mice somehow tasked with making themes for children's TV shows. Musicians, surely, but ones that have set their sights on wow and flutter amongst the melodic sprinkling.

Edition of 60

Kinver Pond - Moonrise Over Legends Gym  CDr £5

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"Yes yes, this gunk is gonna smear perfectly amongst all you Choco Monk lunkz. It’s a solo debut (sort of, if you exclude the self-released stuff) from Kinver Pond, aka Mike Holland, one half of noise amateurs Wellness Regime and full-time aural dissolver.
Skittish and heavy it is, Holland’s avant sniffer hoovering up all sorts of debris from his metropolitan surroundings. If these mournful yowls and gristly heaves seem initially to push molecular nihilism into your lobes, further exposure peels back these blistered surfaces to reveal a carnivalesque delight in the chaos of urban life. Madness, bro, but this Kinver Pond guy loves it, his antennae always set to the ‘on’ position, continually flipping the jostling carnage of our reality into deep cuts of topographical collage. Back in the day you’d need a room full of mainframes in a basement in Paris to get this kind of musique concrete jibber-jabber, but fortunately for us, Kinver Pond’s access to the means of production is far less arduous. It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it, babycakes. That’s what gets results."
- Paul Magree


Edition of 60

Meadow Argus - Arboreal Frippery  CDr £5

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Ohio-based tape manipulator Meadow Argus (Tynan Krakoff) returns with over 60 minutes of memory mulching sound stew. The main aural sources stem from a momentous summer 2009 trainhopping/hitchhiking trip around America's West Coast with Tynan's brother Max, a seminal coming of age experience. During the trip, Tynan carried a microcassette pocket recorder and captured hours of raw audio. These memories are collaged & juxtaposed with found tapes & other family recordings touching upon themes of altered states and trips; exploring the tension between paranoia, elation, and revelation, holding space for each.

Tynan Krakoff began Meadow Argus in 2006, privately making tapes for friends, with his first real public release coming in 2015 on his own label, DNT Records (2005-2015, RIP). He has released over a dozen tapes on American labels including Flophouse, Hooker Vision, and Aural Canyon. Album artwork by Pearl Morgan.

"The first song I made was actually the album closer, 'Trainwreck Tunnel.' That piece is built around a sample of my brother telling a train story from earlier in that trip. After rediscovering that particular tape in my old shoebox from trips past, I realized it fits perfectly into the Meadow Argus universe, which is all about tapping into nostalgia and jumbled memories. An ethereal blending of the past, present, and future." - Tynan Krakoff


Edition of 60

Forrest Friends - untitled  CDr £5

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Too weird for the "song heads" and too toe-tappingly wonk for the "noise heads" The Forrest Friends return to their spiritual crack shack of Chocolate Monk to serve up their most solid what-the-glup?? album to date. They got a shovel and teaspoon and everything in between and they ladel the sonic plate HIGH while indulging in their favourite past time of third-eye dusty trail wandering. Come gormandize on alien jukebox tubthumping, haunter cavescape, head-scrimmage dancefloor stroll and kitchen sink syncopation. Or maybe you would rather lounge and kick back to ritual doowop exorcism and industrial helium string majesty. It is all in here, playing out like a primodial mixtape compiled just for you by a twitching dumpster-man. Watch out for the juice and gases as they emit dark hallway anxiety muppetry & demon campfire storytime vibes.
FILE UNDER: mystical bog karaoke/back-porch astral strum & pluck


Edition of 60

Johnny Scarr - Étude in Black  CDr £5

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Bent bleak monochrome "music" for misery guts.

"Some significant personal events occurred and I made some inept "faulk" music in response (so emo). Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, the work fails to convey much of anything about those events. After making stuff which was intentionally devoid of emotional resonance for years, this way of working felt pretty revealing and somewhat pathetic. Which is probably why, by the time I was done with it, I think I ended up burying most, if not all sentiment that might have been there." - Mr J.Scarr


Edition of 60

Egg & Crisp - Cleverness Ferments Meat  CDr £5

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"Egg & Crisp return with a release which won’t revolt your housemates so much as the previous one. If you’ve made it this far, you’re probably on the lookout for duck noises drenched in reverb - well I can guarantee you’ll find that here. But there’s more. On track 4, “see you friday” (wonder where they’re headed?), I could swear I detect - get this - *over*dubbing. Either that or the clone-farmers Egg & Crisp have managed to herd a half dozen Eggs, a handful of Crisps and even an Ivor Kallin or two into a single room simultaneously, for some sort of a barbershop TwelveTet. By the end of the final track, titled - predictably enough - “puppet 7 eating up the crap peacefully”, with several wrongfully-detained harmonicas seeming to have been waterboarded most unceremoniously by this point I am ready to concede that I have no idea what’s going on but I do know one thing, that cleverness ferments meat. It says it right there on the cover. That’s right, cleverness, apparently… ferments… meat." - Andrew Ciccone, Navel-Gazers


Edition of 60

Todd W Emmert - The Key To The Seven Gates Of Heaven is Love  CDr £5

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"Another relief cascade from this beloved mountain mystic who can atomize the ambiguity and hateful confusion that eat away at your psyche by a mere twitch of his eyebrow. If you’re not grateful, piss off. Emmert’s tremolo-ruffled drone-adjacent porch gaze favors episodic, self-contained constructs with little use for large, dramatic jumps and twists. Those of us who appreciate an all-consuming application of The Hard Soothe have known this since Dome covered “Flying” and replaced the pastel industrialism with the barn rock sound of the first Modern Lovers album. Join us. If Studio Ghibli would have a look at the Licensing Agreements page on Chocolate Monk’s website, they’d realize they could get Miyazaki’s upcoming anime about a justice-enforcing capybara soundtracked for the little more than the cost of a handful of shiny beads. The steady, micro-stated clunk of percussive objects, what someone somewhere might refer to as drumming, backstop reverberations colored by the elusive mysticism of an Appalachian Gamelan appreciation society ploinking upstream. Each track glides into view, drifts across the panorama and exits into the blurry mosaic of silence without once making eye contact." - Seymour Glass


Edition of 60

Brandstifter & Cody Brant - Fuck Piss  Booklet & CDr £8

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In which the Moustache of Mainz (Brandstifter) collages a 12 page full colour zine together from lost & found scraps sent to him from the Portland Peasant (Brant) while the roles are flipped when Brant collages together a short album of sonic nonsense from recordings sent to him from Brandstifter. As delightful as you would expect and with enough random strangeness to send Qanon nutters into a froth with their eyes smarting. One persons detritus is a another fools symbolism.


Numbered edition of 67

Plastic Hooligans - Lay-by Fantasy  cassette £7

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More solo weirdness from Sean Conway (formerly of UFO Antler Band and Gas Shepherds), here serving up three tracks of burbling sounds to ease the quease. Zonked and soothing “in the pink” lo-fi analog electronics all laid down direct to tape which the man himself says is “for lay-bys & fetish gatherings and telepathic others.” so you can modulate your mung mind any which way.


Numbered edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Dave Miko + Twothirds = Dave and Erick - We Were Where  CDr £5

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These guys born 50 years ago in Connecticut, linked 30 years ago at SUNY Purchase, to begin a musical plod to the present. Worked together and autonomously these tracks bear the ambience of a long-term friendship. Enjoy the difference of 90s primitive SoundEdit collage alongside the two-man live jam band. Supplemented with leftover interview snippets from a recent oral history tome of New York City graffiti writers and a new live acapella lament.

"Although, Erick and I met in September 1994 when I started attending SUNY purchase, we had been crossing trajectories for years. We had a number of mutual friends in high school and would both frequent The Anthrax as young teenagers. Although I had never been in one, upon our meeting I asked Erick, who I had heard was a drummer, if he wanted to be in a band with me. I boasted that because I had an electric guitar with a speaker built-in, I was ready. He agreed, a bunch of other friends joined, and with no practice sessions, we started playing the Purchase Experimental Theater Cave open mic weekly. The band we had, Multiball, quickly derailed that open mic as it had been. So, the guy running it, asked me to take over supervision. I ran The Cave for the next four years. During that time Erick and I became close friends, and began a long relationship of working on, and processing, many things together.
This collection groups some sounds Erick(twothirds) put together on SoundEdit starting in 94, with two live one take guitar and drums recordings we made in the fall of 2001, in NYC. Also included is a recent track Erick helped me make from unused interviews I conducted. Lastly, I thought to add a new solo vocal track. Rest in peace Tracy 168, we appreciate your generosity." - Dave Miko

Edition of 60

Tom Betteridge - Pinkfoot  CDr £5

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Intimate croak concrète from London based poet/musician Betteridge. Like a low key ear tonguing. Moist and at close quarters.

"Pinkfoot's fragments are cut from vocal improvisations done in the house while the baby slept – just a mic and a reel-to-reel tape emulator: there’s sound poetry, Ami Yoshida/Junko overidentification, some rattling on. Compression and EQ are instruments and also feature. I projected some of the snippets into different environments—it’s often good to drag withdrawn things outside—and populated others (my partner and daughter, my father-in-law, geese). Uncanny/on the cusp of too intimate/spectral but mucky – that’s the hope. I’m just trying to say hi and then listen; maybe you’ll say it back." - Tom Betteridge


Edition of 60

Family Underground - The Acetone Of Flowers  CDr £5

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Copenhagen's finest purveyors of pulse, drone and general mind float present all new recordings made at their D7 lair, a well loved hovel behind ten thousand layers of paint. Since August 2023 FU were making tape loops which were then curled up and stomped on the floor, later to be fed through an old plastic National reel-to-reel and combined with synths and guitar skree. The opening two tracks are performed by the classic duo of Sara Czerny (Buchla Easel & tape loops) & Nicolas Kauffmann (guitar & Moog) while the final two tracks introduces new member Matt Saporito, a NYC transplant who brings his manipulated tapes and keyboards creating a new hive mind of smashed fragments and resonant strings. Buckle it up.


Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Poulsen, Scariot - Hands On (Voidtronica Chapter Two)  CDr £5

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Hands On is the second work of experimental musician Claus Poulsen from Denmark and Italian improviser and noise performer Michele Scariot (aka Nodolby). It is the second exploration of what the two call Voidtronica. The method is to meet and record without either one knowing what instruments the other will bring, free improvisation and no overdubs or mixing. What you get, however, is the opposite of emptiness: as if driven by a sonic "horror vacui", the two accumulate debris from self-made cassette loops and needle jumping the grooves of prepared vinyls, creating the pulse of the tracks. At a certain point the voices enter - sighs and whispers blabbering through hastily set-up filters and effects. Some sounds come from the room, others are feedback from the electronics themselves. It is the emptiness that once again manages to feel musical. The recording session was held in Copenhagen during a break of the SUPERNOISE 2023 festival, where both musicians participated with their personal projects.


Edition of 60

Ashcircle - Yet More Warnings/Object Permanence  CDr £5

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South London duo Ashcircle improvise micro pseudo-music together to cope with the chaos of overwhelming information and Tory governments. They organise Cliff-Edge, a regular show of “improv for end-times” at Hundred Years Gallery in Hoxton.
Yet More Warnings and Object Permanence, presented here back to back, were recorded a week apart in November 2021, both with a Bastl Microgranny each. It is the sound of goon men gathering the electronic shrapnel of what was music and gluing it back together with all the huff and wheeze of spore huffing delusionals. A no let up set of frothing pitter patter. Sonics which are ripe to dissipate the gloom. Do you want a shovel or a spoon??


Edition of 60

Extra - Melt/Surround  CDr £5

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Melt/Surround is the fourth album of insidiously immersive headphonic haze by alliteration-loving living legends Brian Grainger (Milieu, Coppice Halifax) & Howard Stelzer. Extra sculpts sensuous, vivid drone music out of steamrolled cassette tapes, mountains of modular synthesizers and repurposed suburban ephemera. Their latest missive is a deeply serene time-defying expanse wherein it is possible for all participants to find themselves hovering several feet above safe ground. And so on.


Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

various artists - Calibre 3 

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More friends & family of Chocolate Monk create new sound whump using old Calibre recordings disks as primary sound source. Featuring Nimmo, S.Glass, Ani (aka Hobo Sonn), Wino Lodge, Cody Brant, Andy Heck Boyd, Anna Peaker and Ripped Spit. Avaiable FREE for the hardcore Monk heads who buy all of the December batch.

Edition of 50

ALL GONE

Tongue Depressor - Wonder How It Left  CDr £5

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Connecticut sound conjurers Henry Birdsey & Zach Rowden prove that you can find God in a dead dog. One track of duo organ and one of cello/bagpipe to levitate your weary arse.

"An enigmatic scuttering scores the fabric of this dimly lit seance.

Infinitesimal pulses drift from the interior,
draping shadows upon the surface,
its exhalation suspended in the air,
monolithic yet diffuse.

Here, the pipes burnish a remnant partition.
Here, the tungsten lays bare the graver's block.

Exclaim that which has dissipated.
Wonder how it left?

intone. intone. intone."

- Adam Buffington (Mumbling Eye)


Numbered edition of 75

SOLD OUT

Robert Millis - Harmony Hollywood  Cassette £7

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Robert Millis, he of Climax Golden Twins, Idol Ko Si, Sublime Frequencies etc comes good with a beautiful tape to soothe and confuse.

"All sounds created with or recorded through a 1960 Harmony Hollywood H39 arch top hollow body electric guitar in improvisational bursts throughout 2022. More than 20 years ago I traded my first ever acoustic guitar to Patric Barber from the band Blowhole for this Harmony guitar and a copy of the Sun City Girls Grotto of Miracles LP. Not sure who got the better end of the deal. I love playing that Harmony. I even like listening to Grotto of Miracles. So I guess it was me." - RM

Uncle Jim (Alan Bishop/Alvarius B) had this to say about the recordings:
"was groping for a little more rhumba and calypso from this goblin smirker with his Lomax molded spin pipe-drool but I suppose a Truman Capote underwater soundtrack'll have to do although not sure how many seahorses he can stuff in his Honduran fishbowl…”.

So now you know.


FOR POSTAGE PURPOSES PLEASE COUNT AS TWO DISKS

Numbered Edition of 75

SOLD OUT

Karen Constance - Positively Susan  CDr £5

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"The more I come to consume work by Karen Constance the less I find it helpful to think of in terms such as ‘sound work’, ‘film work’ or ‘painting’. At this point I consider what she does as an ever living, ever growing ecosystem of audiovisual dream logic; one that may express itself in the shape of the above media yet exists in an essence far less tangible. Positively Susan - in this case a compact disc recordable manifestation – is another prime instance of the great arc of images, motifs and obsessions that live via the now buckling shelves of Constance’s zero filler back catalogue.

Such is the profundity of this gesture toward the abstract infinite that I can no longer tell whether I am listening to a reinterpreted, reanimated take on materials previously encountered in older jams/films or if this is an entirely virgin experience for my lugs and bonce. Maybe it’s both. Like getting to read a missing page from a beloved novel or finding out an action figure you’ve had for years has a gun you didn’t know about hidden in its arse. Fresh perches from which to angle your head whilst gazing at the aesthetic biosphere.

But to concede to categorical thinking a moment; what am I actually talking about vis a vis the lived tasting experience of this disc? Pearls dropping from wet cave roofs, as seen from a staticy television? shattered memories of hearing a piano glued purposely into the wrong shape? spoken word tracts detailing dreams (probably) amidst deep larynx level non-verbal utterances? Sampled and stitched with a calm, delicate poise then gently warped and looped into heaving inhaling/exhaling living organs? Maybe so. But much like a decent plate of Chongqing Xiao Mian the proof can only ever be in one’s own tasting. Whether you’ve had the prior pleasure of a toe’s dip in similar culinary waters or find yourself a first time diner, ready your mouth and heart for an earful of the most auditory numbing chilli oil to be found this side of Preston St."

- Mr Duncan Harrison(AdHuman)

Edition of 75

SOLD OUT

Points of Friction - Sprinkle Of Blunder  CD £11

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Chocolate Monk's 600th release is a long awaited release of Point Of Friction's final recordings featuring our much loved and missed friend Damian Bisciglia (alongside equally brillant Tim Alexander, Mitchell Brown & Joseph Hammer). "Proper" CD release in digipack. Just in time to top your end of year list.


"Even on occasions absent slide dissolves and the multiple super-8 projections that ornament their live shows, Points of Friction have remained an audio-visual group since their inception. Listen to Sprinkle of Blunder in complete darkness, and notice if your sponge doesn’t require a good firm squeeze by the end. Is anyone else seeing the mad flashes of painted film, hand-scratched emulsions, layers of transparent material, and magnified vegetation? Good, so we agree, then.

The late 2011 session that gives us this album progressed from dark energy to its current state on the material plane much as others before it: Joseph Hammer, Mitchell Brown, Tim Alexander and Damian Bisciglia gathered informally in remote locations where acoustical situations were presumed to exist, waiting and ever-welcoming to seekers and freaks, like a tunnel or an abandoned bakery once owned by a crab-faced character actor from the 1940s. They did a bit of recording together, saved the results to their respective devices, and then played them at various moments during the recording session proper — in this case at Brown’s Los Angeles studio. Around these and other field recordings each had made on his own, Sprinkle of Blunder pulsates at every intersection of Brown’s synth, Hammer’s tape loops, and the hoarder’s paradise of objects, prepared instruments, toys, hot-wired and damaged goods that Alexander and Bisciglia considered their axes. But let’s not forget that the seamlessness of their entangled montages makes accounting for precisely what is being done by whom at any given moment superfluous. Curiosity might not kill the cat but it’s not going to clean its puke off the carpet, either. However we diagnose the root cause of our cognitive maladies, we know they need to be cured with a nuance-rich antidote free of side effects. Points of Friction’s model of the subconscious flows and jars with sublime finesse. It has a life-force all its own, flickering back and forth between the primal states identified in Goethe’s Theory of Gunk (gooey, gaseous and gelatinous) — one big thing ready to be absorbed. But, fair enough, knowing the constituent parts of what’s going into our bodies is an overriding concern of the times. How about this: metal sculptures, bristles, vocalizations, banjo, harmonica, effects processing, sampling, loops, zither, rubber trumpet, badge reel with clock spring, Speak’n’Math, spin whistle, synthesizers, keyboards, drums, field recordings, loops, tape loops, and tape loop manipulation. Mmmmmm, information…. so enlightening.

At 12 tracks in 57 minutes, it’s more of a holistic, live-in-the-studio recording than a pharmaceutical confection (though just as sinfully rich as your Aunt Twiggy’s figgy pudding). As with any 600-piece jigsaw puzzle, once assembled in the correct combination, the mosaic is complete. Bisciglia in particular was certain right away that these recordings were suitable for release, and as such it has been in the works for a decade since his passing. It arrives not without a bit of after-the-fact touch up, minor editing, crafting, tailoring — sure. Listening to the master recordings of the jams, Alexander, Brown, and Jay Morales pinpointed certain themes or modalities, not all of which moved in a straight line. They didn’t hesitate to relocate bits and pieces that made sense elsewhere as a transition between two parts of a completely different track. Ultimately it’s the overall mood that connects everything, accounts for the continuity and internal logic, keeps it all related."

- Seymour Glass (Bananafish/Butte County Free Music Society etc)

Edition of 200

SOLD OUT

IVY NOSTRUM - PACE-DELVE  CDr £5

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"You can have one, or the other. But not both.

A frenetic collage of domestic recordings, crumbling tapes and cheap electronics that smudge together quite a few sonic ideas that I’ve been playing with for the past few months.

You wander around for a bit. Then you find it.

Cack-handed minimalism, amateur improvisation, barely passable sound art. Some of these things have been ripening for a while. Others are new flowerings. Somewhere between points of departure and dead end streets.

I’m just happy to be here. I suppose." - Paul Margree

Mastered by Phil 'Big Yin' Julian

Edition of 60

Marija Kovačević & Roro Perrot - Push Broken Duet  CDr £5

choc.598

A duo birthed by chance at one of Perrot's 'Broken Impro' soirées at Le Chair de Poule in Paris quickly entered the PUSH studio to capture their broken music for broken times.

“Crafted from the fervid echoes of broken violins and the crude energy of improvised guitar, this album is a unique testament to the compelling beauty that resides in unexpected corners of composition. New life into forgotten fragments, using the cracked, splintered, and cast-aside that promises the unfamiliar yet resonates with a primordial musical instinct we all carry. Both players splayed out on the concrete floor teasing out their spontaneous sound showing us that music can bloom in the most unsuspected environments.” - Capucine Bonenfrant


Edition of 60

Diurnal Burdens & Matt Atkins - Futile Phantoms  CDr £5

choc.597

Flout the floatation tank and the devouring of celestial orbs, lay down the pipe and lend your ears to the inimitable allure of sonic innovation of the two-headed nature. Atkins and Scott-Buccleuch seem to almost whisper out these transmissions of crisp psychedelic sound collage. Dictaphone scutter and vacillating tapes are folded into mellow drones and intoning loops deftly. Field recordings, electronic purr and gentle clatter infused with warm hiss. A sound paste that can be applied liberally to yr cracked case with rejuvenating effect.


Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Hello Spiral - Guitarded  CDr £5

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This isn't a put on. This scruff really wants to put rock n roll in the ground. If you soak the ego in whisky long enough it becomes a dissoant crank. NO MORE MUSIC.

Some points from the player.

• Walking through strangely luminous walls of garbage, until then I will never believe in you so much.

• 20 x 14 RAWSTOCK GDNS, half a chunk of my daily dose of being robbed. I actually just think this is a clowncore thing, unrelated to ice-cream care for the feet of the soft lady. We don’t have anywhere to store car doors. WANTED: Standing coat hunger, wardrobe, chest of drawers (Kentish Town). Enjoy your blood vinegar. The doors get slower every day, the doors get slower every day. Like sugar and mint on top, and then an undertow of dense breath smell. Functional head’s doubts entomb us like giant towers of pigs. Bruxism headache. Nice weather for xenophobes. Add insult to insult.

• Snitchcraft, the end of life below the spiders as we’ve known it. Colonorectal fear. Gamer girl fart carts. Something else round and brown. Download more night. You’re telling me a ghost wrote this book? You can’t control the direction of the wind but you can adjust your balls. He brought him to the sweetie realm and uhm’d him to death. A problem too boring to share, like a kilo of rice and naming all the grains, aesthetical microaggressions are no laughing matter. Privately amused by the not-quite non sequitur. Sinking your teeth into the texture of now, that dread would disintegrate. Kinda looks like this guy looks like this guy looks like this guy looks like this guy embraced the bald. Forbidden gun emoji. Levitating window cleaners eating a big fucking skeleton-shaped pizza. Looked like nipple chafing from running but you’re full of asbestos. We are all evolving into crabs, laments of the garbled man. Convenient racist t-shirt. Pat the background object. If I didn’t have worms before, I definitely do now. Indulgence in moral turpitude, musta done a slid at least. Made dinner and ate it…you cannot replace the imposter. Photograph of a model modelling. “I’m not really bothered about that hole right now cos I know what it is and I know where it is” Probably hungover from the fireworks. I get all my shitting done before I leave the house. We will take the piss.

Numbered edition of 50

SOLD OUT

Michael Ridge - Misc Loops #1-#3  CDr £5

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The first three instalments in the Misc Loops series effortlessly compiled together onto CDr for the new decade. All three were originally released between 2017 – 2018 onto super limited and long unavailable cassette tapes, if you missed out on owning a physical copy now is finally the opportunity. Each one in the series exclusively utilises homemade/wobbly/crusty old tape loops that blend elements of field recordings with distorted and stretched spa/ambient music. Meditative loop exploration for drizzly late afternoons. All tracks were recorded in one take onto semi-functional and poorly maintained gear for that additional background noise, hiss, and distortion to bathe in.


Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Insect Factory - Nature  CDr £5

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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. Percieve 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

SOLD OUT

Grey Windowpane- ABRACUJO  CDr £5

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"Abracujo was glued together with stream of consciousness poetry, field drip and mouldy lab manipulation. This compact disc is a part of a trilogy (the other two consisting of Barnie Bewail, a Film Soundtrack put out on cassette via the Half A Million/Belltower Records folks in Western, Massachusetts and the Churn Clockburner Ace cassette released by Torn Light out of Cincinnati, Ohio). ‘Cujo was recorded at Lincoln Shoppe and other parts of Brighton, UK then performed live (with visuals by Karen Constance) shortly thereafter at the Bees Mouth in Hove, UK early summer 2023.

It’s alright, Satan’s calling you home." -Mazozma, Autumn 2023

Edition of 60

False Face Society - At war With Windsor  CDr £5

choc.592

At War With Windsor is a collaboration between Hannah Walker (nee Salt) and Russell Walker (no relation) of Stevenage Road, Hitchin, inspired by cut up noise (NWW, Mixed Band Philanthropist, Gus Coma) and the British poetry revivial of the 1960s, as well as their own squalid and depraved domestic situation. Russell is a rock and roll singer and lyricist from Ruislip in Middlesex; Hannah is a self-taught artist from High Cross, Hertfordshire

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Grease Proof Kids - Frog Soil  CDr £5

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Another offering congealed and solidified from the amorphous GP Kids technicolour quasi-song noise deluge. Leeds oiks Hils (Yakkida!, Cowtown) and Theo (Territorial Gobbing) whittling cheapo keyboards, janky cassette loops, toys and bells into spontaneous slop-pop rituals while all singing together. Honky tonk country lurches, synth pop sweetness and mumbled abstraction all fed through the one tube into the one Tupperware.

"We're you're only friends, we're not your only friends, but we're little glowing friendd but we're not actually your friends, but we are"

Numbered edition of 50

SOLD OUT

Various Artists - The Guiding Fever  CDr £5

choc.590

Huffing in trilling devices and electrical crackle. Soothed by meditative crunk and mechanical whir. A feeling of paper scraps, lint and carpet debris stuck to feet and the infamous one note pianist has Mod Podge slavered down his front. Prophetic glitching with accompanying echo throb is giving me a bad itch. The grunts and whelps of gobs repeating on themselves. What did the headshrinkers see? Static tone float trembles and there is a weird shuffler in the corner. Bedroom wheeze and half empty toner. Skittering tapes with warm warble. Is that dirty device mechanics or electronic sputs? A dank gutter man. I've got the groo.

A compilation celebrating that fever feeling, when cognitive processing is simmered to shit and for better or worse one idea, sentence, image or sound gets stuck in your delirious head. Featuring tracks from Vitjist (aka Witcyst), Karen Constance, Ida K (aka D Coelacanth), The Daimon & The Sloth, Slums and Soft Migraine

Numbered edition of 50

SOLD OUT

Nichola Scrutton & Ali Robertson - The Longest Forty Miles  CDr £5

choc.589

"The last train is at 11:30pm and I wouldnae recommend the night bus. It'll be full of Lothians troglodytes, Cumbernauld carbuncles and folks what like their improv idiomatic. Best hop in our taxi. It willnae be cheap and, with two drivers pulling in opposite directions on the same wheel, you'll be unsure which way is up let alone which is East or West. Ensure you're wearing your seat belt on this tour of the Scottish Central Belt as your escorts are predisposed to unleashing belters for strings, gobs & kerfuffle and you'll get pure pelters if you dinnae subscribe to their version of the Highway Code."

Nichola Scrutton is a composer, sound artist, experimental vocalist/improviser and artist based in Glasgow.

Ali Robertson makes himself & others blush as the Giant Tank Institute For Low-Brow Avant-Thought’s resident organiser/improviser in Edinburgh.

Edition of 60

FAT CHANCE - Artificial Stupidity  CDr £5

choc.588

Andrew Sharpley got busy during the lovely lockdowns of 2021/22. Robots wake up, go to sleep, new age, old age, a plague on all your houses, wellness, sickness, gloop or goop? William Shatner, the Dalai Lama, facemasks, COVID, conspiracy nonsense, bad jokes, live in a bubble, live outside a bubble, who cares? The whole nine yards in 38 minutes. with some added Valery Pasanau. Sharpley reckons it a "A not very weird record of a very weird time. A kind of relic." but it surely lifted the spirits of all here in Wino Lodge. A repeater for sure. Comes with sticker.

Edition of 60

Ark Drane - Ark Drane  CDr £5

choc.587

"This is the first Ark Drane album and is a collaboration between Karen Constance (Brighton) and Kristafer Abplanalp (Kentucky).

“Hangnail Persistence”, the opening track, dips the listener to a loping gate that fords up through the swales and circles round the midden, like if Brothers Quay whittled dub music out of wooden blocks forging a beat of wet earth stirred in memory dimly carried to bed at night on rainy days.

The second track “Laugh like Midwestern Wind Chimes” is the resonating afterimage of finding yourself in an unfamiliar neighborhood liquor store asking for a six pack of Peroni only to be told that “Peroni used to live down the block but has been locked up for ten years.”

“Monks on a Train” produces the aural translation of the following Cormac McCarthy sentence: “Wasps pass through the laddered light of barn slats in a succession of strobic moments, between black and black, like fireflies in the serried upper gloom.”

According to the Ark Drane press release most of the source material to the final track “Bloodline Stitches” was recorded in a Kentucky hospital’s Cardiology Wing of an Intensive Care Unit, summer of 2021. From what this listener can discern, black husks of pupae swarm the purloined insurance agents rendering portraits of their noses, caked in enamel, framed in gold, with miniscule chains to fit under their clothes.

Disc includes liner notes by the venerable trademark of quality S. Glass." - Crozier Lathrop

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Various artists - The Juice From Your Pen Is Running Down My Leg vol.2  CDr £5

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Volume 2 of the compilation celebrating all things word, throat, tongue & mind. This time featuring tracks from Ali Robertson, Anna Peaker, Home Secretary, Gee Rams Ensemble, LDSN, Lucian Tielens, Luke Poot, Olivia Furey, Karen Constance & Catherine Plenevaux, Posset, Raymond Cummings, Rebecca Rani, Richard Youngs and The Bohman Brothers. Artwork by Ms Constance.

Edition of 80

SOLD OUT

Arrington de Dionyso - Exorcist Blues  CDr £5

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Exorcist Blues is an invitation to take a deep dive into the intergalactic mycelial network of Teonanacatl- the sacrament of Teotl- the totality, the pulsing, undulating wave of Time~Space~Becoming~Unbecoming. The two a cappella vocal songs were received by ancestors while wearing an upside down trash can mask in rural Scandinavia. The more electro-acoustic pieces do their best to replicate some of the various sounds received during the Ceremony of the Deified Heart in which one BECOMES the feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl. Sacred mushrooms optional.

Edition of 60

Cody Brant / Carl Kruger - Whether on the Ones  CDr £5

choc.584

Frantic yet focussed sound collage work by two of The Stinking Republic's finest noise manglers. Many layers, peel to reveal.

CB - In the winter of 2021 i started squatting at my friend's art studio in Longview, Washington. It had been a thrift store previously. I suggested he let me turn it back into a thrift store and he agreed. I put ads up on craigslist and other platforms saying that we were accepting donations and before we knew it we were flooded with objects. Along the way i started an audio diary of the experiences i had in and around the thrift store. Quickly i became well acquainted with all the local miscreants and these characters also became part of the mix. I shared these audio pieces with Carl and he collected a folder to soon be mulched.

CK - the collected source recordings for this project themselves ended up resembling a thrift shop: seemingly haphazard but treasure filled for the patient digger. Collaging them resulted in 40 minutes of junk drawer memory shard channel surfing. I used to shop at the dept store sized thrift shop in southern Minneapolis up the road from Paisley Park that had many dozens of copies of Prince (RIP) cassette singles.

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Red Wine and Sugar - Turkish Coffee and Twice Baked Potatoes  CDr £5

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These days there’s usually 1618 kilometres between Samaan Fieck and Mark Groves. The distance between the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales and Greater Melbourne can be covered in around 17 hours. However, you’ll want to break that up with an overnight stay in Sydney or Newcastle to avoid driver fatigue. A flight’s probably a better option, but the closest regional airport to the Northern Rivers is Ballina. It’s privately owned and had a major upgrade a year ago. The updated building only allows for one security screening lane and one body scanner through which everyone must pass. Insufficient infrastructure means that the security queue is diabolically long and slow. In light of all this, Samaan and Mark tend to favour file transfers and conversations over Zoom to make Red Wine and Sugar music. Turkish Coffee and Twice Baked Potatoes was made slowly using this approach between 2018 and 2023.

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Wino Lodge - Pocket Mutations  Boxset £22

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The second communique with the outside world from the re-christened Constance / Nyoukis joint is a nattering and belching collection of weird for the eyes and ears.

Rubber stamped cardboard box (24cm x11.5cm x 2cm) featuring C30 cassette, 2 x 3" CDrs, A6 colour booklet of collages, fold out art print (5.8" x 16.5") and 1" button badge. Liner notes by Seymour Glass.

"Time passing and notated by gnawing dust-infused cardboard. The mush compacted in sediments. The ungnawable. smooth bliss of the interior of Nanny’s Sunday gloves is right there. Pepper and dust and cellulose. A sign that says “gaping” with an arrow pointing the way, placed with exquisite feng shui, an abomination, a rash too far. Cardboard infused with dust, notating, notated. Nanny’s Sunday gloves, the interior, a proper mute for hallucinations triggered by teretomatic brain-teeth." - S.Glass

Edition of 50

SOLD OUT

Adam Buffington - Rural Trash  CDr £5

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American sound diarist and crafty composer Buffington serves up an assemblage of scraps and bits recorded in Pennsyltucky, London, Reykjavik and elsewhere. Far from a shuffling xerox of sound blame we get a most “meaty” yet “crispy” audio document that may take you from a poor stand-up comedy show to some whistling by a waterfall in Gufufoss, not to mention some looped Britten head scratch and log book scribble. If that doesn't float yr fancy how about an entire track assembled and featuring English avant sound old head Rod Summers? Migrate the bingo hall and bring yr soup bowl.

Edition of 60

Todd W. Emmert - Everything's Coming Up Roses  CDr £5

choc.580

"The eternal golden braid that Todd W Emmert twists from strands of ectoplasm (seldom accessible to likes of you, me, or the cleaning lady wearing a gas mask) pulses like a healthy body. But this time, the tobacco haze is illuminated a little differently; the aura shimmers a little harder than usual, for a simple reason: Emmert Has Gone Electric. Instead of acoustic guitar molding the character of his songs — which are more than sketches or demos, though referring to them as compositions feels gross and flashy — here electric bass is the generative force, followed by electric guitar, electric keyboards, and (non-electric) tambourine with a drum head on it. Visions of instrumentals from Pink Floyd’s More / La Vallée era drift through the lobes. Migrating birds pass by, thunder reverberates across the valley, bleating sheep navigate the fields out back. The man understands and feels the cycles. He doesn’t seek to dazzle you, or really to entertain you at all, and probably cringes at the mere thought of your existence, to be honest. Maybe not. You seem like one of the good ones. But Everything’s Coming Up Roses is an album that invites you to immobilize yourself for a bit. Allow its languid mini-anthems to prick you with a micro-dose of perfect ratios. Nine tracks or nine variations on a theme, you don’t need to know for sure. Stop fussin’ over everything. Just sit and vibrate there like a miracle of nature for 25 minutes, whydoncha." - Seymour Glass

Edition of 60

SITTING - s/t  CDr £5

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"Sitting was started by Aubrey Hornor and I as a synth-drone duo back in 2016. We played a few shows around town using indeterminate graphic scores we designed together. This is, of course, not a groundbreaking idea but for a while it was fun to experiment with what amounted to a very unaccountable method of music making. Despite occasionally producing compelling results, that approach ceased to thrill us eventually and we lost interest.
We never really let go of the idea of Sitting as a band though and over the years we would sporadically and spontaneously record together. We used whatever was lying around, household objects mostly, along with contact mics and sometimes tape loops. Though the texture and tools of the project had changed, we continued to think of it as essentially drone.
This album was compiled using source material from those sessions, live recordings of our old synth incarnation and voice memos of interesting sounds that Aubrey sent to me, all looped and layered into something new. It's a years-long sound diary documenting what I've always felt was an inspiring and fruitful creative partnership." - Bob Desaulniers, Portland, Oregon, 2023

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Smaely P - (are you taken) aback  CDr £5

choc.578

Black Forest sound frazzler NM can usually be found plying his trade under the Ypsmael moniker but with Smaely P he is branching out into even weirder atmospheric aural grease. Considered, composed pieces that are equal part soothing and discombobulating.
“Jumping the heart of smaely p, just as of ypsmael, the zone where 'it' plays a moment of poetry wading through endless puke, anguish or slumber apparatus possibility. Unleashing only ruin to be there and arrange for the surrounding the 'thing' to happen up a pile of junk on a broth is not a job, more like an obsession to have another packet of wheetabix else hungry The bug unnamed thing, it may not be when the feeling arises that roles are being swapped and being played by whatever floats around the room 'antenna' disSECTing explained missing the point entirely. mindframe as guises or personae perhaps even something or ring out, rather, on the table, mostly.” - NM

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

dogeeseseegod - untitled  CDr £5

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Southampton's purveyors of sound gibber have brought many a face bursting smile to those lucky enough to see and hear them in all their live glory. Life affirmation through noises and prance is their bread & butter but recordings have been scant over the years. Chocolate Monk is proud to present you with this sonic egg of fluxus level blubber and bent class. All hail that damn goose and these noise joy masters.

"Our little brand of music is not for everyone but reat assured we love every part of making it. This release was a year in the making. For anyone who has seen us live you'll get that putting that on audio, and having it representive of what we do live is tricky to say the least, Wayne and I tried our best to gather together all the aspects that make our live shows what they are and copydex it together in a chunky, goon fuelled slice of what represents us. All done whilst trying to keep that damn goose in line." - Steve

"Two lost souls brought together when they find an abandoned inanimate luminous goose called "Dog". What unfolds is a decade goosey ritual, goosey parps, goosey stomps, goosey wonder and inevitable goosey violence. A warning shot fired across the bow of whoever may seek to adopt abandoned novel lightning objects." - Official statement

Edition of 60

cheapcrapcommunity - juicy output  CDr £5

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nod, sniff, slide into the tunnel.
smack, cheers.
choke any balloon until it grows hairs out.
hard and strong like needles.
don't be shy,
shoot! poke the magic clouds!
it's gonna rain.
spaghetti dancing on the street,
all wet and sticky,
make every hole happy.

Shang Ren, known as cheapcrapcommunity in the music scene. A vocalist, audio programmer, electronic musician. Life's aspirations: no one's gonna check her ID and ticket.

Numbered edition of 50

SOLD OUT

Michael Ridge - Unbalanced Contraptions  CDr £5

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Sound Psychonaut Twig Harper recently tweeted that he has this feeling that some experimental musicians aren't actually doing experiments. Maybe old Hairy Gravy has a point but that is not an accusation that can be aimed at Norwich based weirdo Michael Ridge. The label sewn into the back of his shirt reads "Michael creates work incorporating elements of sound, video, electronics, sculpture, performance collage. Key areas investigation include utilising non-musical materials in sound and composition works, employing elements of chance, pieces with an auto destructive element or that degrades over a set duration, the metaphysical/self-referential, awkwardness in live performance and relishing cacophony. Compact audio cassettes/tape loops, phonographic records and microphones are commonly featured in his practice and used as the basis for sculptural/installation pieces". Hot tattie. Unbalanced Contarptions consists of live improvised battery powered undertakings using a haphazardly assembled mix of cheap ass FX pedals, homemade noise makers, semi-functional bent Walkman and cut-up flexi’s. A bit of drone, boing, crunch, squelch and all the bits in-between.

Edition of 60

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Astral Social Club - STARBALLS  CDr £5

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Always a delight to have another release from our Uncle Neil. This one arrived with a frantic hand scribbled note "Blown-out fuzzed out ragged sister to the shortly forthcoming pro-lounge OCCULTICS CD / Machine flicker, celestial scrota, no mind / "make-out music for hermaphrodite Venusians floating through the zero gravity pleasure palaces of Alpha Centauri" / Tangerine Fucking Dream, more like / Feedback, the only good thing ever to happen to guitars / The Return of The Electric Mistress / There's probably a tune buried under there somewhere / I once met a guy from Stoke who was tripping and dancing like a bastard at the front to a Russell Haswell free noise set - hope he gets to hear this one / It's all variations on a theme, isn't it? / pennine exotica bionica erectronica (sciatica) / Long-ass final track, you know the score". Indeed we do.

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Hardworking Familes - Eight Knots Bathing  CDr £5

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Glistening Examples recording star and British Library good egg Tom Bench finally gives in to Chocolate Monk pestering to deliver us Eight Knots Bathing which he claims is "Recordings of significant and insignificant situations from 2021 and 2022, mostly. Tightly tangled up together and left to marinate. Not so fast." A fine set of simmering lower case noise and field recordings utilising electronics, tapes, loops, dictaphone, spring reverb, broken violin/guitar, phone, feedbacker and whatnot. Cover art from our man Malcy Duff.

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Constance/Glass/Nimmo/Nyoukis - Calibre 2  CDr

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Another Festering season freebie featuring the same gonks wrangling sounds from old Calibre disks. Comes free of charge to anyone placing an order this merry month.

Edition of 40

Staubitz and Waterhouse and Seamus - Gorgers  CDr £5

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"On September 27th, 2021 Ms. Donna Parker and Messrs. TVE and Rhuem descended into Blackstone Gorge intending to capture the call of the Common Merganser. Although our allegedly 'common' feathered friend proved to be elusive that day, the expedition was not without event. The trio happened upon a clearing as dusk approached, and oddly enough, a well plated meal of fried Creek Chubsuckers worthy of Chaïm Soutine. Ravenous, our intrepid explorers made a feast of it before escaping nightfall and the penetrating gaze of the Castor Canadensis. This album documents their journey on ancestral lands of the Narragansett, the Wampanoag, and the Nipmuc Nations." - Barrett Clark, Record Producer

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Molar Crime - New Fun  CDr £5

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More Fun. 
More Fun they said. 
The Molar Crime is afoot.

These two young dukes play the percussion/objects (Chlorine) and the dictaphone/objects (Posset). That's clear. That's naturally obvious.

But sweep away the soot, brush away the leaves and there is something breathing down there. What's breathing? What's huffing in the Oxygene? it's a system of tubes and levers, rubbery and sweating. The tubes pulse, they wriggle with a cumin-scented gas. If you lean in you can smell the dusty fumes. Grab a lever and pull. What's released? A fine sound. A sound sizzling like a greasy grill. A sound as fresh as autumn mornings, ripe with both promise and decay. Old worlds hum into life, ferns unfold. The saturated colour of a de-tuned TV blitz each eyeball making it fizz...horns swoop up and around into dry cotton-mouthed clouds. Sherbet crackles in the Kool Aid...a piano is detuned via mouldy fingers. Gears lock and then miss-fire - the machine delicately malfunctions. It's a Jazz thing if your Jazz is heard though soil-clogged earholes, worms crawling between your lips and teeth. That's more fun eh?

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Shareholder - The Restless Desert  CDr £5

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With his happy-go-lucky new release Shareholder embraces the warm positivity of The 21st century. Why not climb inside the mind of a deranged citizen as they negotiate waking from an anxiety nightmare? Or perhaps you'd like to join a drug addicted aristo for breakfast or listen in to a abusive voice mail left on The Duke of York's internal? Perhaps your the type of person who'd prefer to ponder how the British colonial mindset remains active through leisure pursuits? Or maybe you're just obsessed with the imminent collapse of society and the end of the world? Whatever your passion, you'll find something to warm the cockles and tan the bones in The Restless Desert!

Edition of 60

Firm Friends - s/t  CDr £5

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Martin Greenwood and Kate Armitage out of Silver Dick have gathered a range of materials from the distant end of a dim tunnel and put them here in an inscrutable stack. Iridescent mold, water-logged fibreboard, medium density clang-procession, irrational tablature, inching up the spout to the gutter: friendship, starboard. Point a flashlight at them. Point a couple.

Edition of 60

Rory Salter - Free Music On The Clock  CDr £5

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Mr Malvern Brume pulls a few skivers at LCC. Liminal music for vacant minds.

"Some music recorded using bits laying around at the day job, on the clock, at the start of the summer break when there were spare moments. Recordings were then cut up and arranged at home, on the bed." - Rory Salter

"What the fuck is this, Rory?
You've asked me to help you with yer blurb and maybe include some of what you've written and you give me this? Absolutely not: it's rubbish. It's cringe because it sounds like you don't care but I know that you do. You wouldn't reveal so much of yourself if you didn't. All those breathing sounds right up close distorting into the mic...muttering and complaining about stuff it's so intimate, you clearly want us to know what you're going through, what a working day feels like to you. Now that we work together I know these sounds like the back of my hand and they're interesting not just from the perspective of 'this is my day job' but because you create a soundscape from the noise expressing what it's like to go to work everyday and be constantly pulled away from the thing you want to be doing. And that tension is exciting and more potent than the shit blurb you've come up with. It reads as false modesty and that annoys me. I've experienced you reclaiming time from your day job, being playful and curious and also holding the department together and I just don't get why you're trying to sell this album as something straightforward and non-emotional. Have a word with yourself. What are you playing at? I'm not the biggest fan of the track titles but I reckon it's a bit late to change that given the release date is tomorrow, but I will say that what you've done is sick and you should be really proud of yourself. I like your cello playing, too." - Ecka Mordecai

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

A LARGE SHEET OF MUSCLE - DIASPORA BRAG  CDr £5

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"Him who was WANDA GROUP takes time off from flexing his guns and punching up to the twats to present over 70 minutes of lurk affirming tunes/no tunes. 4ft 8 in heels, the grizzly man of Hudds (a dogs hole) is the gift that keeps on seeping." - Corriander, Mutek PR

"I HAVE BECOME INFATUATED WITH THIS THEORY OF THE HUMAN CLOCK SYSTEM. EACH SECTION OF ITEM INSIDE AND ON YOUR BODY HAVING A BUILT IN TIME CODE. EACH PARTICLE EACH PIECE OF BLOOD HAVING A TEMPO OR A MOVING SELF REGULATED GRASP ON SECONDS. DIASPORA BRAG IS ABOUT THIS. EACH LUNG BEING ITS OWN LUNG AND EACH BONE OR TONGUE BEING THE KING OR QUEEN OF ITSELF. COURSE ALL THIS IS JUST MADE UP ON THE SPOT BECAUSE DYLAN ASKED ME TO WRITE SOMETHING. LISTEN TO THE PIECES OR DO NOT. I REALLY DON’T GIVE SHIT. ALL OF IT MADE ON AN IPHONE 6. THATS IT. ULTIMATELY I’M JUST NATURALLY GIFTED AT BENDING AND CRAFTING VIBRATIONS. SO SHUT YOUR PIECE OF SHIT MOUTHS AND INHALE A PLASTIC BAG. THE HEAVY CLOCK IS LURCHING FORWARD."

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Micro_Penis - Süra Wald  CDr £6

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"Süra Wald was recorded in the Blackforest on April 17 & 18, 2010 at exactly the same two places (near to Aufen and at the Schwarzenbachtalsperre lake) where Bennink and Brötzmann recorded their Schwarzwaldfahrt Lp in May 1977"

Hey free improv fan, fancy taking a forest walk with France's finest music brut weirdos? Come hear their yelps, grunts, gurgles & horns. Marvel at the clatters, electronics, small percussion and more. It is all very considered and strangely soothing. A deep listen.

In loving memory of the late, great Thierry Monnier.

Comes in half size DVD case with 12 page colour booklet

Edition of 75

SOLD OUT

Small Cruel Party - Sic In Se Sua Per Vestigia Volvitur  Cassette £7

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After a few years of constant pestering from Wino Lodge, Monsieur Ransome seen fit to pull himself away from his Farrow & Ball paint habit to serve up two new recordings for this c30 cassette. The old sound explorer did not disappoint us. Side A leaves your headspace in a gnarled punch drunk flashback state before Side B envelopes you in a warm gas of meditative murk, assuming you can get over to the deck to flip the tape.

"Both pieces recently assembled, disassembled, prodded and chortled in the Perche in Basse Normandie.

No. 1, to the personal attention of D. Menche, concerns a close-up investigation of cascading cascades of dripping audible elements of 100% sonic origin. Prefect for flying carpet errand running.

No. 2 is obviously a Gregorian-Normand sea chanty for use while waiting for the Vikings to return” - Small Cruel Party

Mastered by Scott 'Chop Shop' Konzelmann. Comes in 2 colour riso print cover.

Edition of 75

SOLD OUT

Wino Lodge - Ouster Crawling  CDr £5

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The artists formerly known as Miracle Wheat, Pinked Eruptions, Unspoken Tide, Dumbluck Cycle, Artist Tonks, The No Concept People, Ear Making, Ignored Oven, Yellow Ponces, Wine 6000, Top Fuckers, Incest Insects, Cum Palace, Glorious Throat, Paedo Eaters, Brown Sabbath, Blood Stereo, Path Of Glue, The Danny Greer Unit, Rubber Toast, Gravel Connection, Neck tar, Muehl Flowers, Crumb People, Wedding Beet, Tory Gods, Cum Crisis, Thyroid Massage, Baby Abusers, Randy Ankle and NHS have slowly morphed into Wino Lodge. They present Ouster Crawling for your consideration. Electronics, tapes, voice, field recordings, objects. You know the drill. Why change a failing formula?

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

John Godbert - Pond Life Noir  Booklet CDr £10

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We are honoured to present a 34 page A5 booklet of collages in full colour plus a disk of John's wonderful lo-fi reed/ fog blare.  "Time and logic totally flies out the window as soon as this stuff starts to spool." - Neil Campbell

"I came up with Pond Life Noir some years ago when I was stuck in Edinburgh for 5 days due to a mammoth snow storm. When I wasn't in the pub, I was thinking too much & this mad idea came into my head. Fortunately I had a copy of the 60's Ladybird classic Pondlife, published in 1966, to hand & I just decided to alter it slightly to make it more enjoyable for the people who weren't interested in the pondlife, but liked guns & murder. As the original preface to the book says - A pond might look like just another patch of water, but beneath the green scum, many interesting things are happening." - Johnny Fucking Godbert

Edition of 50

SOLD OUT

Mik Quantius & Matt Mottel - Haus Record  CDr £5

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The proof is in the recordings, friends.... we ARE living in the Middle Ages. Forget about Get Back and listen to two munt minds meet in Koln for a domestic sit down/session of liquids, smoke and keyboard gronk. HEAR them attempt to stave off serfdom with Yamaha hoodoo and get into it with the Quantius vocal lo-jinx which if cranked loud enough is sure to suck the colour from any nearby tie-dye shirts. Ten happy fingers, two throbbing brains.

"camaraderie, friendship, and observing the unknown ;
Mik Quantius
became my psychedelic big bro in 2021.

In the wilderness

Mik forages

dirt and dust
into epiphany." -Matt Mottel


"I like that Matt drove blind to me without knowing if i am home, he is an improviser conected to the ear, a wonderful musican who lives it for long and a friend i can trust, this shows me touring with him yeah!" - Mik Quantius

Edition of 60

Andy Heck Boyd - Munterated Merropity  Booklet, 3" CDr, Badge, Photograph £10

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Whether or not you believe that the gloved mouse is pulling the levers to our reality Kentucky curve ball Andy Heck Boyd is here to bring more confusion to the seed swap. Priscilla Presly is watching Pinnochio on mute, someone decided to eat all Paul McCartney's food, the mouse died three days in a row, there is a neon slime face sit and so much more to decipher. Just be sure to take a right at the end of Spalding Lane. Energise! Energise! Energise!

A5 colour booklet (36 pages), the 3" CDr Parking Lot featuring The Frankenberry's and The Gay Zorro's, a 6x4" photograph and 1" button badge.

"sometimes, if one is to understand "correctly", if i were to mention that it, no, that i saw a giant painted unknown (to me) secular figure on the back wall, that ascended up to the fifth floor in the tall open building, but, it was so large and out in the open for the daily visitors, that it was not visible to others just passing through, and not looking around, anyways, if you wish to, i don't know, it's right out there in the open,"- AHB

Numbered edition of 54

!!!FOR POSTAGE PURPOSES PLEASE COUNT AS 5 DISKS!!!

  SOLD OUT

Raymond Cummings - Northeastern  CDr £5

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"Since flying to Detroit, Michigan in 2016 to cover the first Trip Metal Fest for SPIN, I’ve made it a point every year to visit a U.S. state I’d never been to. After 2017 (Chicago, Illinois), 2018 (Providence, Rhode Island), and 2019 (Los Angeles, California). Portland, Maine should’ve been October 2020 but was shoved forward a full year to October 2021 due to the pandemic.

My plan, originally, was to visit Maine and Connecticut in sequential months in fall 2021, capture a bunch of field recordings, and later emerge with a collage for each state to be released as an album. Connecticut was axed for money reasons but Maine ultimately gave me Northeastern anyway, a record about vacationing in the American northeast when the autumn trees are at or near their most psychedelic.

Herein is incidental life, baked into new ambers: laughing strangers, enthusiastic tour guides, restaurants and airports, a fountain, two young twentysomethings on a street corner staging a lonely action for reproductive rights, the world’s most mesmerizing hotel refrigerator, and more besides." - Raymond Cummings

Edition of 60

LDSN - Cup Queen  CDr £5

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"The energy of the Queen is situated between the 4 (security) & 5 (appeal of an ideal). She rests upon something that has been established, all the while knowing a new point of view exists. She is a pragmatic & active figure who knows her symbol well. She can become excessive, submerged by her element.

Sea, shower, rain water hit the edges of their boundary spaces – shore, bath, polythene roof – & LDSN speaks variously on the subject of the water element, receptivity, fluidity & time, care & recovery. These are spare, playful compositions with vocal loops, field recordings, wind, strings, bells, birdsong, breath, claps, slaps, percussion & a mesmerising quote from Ursula le Guin: “Neither grief nor pride had so much truth in them as did joy." - LDSN

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

The Heads And The Golds - A Horse In Your Head When You Made That Horse  CDr £5

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The couple behind shared projects including The Hunter Gracchus and Singing Knives Records and individual projects such as Roman Nose, Blue Yodel and Papal Bull, Fiona Kennedy and Jon Marshall’s little-heard duo work draws on their professional and personal experiences of mental health as manifested in the individual and the family, set against contemporary depoliticised, pathologizing and commodified interventions, playfully disrupting attempts to determine sound sources, attribution and intent.

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

KARK - The Tattooed Date of the Earthquake Across the Abdomen  CDr £5

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"Do you remember the first gasp of air you ever sucked down, abjectly sensing that things outside you can go inside you, as you crawled out from inside into the outside unknown: still-born at the still-lodge reflecting still-waters, perpetually distilling your daily boils, bils, dungs, romans, and countryfolk throughout the last half of adolescence, more-or-less mute, and then those who didn’t already live there all migrated down river to a Kentucky city-town and blurred into the salon-saloon weekly-gatherings held in foreign-tongues, obliterating toward no-known-object, only, for those who survived, to wake up decades later to a set of Pappy Van Winkle-wrinkles, and a good-enough smile? The two general rules for Kark—and what distinguishes Kark from their sibling-limb Sapat—is that there are no amps and no guitars allowed. The 19 tracks and 79 minutes of sound on this album were recorded over a 21 year period and co-created between 47 people in Louisville, Kentucky. Membership overlaps with too many bands to list here, but some highlights include The Cherry Blossoms, The Magik Markers and Ron Pate, big band leader of Tuscaloosa, Alabama’s 1970’s Dada-heavies Rev. Fred Lane. Arkestrial Moondogs soak Kenny G’s Jazz-Concrète saxophone reeds in a Xenakis-Joujouka urinal cake. Secret agreements between past and present selves flash-form into a joyful body of outsider music." - Crozier Lathrop

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Crank Surgeon & Dylan Nyoukis - Dulles Unt Huso  CDr £5

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"For pete's sake, it's the year 1996. We recall the tactic: trundle off to visit the Scottish branch of our international cult, make a pile of recordings using a handy dandy Aiwa cassette recorder featuring the retractable mic, remix the sounds a couple months later on the pink boombox at BBF in Harpsie, Maine; then, finally, dash it off into the mail, maybe circa 1997 or so? and wait a few decades for it to re-emerge from the lichen curds of memetic cardboard & bubblewrap, liberated from its proverbial broom closet suite in Brighton, UK.

This purpling welt of a salvo was intercepted by our pal, Dylan Nyoukis, of Decaer Pinga & Chocolate Monk infamy. Mr Nyoukis not only stars as a darling co-collaborator in this brillo, we raise our stout coffee mugs to celebrate and acknowledge his generosity in digitizing a humble multi-mile cassette into a format that all of us can swoon to.
glurp!" - Crank Sturgeon

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Karen Constance - Lalo Mendy  CDr £5

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"Cinematic molecules from another era, having seeped through fissures in the timeline, arrive on Lalo Mendy disguised as neurological pulsations and astrally projected trailers from a drive-in theater. Does this mean La Constance is here to willy Enter The Dragon and Cool Hand Luke samples all over your nilly? You deserve a slap for even asking, Bun-Bun. The repetitions here feel compulsive and hypnotic, yes, but also off-kilter and Just Not Right, away from which one is loathe to look. Areas rumble like boats traveling where they oughtn’t, shot through with the kazoo-like quack of bleeps and voice fragments and shadows of transmissions intercepted from intercoms at Business Goose HQ. A recurring tempo recalls quasi-synchronous swingsets rocking back and forth as enjoyed by the surreal children often depicted frolicking and assuming recognizably-Constance postures in her paintings and collages. It is also, however, a bit more complicated. Orders from the Supreme Honk simultaneously ooze over and whiz toward an all-femme Space Force, destabilizing civilians like us with Doppler Effect howls that leave us feeling pushed out of an airplane and descending through a hailstorm of whistling meat rocks. Destination: Unarius picnic overtaken by groundskeepers scooping up damaged mechanical heads with shovels." - S.Glass

Edition of 50

SOLD OUT

Rebecca Wilcox & Hannah Ellul - Third Parties  CDr £5

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Most of the sounds that RW and HE make come from close to hand, everyday, tactile objects, accidents, or routines. And from the body as it rubs, carries, plays, waits, dawdles with its surroundings. The voices are chatting, syncopating, trying to change position, getting in a mess.

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Ypsmael + Eloine - Lost Teeth  CDr £5

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Here’s something that’ll keep your kitchen lit. (For you 20-year-olds, a “kitchen” is like the break room at work, but in your apartment.) From front to back, this disc hits like possessed plasmatic visitations happening in the middle of an otherwise silent instructional cooking program. You know that means metallic borborygmus and delicious lurching — the percussive collateral damage recognizable to anyone who has attended after-hours jousting with live but grievously unwell horses in a public library. Fear not, disdainers of randomized flail, Ypsmael + Eloine have done this before (because late fees). The duo maintains a delectable balance between electro fweep, tape fwip, and considered fwunk of the hit-it-or-quack ilk — without neglecting, as some of our peers are wont (let’s face it), sonic backdrops that enhance the ambient depth of field. The beautiful yet unprecious recording and the bounty of friction throughout Lost Teeth bring to mind a compact, super-portable Nuova Consonanza. Oh, yes they do. The homemade instrument, the field recording, the non-musical object, and the musical instrument manipulated outside the bounds of traditional propriety serve the needs of these two freedom-lickers, based respectively in Germany and San Francisco, a detail that should scream “secret tingle spoken here.” - S.Glass

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Shit Creek - No Jacket Allowed  CDr £5

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Raconteur, maths whizz, fine thread dresser and psychedelic noise psychonaut Shit Creek follows up their last Monk disk Tango Super Bock with a deep dive into his post covid brain drain. Shimmering electronics and repetitive glee pulse out like euphoric ear worms through the fug fog showing everyone that Mr. Duffy has a mind boner for the impossible. Like a more hirsute Neil Campbell with the skills to tickle your tone spot with purple yipple. Bow down and file under: Radiant Slack Mind.

Numbered edition of 50

SOLD OUT

Tim Olive - Chocolate Radio Band (The Golden Sceptre)  CDr £5

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Further audio evidence if any was needed that Mr Olive has the full skill set when it comes to mishandling sound. Out in his hovel in Kobe, Japan he worked with hours of mono radio signals which he recorded through a simple chain of eq, spring reverb and preamp before he chopped, combined, layered, arranged, scrambled, juxtaposed & quilted to just the right degree so as to turn the inside of most listeners skulls to brain tepenade. Warm and cozy!
 

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Augenmusik - Lucky Crystal Wave/Exit Generator  CDr £5

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Chocolate Monk's favourite living violin sorceress Samara Lubelski teams up with Metabolismus's Werner Nötzel for some heady violin & electronics whatthefuckery that comes off like a tripped out little sibling to Kosugi's Catch Wave (yes it's that good). Douse your chakras in this sonic sauce and embrace the cosmic quease.
Recorded summer 2021 at Sumsilobatem, Germany. Next level adjustments at Uniform Recording with Jeff Zeigler and Bill Nace. Nuff said.

Edition of 60

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Karen Constance/Dylan Nyoukis - Day Music/Night Music  split Cassette £6

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Constance the insomniac presents us with Day Music. Heavy processed electronics, field recordings, mangled voices and tape wrangle constructed late at night in bed. Fend off the darkness fears with some Blackburn Academy of the Arts sun glow bloom insight. #pro-peasantmusic

Early bird and morning whistler Nyoukis gives you Night Music. Synth, tape players, loops and delay start off squelching & skittering into dream state before a wee stumble takes us into into a low T tower of crud. Recorded during the day live to tape. No nightmares allowed.

Numbered edition of 50

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Witcyst/Nyoukis - I Am Falling Down  CDr £5

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Recorded in his infamous Kamo Road wack shack way down in Whangarei, Witcyst presents Allt går fan veet 35 minutes of wheezing computer music and hyperactive whir. 0s and 1s fall in dollops of noise, twitching.

Nyoukis gives you Warbles Came Calling a 25 minute tape loop meditation recorded at 6am inside Wino Lodge one dreich April morning. Sit still and feel yourself slowly drifting upwards or sideways. More hiss than you can shake a snake at.

Numbered edition of 50

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various - The Juice From Your Pen Is Running Down My Leg vol.1  CDr £5

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Compilation celebrating all things word, throat, tongue, mind. Featuring tracks from Malcy Duff, Natalia Beylis, Of Habit, Sophie Cooper, Neil Campbell, Roy Claire Potter, S.Glass, Andy Heck Boyd & Kasper Melted, Mark Groves and Angela Sawyer. Cover art by Andy Heck Boyd.

Edition of 80

SOLD OUT

Jim Strong - 36fibulae Booklet/Cassette/Badge £10

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36fibulae is a Gnostic-Horror song cycle by American Visual and Sound Artist, Jim Strong. It employs a sonic arsenal of malfunctioning home-built instruments in a series of asynchronous dream-logic miniature plays. Each World is a Drop World, measured in fibulae. most are without words and many will eventually be expressed as jewelry. Select fibulae include: 1fibulae: a small Pennsylvania suburb in which humans grow prehensile tails with a large eye at the end ala Charles Fouriers theory of the Archibras 9fibulae explores the erotic pleasures of botany in a world without sound 17fibulae an innocent game allows the viewer to see invisible intelligences in residues of protein via various of household devices 23fibulae The Police are here again 28fibulae on the manufacturing of psychoactive pharmaceuticals from a reliquary housing the preserved corpse of a child posthumously revered as a saint 32fibulae against the diseases of civilization

Strong has been quietly active and inactive in various artistic capacities since the mid 00’s developing an approach to improvisation and instrument building applying material from daily life for psycho-devotional purposes. He has performed in groupings such as Melkings, Eyes of the Amaryllis and Weyesbluhd/ Weyesblood to name a few. He also operates the tape imprint Cor Ardens.


28 page full colour booklet, 1" badge and cassette in hand stamped envelope

Numbered edition of 50

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Territorial Gobbing - Suffer For Succotash  CDr £5

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Is this manchild an Absurdist pin-up or the human embodiment of a dung beetle? Either way Theo Gowans never lets up with his vision for a better world through sound and performance. Suffer For Succotash is a weird tour through a few different styles he has been dabbling in for the last two weirdo years. A sauce worth sampling.

"More Gobbing works from my endless struggle between 'messy noise muckabout is cool' and 'silly little songs are class' which seems to have been the unfocused trajectory of the last year with this stuff. Sure in hindsight this will either some odd transitory document or some hulking screeching tyres U turn. Songs? There's no money in songs!! Waste of time." - TG

Numbered edition of 50

SOLD OUT

Constance Nyoukis - ??????  CDr £5

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Who does what??? Well put these in your Pantheist pipe and have a guess, dummy.

Huff 1. The dreaded yet joyous satsuma nightmare. You have never heard of it, but you know it.That pulse and burp and craw that leads to the electric scuttle. In a movie it is protein farmed from a peat bog with a dollop of silver acrylic paint. Wheeze. Omit the atmosphere.

Huff 2. Set deep in a dank boot. Crumpled birds bent into figure eights in woozy frame. Cave people recorded straight to paper. A crooning lothario slipped a healthy dose of something good/bad. A pot of ooze poured upon any negations. A broken laser as your friend.   

Huff 3. Boomers straight to walkman give good song and life advice.

Edition of 50

SOLD OUT

Brian Ruryk - 12 Chairs for Chu Chu  CDr £5

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12 tunes of harmonically broad non universal guitar cut up n' crete guaranteeed to create disillusionment in any lover of the guitar; music in general; Acoustmatic music etc. etc. (Spoiler Alert: fairy does not take tooth….) music / not really music / self stimulation (head banging) (dancing) / joint locks / irreparable loss / questionable grounding practices….it's all here. Flicking off the ear-brain system and interrupting any continuum you like, Ruryk calls the plays, and he takes the blame (ie. various stereo panning laws, and the 3:1 mic placement rule were often broken here). Also…..he would like to thank the following team members for contributing sounds to this CDr, In order of appearance:

…………………………………………….
bBomit,
Id M Theft Able,
Toshiji Mikawa,
Daniel Gregory,
Brian Turner,
Rob Michalchuk,
Cody Brant,
Giblet Gusset,
Fleshtone Aura,
Stephen Boyle,
Territorial Gobbing,
Fray Bentos
who all blindly (perhaps foolishly ?) handed over their content to be used by Ruryk, and fuc

anyway this has all the typical stuff, audio spills, fog offs, signal chains, and the bickering you’d expect, but this time it drips onto the others, and their stuff trickles back, you get it right ?….sometimes he even creates places where they can go and be alone. Overall great boss….4.5 stars…fearless leader….also dad rock; parking lot ambiences; roller coasters… 4.0 stars, and if anything smells like shit on this disc, blame Ruryk not the team ok ?

Edition of 75

Tyler Hicks - Guitar Solos  CDr £5

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Michigan mangled guitar extemporizations from one half of slow moving weirdos Creode. Empty the fridge of thoughts and fill the cauldron with shrugs and flutter. Tyler resists ball dangling collison course tactics and instead deals in concentrated alien farts for the hushed and humbled.There are no words just hunched shoulder meditation. Toenail gaze. Feel the mind cigar bloom and the malfunction get greasy. No Van Halen or Nace was hurt during the makins of these recordings.
 
"I can't imagine stringing the words together for a Tyler release. Jedi in my book, and my words wouldn't do it." - Mike Collino

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Ida K - Pterodactyl Graveyard  CDr £5

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Dai Coelacanth Ida Coelacanth Ida Koelacanth Ida K agitation confusion paranoia wigs worms the bunker the B&B the Graveyard. The Pterodactyl. The Pterodactyl trilogy. The final part of the Pterodactyl trilogy. Over fifty minutes of shouting whispering mumbling jumbled up sounds and incessant banging. Bovril smeared on an aching skull can evaporate and cause oily plumes in shafts of light. No prisoners taken or required. A small pie hug given. Make lard not war.

Edition of 60

Cloth - Present Cracks  CDr £5

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Cloth are Matthew and Lila of Food People and this is their second Chocolate Monk offering, recorded in Nottingham July 2021, in the two weeks leading up to the birth of their daughter.

Hot in the house, hot outside, hot sweaty hands poking things. Sounds of our neighbourhood with cars barking like dogs. Voices of friends and voices from the TV. Flute, radio, tape, violin, guitar.

"Get on with your bloody soup, cloud merchant"

Numbered edition of 50

Glass/Constance/Nyoukis/Nimmo - Calibre 1  CDr

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Another Festering Season freebie. Each performer using recordings taken from old Calibre Auto Recording Discs as source material to give the first 40 keen punters some crackle for their ear barrel.

Edition of 40

ALL GONE

Jorge Boehringer - Hair Strings and Magnets  CDr £5

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A continuing viola-shaped entry under the Core of the Coalman category for the bureau of international mystery recordings of Chocolate Monks.  Hair Strings and Magnets presents 5 pieces performed on solo viola with electronic things, and recorded in empty, disused, and leaking churches, warehouse spaces, and a dance studio, while Jorge lived in Huddersfield from 2014-2020.  Signals bowed, intercepted, and fed-back upon themselves until they become their own memories. Scores for tracks 2 and 5 are also available for anyone wants to take a stab at making their own performance with these.

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Dylan Nyoukis - Perpetual Ear Brew  CDr £5

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As below but on the sonically surperior street level CDr format.

Numbered edition of 30

Dylan Nyoukis - Perpetual Ear Brew  cassette £6

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Almost 60 minutes of lo-fidelity tape warble and crug.  A box of cracked tapes are easy to shape uses some equally limited tape releases as source material, while the flips A bowl full of crystal cabbage contains some recent recordings with added mystery twang.

Numbered edition of 25

  SOLD OUT

Leslie Keffer - Temple  CDr £5

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After a much needed drop off the radar when she got with a UFO cult and huffed it up to preserve her mind from the outer-mush and swerve the sanitorium Keffer reemerges with a  gentle soothing throb of spew-age music. Recorded deep in Toad Holler, Chesterhill, Ohio.

"Nada Brahma means sound is God in Sankrit and So Hung Har Har Har Har is a mantra that means I merge myself with the vibrating creative nature of God." - LK

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Rick Potts - Advanced Auto Body  Book &  stickers £8

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LAFMS legend cracks out the art supplies in this 40 page, full colour, perfect bound pocket book.

Rick Potts is a looney from LA LA Land who as a flip young squid decreed, "Reason is unreasonable". The unfiltered un-adult joined a free association cult who handcrafted unreleasable records and threw them into the sea. Soon they were leading the Doo Dah Parade as fictional audio rigamarole icons.

Rick attended incomplete art institute but left to join a robotic circus band, becoming it's lead euphonium puppeteer. An accident with a man-of-war jellyfish forced the band to disband. Potts took his unique talents and soon was designing hybrid semi-bionic personal mobility units. Although none are rejects the plausibility of some models needs time to ripen. Then they will drive into the future without brakes.

Edition of 75

Constance/Nyoukis - Therapeutic Effects  Booklet, CDr, Badge, Stickers £10

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A mixture of solo works and collaborations cooked up in both the audio and visual realms. The full colour stapled A5 booklet features paintings, collages and life pointers. The accompanying disk comes in a one off hand collaged cover and gives you a solo track from each Wino Lodge dweller and a spun out hand hold. Remain prescribed to the outer edge.

Numbered edition of 50

SOLD OUT

The Negative Kite - Hovering A Corner Into Carpet High Skies  CDr £5

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Birmingham's mysterious The Negative Kite return after a short (for him) 3 year absence with 41minutes and 41 seconds of hard to pin down lo-fidelity xerox like tape music. This thing wheezes, crackles and confuses. Bass rumbles and skittering cassettes float alongside distant resonanting who-knows-what while unknown animal like sounds burble up into earshot. Feels like yr floating over some monochramatic landscape. Astral projection music for all you ferric oxide animists.

I don't know if he ever found Evil Ruth.

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Horse Laminators - If You Can Hear This You're Too Close  CDr £5

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Hey poser forget the much-vaunted cardiovascular workout and let these masterful triumvirs ratify your brain and ears with their beyond crunked cut-up music.  A heavy session of scrambled listening awaits if you are ripe for said ratification. Breath deeply.

"pfft, I figured it would be a quiet lazy afternoon in my own miserable comfort, twiddling on with my usual gobbling glob and swashable contact mics and dictahpone skree but I was wrong. When listening back, the tracks were packed dense with cut-ups and synthboggle and shredded microphonie or had been split open wide with slowed down stories from the subterranean ditches from who knows where, dripping icicles, mad locusts swarming, and nothing would really be the same: The horse laminator had been unleashed!" - Sindre Bjerga

"pfft mad locusts swarming, from who knows skree but , I figured quiet lazy where, dripping icicles, afternoon and nothing be the When split open wide listening back, same: The horse laminator had been in my own miserable comfort, twiddling down stories from the on with my usual gobbling glob and washable contact mics and unleashed!"I was wrong. s the tracks were with cut-ups and microphonie or had been synth shredded with slowed it would be a subterranean ditches would really packed dense boggle and" - Max Nordile

"Yeah, what they said!" - Theo Gowans

Edition of 60

National Disgrace - An Evening With National Disgrace  CDr £5

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Paul Sturm famously observed in 1986 that "Times are bad" and here is the proof.

 "Recorded live at 'Vis Club, San Francisco California, July 3, 1986. Founded in the early 1980s, National Disgrace included myself, Kit Young, Andy DeGiovanni and Marshall Webber though I think just Kit and I made it to this show. Ensemble was hand-made sculpture which produced waste sound, utilized in the "songs". Percussion was springs on metal, banging on scrap metal, rotating motor with objects whapping into metal. Strings were from Industrial shortening 5 gallon cans made into amplified pseudo-guitars. Vocals were backed up with melted records and harmonica. A National Disgrace show would be an array of these sculptures emitting sound at random with slight human moderation. - Fred Rinne, Hagersville

"The night before Independence Day in America is for eccentrics and art mutants what a full moon is to werewolves. Party time. An excuse to ramp up full-throated expression of the obnoxious national character. A celebration of our freedom from centuries of German rule. Nothing could be better suited to capturing the chromosome-flaying “wastesounds” of National Disgrace on such a momentous night in 1986 than a hand-held cassette recording made from the audience. The fidelity here is ghastly and uneven, the ideal vessel for the band’s hoarse, harmonically tainted howling and simpleton rhythms. The entertainment flows with glorious promiscuity in both directions, to and from an audience that demands as much attention as the amplified escapees onstage. It was a night of stellar industrial folk, a genre that to this day remains less than thoroughly explored. In the face of Fred Rinne, Kit Young, Andy DiGiovanni, and Marshall Webber’s appalling and consistently perfect renderings of pop music (the dumpster fire of art), who can blame anyone for hesitating before trying to knock the masters off their reclaimed garbage throne?" - Seymour Glass, San Francisky

Edition of 60

Neil Campbell & Sticky Foster - ORANGE EMULSION GUSH  CDr £5

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These two old heads were recently reunited when El Stickoid was granted a short break back to the Brexit Isles by his handlers after successfully sewing confusion in Tunisia. With his never waining Protestant work ethic Campbell dragged our bedraggled Agent to Huddersfield's Dai Hall on a Saturday afternoon in August for a short but savoury jammer of sonic sourdough positivity. Praise the raise!

"From a fine Calder nosebag we headed to the sandstone tones o'Hudd, Neil effusively introducing the jewelcase misery geyser, whose wares we browsed before hirsute sarnies and mauve sambuca coffee. Vacated shop had space, signs of good goings on, hot beverage access. Deep, dark broomcupboard of bags of janglers, cables n footstomp extracted, and Neil applying suitable pluggings. Ebb n flow of harmonium lungs overstretched the retied strap and footpedal duo down to one. Painted pedestals for swapping toys, alpini and no-lamb chanters, things fumbled out of parps to a scratchy throb, between mugs of tea. So long since I'd had a tinkle with anyone but felt so good!
I didn't see it coming, but a gush of white emulsion appeared down my thighs as we deposited the clangers back in the broomcupboard. Glee turned to distress as we realised we'd tipped it into one of the few items not purchased in a Bradford poundshop, but teetering bows and floor rolls had a wind-down follow-up as we rubbed back the Superstition's orange panels. T'was a guilty tale to confess at the well ventilated head of steam." - Sticky Foster, Sidi Bo Said 

Edition of 50

SOLD OUT

Kambrik Zone - Vaporous Clamor  CDr £5

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Cody Brant (objects, feedback, tapes & voice) and Ian Mckenzie (Syntheszers) know you never asked to be born. They have just the right soundtrack for you hurtling towards the finishing line.

"The sound of the electric other has been here for 65 years, and while it changes a little depending on which technology is cheap, or whether or not you’re American, it never progresses per se. And I don’t think it should. Because we’re all trapped.

Cody and his friend Ian are from Las Vegas. He’s had a steady trickle of releases over the last 5 years, many of them on Chocolate Monk. He started like many do, collecting found answering machine tapes, and now makes wet-yet-airless collages that build tension but never resolve.

Round tones hang like a heat, and then are slowly punctuated by the ugly gallop of some somethings plugged back into themselves. Give yourself over to this sound, and you can intuit the heartbeat of a Boston Dynamics robot- a mechanical cop that will keep coming until everybody that isn’t rich is eradicated from existence. There is no foreground on this record, no depth. Sometimes the electronics are juicy, and sometimes flat. Sometimes a snorg has a fuzzy edge, and sometimes it’s metallic. But be certain, you’re always inside the robot and the robot can’t feel. It has no head to feel with. It can only do backflips and open doors while it endlessly patrols. You know it’s looking for you." - Angela Sawyer, Jamaica Plain

Edition of 60

Howard Stelzer - Shaking Off The Metaphors (Suburban Observances Volume 1)  CDr £5

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"When I’m not being an internationally famous composer of beloved music that continues to inspire generations of listeners and influence popular culture on every continent, I teach middle school math. In the education biz, we often invite other teachers into our classrooms to observe us at work. Teachers create their own little world within four walls; we build our routines, establish patterns of behavior, create a specific culture for our students and ourselves. When another teacher visits our classroom/world, that person might notice details that we may not have. We spend so much time inside our classroom/world that sometimes it takes a fresh set of eyes and ears to point out things about it that we might have glossed over, or that might have eluded our attention. Or we may have our own subconscious biases and assumptions that someone coming from outside might be able to helpfully point out to us. Teachers who observe their colleagues and who welcome observers into their classrooms facilitate a culture of reflection. We’re open to new ideas, actively seeking out honest feedback for the sake of becoming a better teacher and, as a result, improving our students’ education.

The “Suburban Observances” project grew out of a related idea. As those of you who’ve read the best-selling, critically-acclaimed first volume of my autobiography already know, I am a reflective sort of guy. I’m wary of falling into habits, of becoming insular and making hermetic music. My desire, after all, is to communicate. I don’t want to make impenetrable music that doesn’t speak to anybody, but if I’m holed up in my studio all the time, I might not recognize if that’s what I’m making. The aim of this project is to force myself out of patterns, to allow observers to offer their own reflections on and responses to whatever it is I do… and, as a result, to help me write (hopefully) better music.

It started with a group of sounds that I’d collected over many years. These were sounds that I knew very well. I had my own thoughts about them, but recognized the limitations of that familiarity. I sent the sounds to people all over the world… to some old friends, to several artists that I don’t know personally but whose work I admire, to people I’d met and to others I haven’t yet… and I asked each person to render them unrecognizable. Everyone’s instruction was to process, manipulate, rearrange and change them, to take them as far as they wished, and then send them back to me. Finally, I’d take a year or two to compose new music using my one-familiar sounds that had been filtered through other people’s perspectives. Each volume of the “Suburban Observances” series is related, of course. If you listen to all six volumes (and I hope you do), you’ll be able to hear elements shift sideways across songs…how an idea initiated on volume one is re-examined and completed on volume three (and so on)… how songs complement, comment on and reflect off of one another… and how there is sonic sympathy from one album to the next and throughout the series… but each volume is also distinct and discreet.

Volume one incorporates processing by Theo Gowans (Territorial Gobbing), Andrew Zukerman (Fleshtone Aura), Theresa Smith (DeTrop), France Jobin, Ross Scott-Buccleuch (Diurnal Burdens), Frans de Waard (Modelbau), Joe Murray (Posset) and Stuart Chalmers. Tori Kudo sings on one track. I used my usual arsenal of cassette tapes etc and composed everything between 2019 and 2021 here in rural Massachusetts." - H. Stelzer, 2021

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Mažas Kiekis - Much Like Yourself  Cassette £6

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At one of the last Crazy Doberman shows before the dreaded covid jaws clamped down some of the ensemble were approached by a twitchy gent sporting a fine skullet and rocking a 'Heart Of The Congos' t-shirt. Nothing unusual there for a CD show, but then he started to talk excitedly about his "plastic & mystic art" and how through the power of the voice he could "prove that social graces are but a side dish of deceit", the players got edgy as Mr.Quick Talk  rummaged in his bag. A tape was gifted and then off he went into the night. As soon as they jammed the tape on their home they knew where its natural home was and kindly proceeded to post it on to Wino Lodge. The sound is of Kiekes letting it all go, speaking in tongues, mumbling, singing, maybe even losing his mind. Multi layered voice and tape crud scurry back and forth, looping & lopping, garbling and gurning.
The only credits on the tape read "voice, dictaphone, microphones, cassettes, tape loops, voice memos, 4-track, moisturizer, mixer". Hard to tell if Mažas is a student of sound poetry/text sound composition or just a loner with a vision, either way he is speaking our language and it is life affirming stuff.

Edition of 50

Todd W Emmert - Open Doors, Open Graves  CDr £5

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North Carolina's number one porch lounger returns to the microphone and the craft of song after spending 2020 not singing a note as he was too busy blowing cigar smoke in the face of the cardboard God. He repents nowt and knows not to mourn this mess of a world as we are all just sea-monkeys observed from afar.

"During 2020 I made 13 instrumental albums in a row, and in 2021 I felt like I wanted to sing and write lyrics again, so I did. I recorded this album in February of 2021, there are themes of death, mental illness, loneliness and solitude, and mysterious bohemian bloodlines. I sing on 9 out of the 10 songs, so If you hate singing, this isn't the album for you. Enjoy it if you can, enjoy it if you like." - Todd W Emmert

Edition of 60

The Occupant - Phantom Cupboard  CDr £5

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"The Occupant’s Phantom Cupboard seems to occupy a homemade spaceship who’s components are outmoded appliances that need regular adjustments and deglitching. After docking onto a decommissioned communications satellite the newly plundered obsolete hardware is cobbled into a charity store kitchen cabinet. Lost voices find a home in this makeshift rocket. Calm chaos ensues as the machines talk among themselves. Outside, beyond the repurposed microwave oven door, the vastly jaded cosmos has a bad dream." - Rick Potts (Solid Eye, Dinosaurs With Horns, Le Forte Four, Airway, LAFMS, all round champion etc etc etc)

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Johnny Scarr - NONNAH  CDr £5

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Thinking of your fate? Mired down in a mortality wobble? Deep breaths and audio hum can eleviate them shakes, while tapes & tones keep the lizards at bay. After a considerable bout of radio silence from Spoils & Relics Johnny Scarr decided to get his thumb out of his arse and dust down the old four-track. What starts off trying to fool you is going to be another miserable Spolis & Relics record soons morphs into something more mellow and almost musical, like a tipsy cult leader of one trying to reel in some starseed followers. Cognition blurred. Ears pleased.

"Generally, it's just another mopey shitty synth record, which obviously the world needs more of." - Johnny Scarr aka Chuckles

Edition of 50

SOLD OUT

Odie ji Ghast - DOMESTIC recordings  CDr £5

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Another snapshot of lockdown life here on the shitty Brexit Isles, This time Odie ji Ghast aka Greta Buitkute (Labas Krabas, Historically Fucked etc) invites you to their abode in the thriving creative hive of Gateshead (don't call it Newcastle, ya bam!). Multitracked vocals (both gibber and song) get mixed in with dictaphone, home appliances, keyboards and "loud thoughts". An intimate insight into the clutter revolution.

"2020 summer full of domesticity that's soaked in time slow moving back and forth between arising direction and reflections on past crumbles" - Odie ji Ghast

Edition of 60

Russell Walker - The Blue Shirt of Simon  CDr £5

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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,  so instead he submitted The Blue Shirt of Simon, a piece of "noir crime fiction" in audio book fashion apparently. It is set in a fictional West London town called Simon, taking place over two weeks in Februrary 2021. All characters are fictional and any resemblance they have to persons alive or dead is coincidental. Aye right.

"I really liked it even though it sounds like a man of the edge of some sort of breakdown" - anonymous

Edition of 60

Dylan Nyoukis & Seymour Glass - No One Cares About The Drama Queen's Potassium Intake  CD £10

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"Talk about truth in marketing! Do you care about the drama queen’s etc etc? I’ll bet you don’t! And yet, here’s a treatise by two of the world’s greatest song titlers (in case you’re writing this down, the complete list of Earth’s A+ song-titlers in no particular order: D.Nyoukis, S.Glass, Phil Todd, Campbell Kneale, Ron Mael) describing the statement’s self-evident truth. And maybe the end of summer is an appropriate enough time to start compiling an “albums-of-the-year” list, ‘cuz this bastard sure is on it. You know Dylan Nyoukis from his solo work, his part in the beast that is Blood Stereo and the man whose “taste” manifests as the catalogue of his Chocolate Monk label. Seymour Glass is an incomparable writer and is part of too many groups to list, but here are a few: Bren’t Lewiis Ensemble, Glands of External Secretion, Suppressive Persons… and I’ll stop there.
Upon first listen, “No One Cares…” an explosion of cartoon psychosis bursting feverishly in all directions. But evidence of its greatness comes with further explorations… for me, the revelation happened a few minutes into my third incursion. This thing left me stupefied (I know, I know… I was pretty stupid, to begin with, har har) and smiling like a goon. Upon continued engagement, “… Potassium…” revealed itself to be profound/masterful. But lemme back up. “… Intake” began life as a single-track half-hour CDR released last year on Chocolate Monk. Perhaps you’ve heard that version. It was good! It also did brisk enough business to warrant consideration for a second edition, and that’s the point at which a good album morphed into a great one. The initial 30-minute piece was transformed (with some scrambling and re-composing, addition and multiplication etc) into three 20-ish-minute pieces… or maybe a single hour-long cerebrum-scramble that’s cut into three sections for easier digestion. The result might be the apex of either artist’s work (so far), but then it’s still only August, so who knows.
As one can expect from Nyoukis’ output, there’s an intangible dream logic at work as one element blurs into the next and aspects become clear and/or recede and/or transform in delightfully surprising ways. At one moment, we’re deep inside a sentient alien esophagus attempting to give directions to lost tourists… the next, we’re surreptitiously eavesdropping on an argument about language at a corner market. The argument started before we arrived and continues after we’ve shifted into a different state of consciousness, so instead of resolution we get a passage of squeaky toys that become inside-piano chimes, then balloon animals chained to actual animals, then the interior monologue of porcelain hippopotami on a fire escape. What seems at first to be linear or episodic or random is revealed upon close listens to have careful structure, sonic depth and attenuated tension. Comic goof is given some air time (whoops, whoopie cushions, grotesque juxtapositions) but the yuks lead inexorably to overpowering three-dimensional heave and lurid gloop as tantalizingly familiar acoustic harrumph folds inside and through itself, inside becomes outside and outside becomes a dream. There’s a palpable space and openness, each sound seemingly tangible within the stew. Human voices interfere by singing, muttering, swallowing or confidently reciting evocative nonsense. A cavalier listener might reach out to grab hold of some big metal ladle or dip a toe into the cosmic gloop before its atoms disperse, and maybe it wasn’t really there at all. It’s a goddamn blast.
Here’s an example of what you’re in for. The second track starts with a too-much-information propulsion rush, but the initial assault shifts sideways to a beautiful distant muttered/muted/mutated conversation and implacably coming-into-focus electronic irritant. A quick shift to Partch-like plonk is backed by another voice in distress… mocked by persistent raspberry and inhuman chortling. Glass & Nyoukis are patient, letting a bizarre mood take hold and establish its own topography before shifting gears again to pots n’ pans n’ animal growl. “Drama Queen…” is a creation of breathtaking compositional dexterity with a confidently light touch. This is something I can (and have! And will continue to!) listen to close over and over. I’m sure I’ll discover new facets interacting beneath and between what I’ve noticed so far. Highest recommendation, folks." - Howard Stelzer, Vital Weekly

With the CDR edition sold out, Chocolate Monk and Butte County Free Music Society pressured their respective kingpins to add another 30 minutes of audio and a couple more frames of Karen Constance artwork for an expanded reissue on CD (not a CDR) in a six-panel eco-pak.
Churning and honking like a couple of white apes in a suntan lotion sento, Nyoukis and Glass bromance the mud for a solid uninterrupted (almost) 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. Mastered by Julian Tardo at Church Road Studios. Co-released with Butte County Free Music Society.

Edition of 150

Forrest Friends - untitled  CDr £5

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The Forrest Friends emerge from 2020 and show how the old passing-an-8-track-back-and-forth can really get you to some strange places. Devolving righteously into a mish mash of mood musics. Imagine Angst Hase Pfeffer Nase doing some alien gas-huffing wangers or one of the dribblers from Caroliner getting their drool on to insectoid funk-a-gunk puzzle muzak. There is plenty of little creepers too, wee sonic plucks matured just right to deliver that all important ear worm (or should that be larvae??), so pull up a chair to the blown out tables and let the psych coloured world seep through the window. You don't to take my word for it, just take Mr Garrison Hecks insight

"All's I can say about it is that we had never done things this way before, but decided to pass an 8-track back-and-forth over the plague-time sniffles season, and the handle flew off in unexpected ways.... is this a pop album? sort of?... there're hip-hop beats, maybe some alien dub... not what I initially thought we'd be coming up with, but here we are.. blur your ears and it's just cowboy soundtracks, dancefloor bangers, goth-industrial lullabies, rural land-lubber sea-shanties, 80's sax-laden jams, etc...
oor maybe that's not what it is at all?
ugh, honestly, I'm really confused by this thing that we have birthed from our aural womb, and not the Wordy Rappinghood with describing this particular thing. but a straight-up pop album for sure, the closest we've come to such a thing, anyway."

Edition of 60

Seymour Glass & Ali Robertson - Donut Oil  CDr £5

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When Ali Robertson witnessed Seymour Glass tell Joe “Posset” Murray that he was the “only guy in the UK whose writing is worth a damn,” Robertson knew exactly who he was going to rope in for a future journalistic favour. Clearly, the Yankee behemoth knows which side of his scone is buttered. Nothing happens without fealty to the institutions of butchery and bakery, after all.

“Sprinkle, crinkle, pit of mud, how I wonder who’s yer fud.” So began the silent incantation that protected the lesser half of Usurper and the decrepit 1/40th of Bren’t Lewiis Ensemble in their completion of this magenta-cloud hallucination. From what, one might ask. Hard to say, as they overcame all obstacles and nefarious phenomena seen and unseen attempting to keep them from their appointed sounds. Emboldened by bullshit sorcery, the reckless pair of hobbits dove into a shared dreamstate, thrashed around inside pink cubes for a while, where disembodied voices and conveyor belts stacked high with body parts and vegan substitutes ensorcelled and nauseated, and slid back out with nary a grease stain on their Brunello Cucinelli perforated, suede-panelled, cashmere gloves. That’s all we know. Rest assured, friend, Robertson and Glass have packed all 48 minutes of this disc with primo slurps, throttled puckers, fairytale calisthenics, fading electronics, tape manipulation, intimate congress with inanimate objects, naïve instrument prowess, and the finest crackle that can be derived from stale peat loaves.

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

various artists - Salvage Job   CDr £5

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If its broken, don't fix it. Further recordings made during the mess of the past year which you may hear as a shining pathway out of the shit, or a "Back to the egg!" warning cry. Pour yrself a drink, put on those headphones and let the gamble commence.

Featuring tracks from Hobo Sonn, Muyassar Kurdi & Ka Baird, Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson, A.S, Raymond Cummings, Hardworking Families, Stone Cornelius, Dora Doll, Duncan Harrison, LDSN, Angela Sawyer & Ethan Marsh, Glands Of External Secretion, Tania Caroline Chen, Mark Groves, Staubitz & Waterhouse, Kraus, Kate Armitage, Constance/Nyoukis and RRS.

Artwork from Mr Bill Nace

Edition of 100

  SOLD OUT

Carnivorous Plants - POTIONS!!!   CDr £5

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The beloved "Beard of Bristol" Owen Chambers spent several weeks trying to unlearn guitar but found that a toxic knot once tied is hard to undo. His resolve failed him, well not totally. While his splendid guitar playing would remain in tack he decided he could at least add a smear of "whatthefuckery" to his belt by spending the next week listening only to a handful of Glands Of External Secretions and Karen Constance recordings. He then set about making POTIONS!!! which he describes as "A soup of sounds made from old russian sci-fi films, lo-fi synth improvisations, duelling radios and other stuff like choral vocals and the like". It is better to travel well than to arrive.

Artwork by Miss Karen Constance

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Translucent Envelope/Bob Desaulniers - Grimly Forming   Booklet & CDr £10

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Yet more sweet eye and ear yolk from the Lunk Headed Library and a great honour to have further recordings from the under documented tape mangling sound wizard Bob Desaulniers AKA Translucent Envelope. The album was culled from recordings made at home between Summer 2020 and Spring 2021 using tapes, sampler, electronics, phone recordings, contact mics, and objects which he says is "a fairly accurate sonic depiction of my brain turning to mush over the last eight months or so. Too much time cooped up in the house... I'm sure I'm not the only one feeling this way right now."
The 20 page A5 colour booklet is a selection of collages made between 2015 and 2021 using magazines, scissors, paper, and glue stick which will sooth the aforementioned mush brain. Balance dear Bozos.


Numbered edition of 69

FOR SHIPPING PLEASE COUNT AS THREE DISKS!!

Ida Koelacanth - Pterodactyl B&B   CDr £5

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Do you remember Colonel Dai from Graveyard Graveyard? Suspend your tears the creep took cannibal odds shouting Suzi with twenty on to win so what's all this nonsense about? Friendly coffins. Love voltage. Death fictions. Familiar Alligators. The Pterodactyl. The Bed and Breakfast. A lot of words. Words repeated. Repeated words. Worms worms worms. It goes on and on and on and on and on forever but it's over in thirty minutes.

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Chlorine - Be Somebody Else, It's Fine   CDr £5

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"A loose swerve with the hips and then a dip at the knees.

They say repetition is the key to unlocking the lizard brain. Yup. Chlorine’s scabby fingers needle the lock, hinges and front piece as I feel the nimble fumbling in my head.

Graeme ‘Chlorine’ Hopper scoops time into small piles and sets a direction like iron fillings clustering round a magic magnet.

The multiple click-click of metallic pegs acts as a lubricant. I’m willing and ready. The surreptitiously-captured voices (a driving test, an appointment with the accountant) plough fever-drenched narratives. Make room for glottal beat-boxing, Lear-esque nonsense and hummed tunes to self. I smile at the shuffle of some rattling shells or the pale blue Farfisa mood. Some machine whirrs as an owl flutters wildly in the gears; then our poor feathery professor gets snaffled by a bigger (yet unseen) beast. I tidy out the shed, one ill-judged elbow starts a cascade of paint tins to bounce playfully off my shins and forehead.

Thought for the day. Hey Old Timer. You remember Orang? Some band that was made up of two thirds of another band or something? Well they had extra hands (like two) and brain (er...like one) and toes (several I guess) than our boy Chlorine and he’s still swaggering up the rain forest canopy like a double-strength monkey.

All the above. All the below. It’s fine yeah!" - Joe Posset

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Brandstifter & Diurnal Burdens - Fireabend   CDr £5

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Hey boink, you want proof that Brexshit doesn't have to totally sour the Kraut/Limey hand hold? Well come hither as we got the evidence right here on disk. A wee document of "whatthefuckery" that will put the rise in your mind dumplings as the mad man of Mainz, Mr Stefan Brandstifter, has sporadic spurts of creative foolery with toys, glossolalia, casio, field recordings and stuck records which he documents on his cruddy (yet well made German) dictaphone before sending to Wigan walloper Ross Scott-Buccleuch who then gets to mangling, chewing, looping & assembling on his double walkman set-up so any potential soul scurvy can be averted. Keep on the grass.

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

MEGGONDOLATLANUL - The Night Watch  CDr £5

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He of Core Of The Coalman. She of The Slowest Lift. Him of Inca Eyeball serve up blossoming drones to clear the fug.

And some wise ass said

"tell me that i am a hero, MEGGONDOLATLANUL
(-behr(sic)/coop/join) joined FORCES some *some*
time ago for an undertaking (unrelated to
the cdr that you hold in your hand) for
S.Yorks television ; in process of
prep for this beaming-out, said prep was
committed to tape, in w.yorks -these
documents now unearthed, dusted off for
the discerning, for discernment, the name
recklessly, wantonly chosen – with manic
abandon, a “front” defaced and torn, that
my life is about to begin."

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Dinosaurs With Horns - PINK COW   Booklet & CDr £10

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Joseph Hammer, master loopest and audio hypnotist and Rick Potts, loopy sonic magician, are those “antique brass holes”, Dinosaurs with Horns, who have been plundering phonics since the Pre-MIDI era of the LA Free Music heyday.
Their chunks of discombobulated ear worm wax are still circling around heads like stars & birdies after a mallet blow to the frontal lobe. BUT…Here is a slice of kaleidoscopic audio fruitcake recently discovered in their jewel encrusted archive treasure chest. So, milk the Pink Cow’s psychoactive soda pop & go for a swirl with floating fragments of dolled-up cartoonery and prismatic rigamarole bouncing off rubber walls of repurposed Exotica malarky in a sauce of dreamy semi-gelatinous electro-stoolage.
What better to enhance the effects than an eye dazzling 16 page full colour booklet of Rick Potts tainted surrealistic eye candy to pursue while submerged in the Dinosaur’s sound swamp!

“You’re soaking in it” -Madge

Numbered edition of 75

SOLD OUT

Karen Constance - Old Scar For New Nose   CDr £5

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More processed surreal appeal from Wino Lodge's hardest working dweller. The words are garbled, but the tapes and gadgets are in enough oscillation to keep your ass anodic. It's hard to believe Miss Constance's craft graft wasn't always so strong but two chance meetings at a early age set her on the path of prevelance. Firstly meeting the Tartan Lads in Blackburn Chemists at the age of 7 where "Scotland's top performing duo" informed her "even a wee lassie can wear a skirt of many colours." and just a few years later a caged Myna bird in a pub in Coldingham told her "the life of an artist is a fucktards waddle!" or maybe it was the other way about, either way she implores you to fill your boots with fruits & vegetables, create and be damned. Heed.

Numbered edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Fred Rinne - Selections From Bands 1985 - 2001  Booklet & CDr £10

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Glory BE!! we here inside Wino Lodge could not be more giddy to host the Left Coast's number one Hager huffer and outsider art wonker. Fred delivers us a A5 booklet of posters/flyers of his numerous brain shattering bands plus a disk of tunes by National Disgrace, The Bringdownzz, The Framptons, the Oswald, The Sentimentals and The Patchkordzz. Make Lard!! Not Wartz!!!

"We wound up in a dirty garage surrounded by shredded wood, paint cans, old records. Tortured by years of fad pop, all we could do was fight it off, banging on empty cans and screaming, vomiting all the pop music back into the aether.
By sanding, grinding or melting old farty records we could gain a new truth from them. The old farts were always going to be supplanted by new farts but the struggle for sonic truth lives on." - Fred Rinne

"Painter, clothing-defiler, visionary of hilarious takes on the conventions of wretched pop culture and the metastasizing celebrity of public figures, Fred Rinne is best known as the vocalist and lyricist for a gooey mound of Bay Area bands that have been spreading their indelible stains and demented approaches since the 1980s. His unmistakable tone-deaf warble is one part sado-masochistic simian yelp. And he absolutely despises eucalyptus trees." - Seymour Glass

Numbered edition of 75

SOLD OUT

Cody Brant and S.Glass - Backdoor Escape From Frog's Gut   CDr £5

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Even though no Vietnamese pop music was harmed in the making of Backdoor Escape From Frog’s Gut, be careful not to choke on bones during your travels throughout the westernmost quadrant of The Stinking Empire, that wasteland of mass-comm eavesdropping, loop hypnosis, burgled field recordings, and fracture-scapes that’ll clamp down on your skull like a Gorilla Glue nutcracker. Chocolate Monk’s in-house Clint Eastwood, Jr. (Brant) and Joanne Worley gender reassignment disaster (Glass) have taken every possible precaution to ensure no one exits their hour-long clatter-and-clunk buffet with blood on their hankies. Still, gnaw judiciously, you lion-hearted gonk.

Edition of 60

  SOLD OUT

Legend Trip - Legend trip   CDr £5

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These two, illicit camping on Mt St. Helens, greek ferry discotheques, do you know where your CD player is? the Acropolis til dawn, free float boat in the ragged islands with call from Lax, alien lights coming from Texada, the reward is in the adventure, do you really want an explanation?

Legend Trip is Theo Angell (Hall of Fame, JOMF) & Joshua Stevenson (Staked Plain, Von Bingen, Magneticring, and JOMF). They recognise that the welt on your forehead used to SEE. Worry not, they have the sonic third eye drops to get you blinking again.

Edition of 60

 SOLD OUT

Honkeyzontal Picnic - Megabus To Clubland   Cassette £5

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Daz Adcock and Luke Poot (with the occasional guest appearance from Ken). Trapped in the flat, sometimes feeling fucking terrible, often being successfully daft, permanently kicked out of society for riding a carpet.

Numbered edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Tasos Stamou - Greek Drama   CDr £5

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Feel the warm glow as the Tas man delivers the goods once again.

"This album was recorded in July and August 2020 in Agini Theodoroi, Greece, during visiting at my father's land in between lockdowns.
I used extremely simple means, a 4-track digital handheld recorder, a few string instruments and a bunch of abandoned albums of my Greek music collection plus some homebrew synthesizers.
It is a collection of tracks investigating and researching some sort of "Greekness" in me and in my music influences.
It was the first time to experiment using all the things I like at the same time, aesthetically unfiltered, strictly transcendental in a very personal non-Greek Way." - Tasos Stamou

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Constance & Nimmo - Souvenir From Empire State Observatory   CDr

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the festering season freebie returns. This time the mysterious Nimmo is paired up with Karen as they both take a bash at mangling the sounds from Voice-O-Graph disks recorded atop the Empire State Building sometime in 19-oatcake. As always these go out free to the first 40 lunks who place an order.

Edition of 40

ALL GONE

Todd W Emmert - Talking To Yourself Is Better Than Talking To No One   CDr £5

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"This is my 14th full length album recorded in 2020. This album is a paperback pandemic romance novel without words, completely instrumental. Feel the warm themes if you can. It took a full year for me to vomit up all the previous 13 albums to get to this album and the proof is in the pudding. True pandemic romance isn't dead, it's just taken another form again. Do your current pandemic lifestyles got you down? Well, just try and remember the time before time, when it was slightly more enjoyable to be alive and the clock wasn't weighing on your back like an albatross. Let your worries slip away into the ether. Remember the fun before time existed. I know you can do it." - Todd W Emmert

Edition of 60

Various Artists - Fug Gum Vol.4   CDr £5

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You want to end the year on a wonk, right?? Then here is the disk of audio spittle and vibe burble to get you there. Tracks by Karen Constance, The Occupant, Bill Nace, Hannah Ellul, DDAA, Translucent Envelope, Cloth, Dai Coelacanth, Kito-Mizukumi Rouber, Natalia Beylis, Odie Ji Ghast, Hair Stylistics, Sweat Tongue, Rick Potts, The Richard Youngs Foot Band and Mitchell Brown. Hot sauce for yr lugholes.

Edition of 100

  SOLD OUT

Constance/Nyoukis - Whit?   Boxset £33

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Praise Be! choc.500 is here and to celebrate we are killing off Blood Stereo. Aye! Putting a spike in the name once and for all. This here boxset contains a split lathe cut 7" in risograph printed cover (Constance - 'Where Warble Ends'/Nyoukis -'Minatures for Joan').
A split cassette (Constance - 'The Glue Tank'/Nyoukis - 'The Great Gut Fixed').
A perfect bound A6 pocketbook featuring 'The Click Inbetween' (collages by Constance) & 'The Failing Felts' (scribbbles by Nyoukis).
A CDr collaboration, reworking some old Blood Stereo sounds entitled 'There Goes Blood Stereo'.
The various artists compilation 'Your Mind is Hiss' featuring a bunch of bands you have never heard of (Fake Meat, Ill Man JawJaw, Clearly Blark, The ERN Band, Charred Drawer, Soiled House, Typewriter target, The Bunker Singers, Biscuit Meek and The Blessed Vagrants).
Two button badges and three photographs (1 of which containing a special message just for YOU!



!!POSTAGE!! Please use the dropdown menu to add postage to your area.

Edition of 50

SOLD OUT

Modern Medicine - Original Home Magick   CDr £5

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A joyous sonic adventure from the suburban anti-dream to the commercial drag of the modern shopping centre. Food , furniture, fitness routines and pharmaceuticals , it’s all in this modern trip for sick people.

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Shareholder - The Glass   CDr £5

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Edinburgh's Shareholder retreats to his bedroom with hash pipe, free music software and a very old laptop to bring the people musings on the cosmic feminine via Harold Pinter, mid life crisis ballroom dancing, hallucinogenic marxist inertia. Bowie flavoured internet entropy and field recordings of genuine public transport witchcraft, amongst other type things.

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Karen Constance- The Junk Merchant   CDr £5

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Futher tape and electronic zoink broadcast from the unfettered mind of covid Karen. Unlike the recent shorter tracks on Still Awake (Beartown) & Still Asleep (More Mars) here we get many sections meshed into one long collage that has that satisfying cut-up yet fluid feel to give you the burbles. If you get giddy on the cool hum of autumn then this click clacker is for you. Hand danglers should approach with caution.

Edition of 60
SOLD OUT

Dayglow Exploding Super Infinite - The Clingfilm Survival Diaries   CDr £5

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Karl M V Waugh doesn't let his day job as software developer sour him, far from it, Big Hairy has used his work from home schedule to put in the obligatory Zoom meetings, get the minimum required done then set about developing his own noise making apps. Priorities people. One of which is a crude looper with manual varispeed control per loop giving a very tactile approach, albeit a tad chaotic, like Pierre-André Arcand's Macchina Ricordi for the Tik Tok generation. This album is made up of four shards from improvisations where he was running various live sources into his phone and from phone to handheld recorder. All via the lens of exhaustion, parenthood, home working, and lockdown 2020.

Edition of 60

Firas Khnaisser & Ali Roberston - Midlife Pandemics   CDr £5

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As worrying times might be leading to welts of mind and soul Edinburgh based Khnaisser & Robertson invite you to rest your eyes and dream. Presenting two audio flashcards of meager movements and top drawer wee letter improvisations. Dullards might call it non-music, but the smart money is on "tunes for goons".

"Firas puts nae garlic in his hummus and it turns out that’s great. It’s buttery like the sort that you’d spread on yr paws to show you the way hame fae yrs to theirs to the park to the loch to the woods, for a pish, to the dirt, build a ganghut and back to yrs fr yr daily bread with a smile. And it was all just round the corner waiting for ye all this time! Ali is ready to eat." - Official statement

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Astro - Adversity And Marginalization   CDr £5

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"Let’s dream big for a moment, gonk: a silent Ray Harryhausen remake of that movie about roughnecks landing their rocketship on an asteroid heading for Earth so they can blow it up. And here’s the soundtrack. Hm, that was easier than anyone had a right to expect. So, yeah, Hiroshi Hasegawa — your freak brother inside C.C.C.C., interstellar synth noise royalty, commander of the violent squad of loyalists protecting Sun Ra’s birth nugget on the surface of Prometheus. He’ll get you high, anoint you with a tap on the shoulder of his blight sabre, and take you for a terrifying joy ride in a glass coffin. Three long tracks, each turbulating through jagged disintegration and dense fields of toxic dust, well parallax’d fur judders, stir-fried collapsing howls, and jump cuts from acidic feedback into thick burning pools of all-contaminating rumble’n’screech that makes the GOMAD weight-builders from the ’90s lose consciousness." - Seymour Glass

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Crude Mirage - Plummet Sound   CDr £5

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One time neighbours in that hotbed of commie anarchism/hipster hops known as Portland Oregeon, Cody Brant & Bob Desaulniers started Crude Mirage back in 2016, meeting up for live jams of tape muck and sputter in Bob's swanky shack. Brant upped sticks to Philly before finally landing in Dougie Jones country for his sins, in the meantime casette tapes were exchanged via the post and finally big fat WAVs got wizzed via web until this hard punch of cut-up crud came to pass. A stinking diamond of collage whattheactualfuckery.

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Food People - God With Stripes   CDr £5

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Lila Matsumoto & Mathew Hamblin (aka Cloth) hook up once more with the reclusive guitarist Greg Thomas (Helhesten), whom was last seen terrifying discombobulated tourists at the foot of Leith Walk with his "spare any change/pay me to stop" drone and strang meditations. God With Stripes is the follow up to their 2018 Monk disk Vetch in which the toxic triplets head 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

SOLD OUT

Bill Orcutt - Pure Genius  cassette £6

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Did lockdown have you mulling the impending neo-feaudaulism? Then spare a thought for poor Billy boy, whom while stuck out on the left coast surrounded by braying tech bros realised that we, the plebs, will eventually be here only to serve the machines. Recorded in August 2020 in San Francisco using his own Cracked app. 1,2,3,4!!!!

Edition of 75

Sindre Bjerga & Tanto - Huffing The Semantic Smoke From The Deep Hum   CDr £5

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"In the midst of it all, I managed to escape for a while through secret tunnel passages to meet up with Tanto in his underground lab where piles of tape machines were oozing and buzzing, dozens simultaneously, and as I hooked my stuff up to the main frame, it started to overheat, creaking, thumping, melting until the sounds themselves were set on fire and then language itself combusted into a cloud of fog, words and meaning went up in smoke and we were cast into the big, deep hum of vaporized sound, words and meaning " All this happened April-May 2020 and was luckily caught on tape on the only surviving tape deck in the lab.

Edition of 60

Shit Creek - Tango Super Bock   CDr £5

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This Glasgow based mystery merchant came hathcing out in Holmfirth, before Bristol spritz up their lugs. Here they serve slurries of audio shrooms for teetotalers while indulging in dry drunk sips from the wine hive of electric warble. These recordings were mostly culled from stuff recorded in Lisbon in Sept 2019, then mangled and massaged a few months later up in the dreich. A woozy audio sip from the cracked glass of failure.

WARNING!! features tape loops, violin, yamaha keyboard, a broken sequencer that a battery exploded in, causing it to mangle sound, etc.

Edition of 60

  SOLD OUT

The Piss Superstition - how do we come out a cosmetic front and go where   CDr £5

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27 years after setting foot upon the spoiled carpets of the original Chocolate Monk HQ in Norfolk Square, Mr Julian Bradley beams in some somnolent warmth. Many little repeating sections in twirl. In twirl.
"What gives with this marvel?" I asked.
"recorded over two afternoons in May, hit by a desire to make weedy, thin songs. bass and fogged rumble: OUT. amp buzz and whiney riffs: IN. for now, anyway." came the reply.
Feel the wheeze of minimal/maximal hypnoid.

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Cremor Tartaro - Cooh-Choo-Choo-Cook   CDr £5

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Two simple kids who had learned their passive aggressive vernacular at the corner shop -not the same lingo, however-. Both had a dream of a bigger bookcase. Both with the wickedness of da' sweet doing hee haw. None of them were on the Malibu beach party's guestlist. One abuses a p-petrol broken guitar (Pernod hound Olivier Di Placido). The other is a handlecrackradio-surfer with at least 20 voices in his n-notebook (positive stepper Renato Grieco). What they do together is stitch their spaghetti eyebrows to the crest of a playground nag, bake leftover viennoiserie and sshmptufflin' down the block. Something's bending there. It's clicking. It is boingin'. Well, sometimes it is a hell of a good idea to let it boing and give it a smile.

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Scar Dealership - Taxi For Brahms   CDr £5

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"This Scar Dealership combo are like a damn coin toss yeah? You flip and make your choice. "If it’s heads expect...

Super-flexed and energetic energy; like the Boredoms (circa ’89) moved to Leeds and camped out in the famously huge Kirkgate Market. You can picture that eh? Young urchins flitting between the stalls at twilight, pocketing the odd pound of tribe or a fistful of pungent herbs while hiding-in-plain-sight in proud hi-viz.

Super-time-travelled and dreamy; like the between-track skits from Bongwater (circa ’88). You can picture that eh? Giblet Gusset getting all Dazed and Chinese while Model Warships pulls a Dave Rick with his acoustic guitar set for Bailey territory.

Super-bodymovin’ and funky; like Mario C (circa ’92) turned the Beastie Boys onto Shoegaze and Dub in the same afternoon. You can picture that eh? Territorial Gobbing turns the ‘tremolo’ guitar sound inside out and drags it through cheap pedals to make whale-heavy moans that leap like tiny anchovies.

But if it’s tails...

Tunes like ‘Tape Music for the Painfully Alone’ and ‘Gelb’ are kinda like, really sensitive man and all that. These are piano ballads that tinkle – simple lines intertwining – alongside sore gasping, moaning and ripping underscored by the bleep of a self-service checkout in that Tesco Express that only seems to cater for exhausted students.

It’s no-way-Jose knock-kneed punk-age by any stretch. In fact there’s a serious run through those tricky human emotions here. Improv slapdashery often collapses into a beautiful Harold Budd moment and then blushes itself pink – as if these six hands were collectively caught in a cookie jar.

I was blowing off steam earlier as I rocked the noise tracks but, seriously my readers, this is beautiful stuff, stuffed with sonic jalapenos for sure, but beautifully measured, constructed and performed.

What do they say? I’m a lover not a fighter. Like Scar Dealership I’m synched for tears.

Yeah man – it’s the full emotional gamut alright. And here come the waterworks eh?" - Joe Posset

Edition of 60

Neil Campbell & Howard Stelzer - Their Crowning Achievement  CDr £5

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Stelzer got the ball rolling on this old school transatlantic collab with the sounds of kids playing, some bass guitar and dozens upon dozens of layered cassette tapes played outdoors and in hallways. A pile of stuff from unrelated or subconsciously-related sources, hung together by crossed fingers and willpower which he then sent to Campbell in the wilds of West Yorkshire who proceeded to add electronics, guitar and percussion. The resulting, almost hour long piece, is a Rorschach rumble that will keep yr gravy wet for the forseeable.

Edition of 60

ALL GONE

Various Artists - Cabin Fever Cleansed My Mind Vol.2   CDr £5

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Further forays into the hovels and studios of some of our favorite sound churners during lockdown. Featuring contributions from Food People, Ogrob, Sharon Gal, Ash Reid Neil Campbell & Sticky Foster, Plastic Hooligans, Embla Quickbeam, Amanda R Howland, Territorial Gobbing, Leif Elggren, The Burbling Mind, Rubber Demon and Dan Melchior. Artwork by Leif Elggren.

Order both volumes and get a Cabin Fever Cleansed My Mind 1" badge

Edition of 100

  SOLD OUT

Various Artists - Cabin Fever Cleansed My Mind Vol.1   CDr £5

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Has lockdown laid waste to creative minds? Or sown seeds of wild whack? Join Cody Brant, Glands Of External Secretion, rlw, Wild Rani, Giblet Gusset, Sick Llama, Fatty Jubbo & Dylan Nyoukis, T.Mikawa, Duncan Harrison, Mark Morgan, Sophie Cooper, Michael Zulicki and Final Seed to find out. Artwork by Leif Elggren.

Order both volumes and get a Cabin Fever Cleansed My Mind 1" badge

Edition of 100

  SOLD OUT

Timothy James Byrne - Turn it On Again. The Guitar Works of Timothy James Byrne   CDr £5

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'Buckinghamshire based musician, film maker, actor and photographer Timothy James Byrne has spent year upon year documenting life via a diverse array of mixed media in what would appear to be near total isolation. Tim's staggeringly prolific output has seen him create and publish multiple new works each day since at least late 2010, before stopping suddenly and without explanation in the summer of 2019. The result is an intimidatingly dense and difficult to comprehend archive filled with thousands of obscure artworks, the vast majority of which remain entirely undiscovered outside of a tiny underground community of obsessive fans. Though Tim is best described as a multi instrumentalist and singer, what you will hear in tio-tgwotjb are selections of covers, improvisations, original numbers and outtakes focussed on his work for acoustic and electric guitar. This is an unauthorised, unoffical fan bootleg existing primarily for documentary purposes and is to be understood as an abstract of Tim's wider body of work and artistic practice. With that said, this release represents perhaps the first and last instance of Timothy James Byrne's work being made available outside of his personal publishing efforts.'- Duncan Harrison

Edition of 50

SOLD OUT

Ross Scott-Buccleuch, Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson & Andrew Sharpley - Ghost Of Dada   CDr £5

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Announcing of invitation principles.
Earlier this year, Ross asked Andrew to edit his solo record for him. He sent over a lot of files, some DIY circuit bent improvising, some tape stuff, recordings of rugby club toilets, overt dregs of blank weather, streams, train stations, drones, all kinds of audio gunk & goof that he was supposed to edit into some kind of shape. Lasting streaks of veer.

At the same time, he had a plan since last year to make a collage record with Siggtrygur Berg Sigmarsson, who sent over a lot of vocal improvisations and audio glitches. Sudden guest. Tongues well and truly bit.

These two folders were sitting next to each other on his desktop for a month, and mysteriously they began to leak into each other. When is a door not a jar? When it's a door. So it has ended up being a trio record, preserving the integrity of the original material as well as being fairly freehand, with a casual and light quality. Today ear. Tomorrow gone. Play by it.

A chance meeting that was perhaps inevitable.

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Todd W Emmert - Unintentionally Marginalized   CDr £5

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The return of one of Chocolate Monk's more musical family members. As always bringing some strumming and sonorous sound to ease the pain. Leave your hate at the gate.

"These days, 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. But I have been treated as insignificant my whole life by people who use their supposedly marginalized status to excel socially. If you are actually a marginalized person, why are you so popular? The truly insignificant want nothing to do with the trend of claiming marginalization. Schizophrenia is what makes me a little bit different from most people, but gaining popularity because you say you have a disability or an illness is just what people do these days. I don't want to be socially popular. And I know I am insignificant in the greater scheme of things. I wish more people realized this about all of us. So, "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. I hope you like the sounds." - Todd W Emmert

Edition of 50

SOLD OUT

Seymour Glass & Dylan Nyoukis - No One Cares About The Drama Queen’s Potassium Intake  CDr £5

choc.479

"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." —Fen Addison

Edition of 60

ALL GONE

Final Seed - untitled  CDr £5

choc.478

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 7 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

Chlorine & Posset - Ultra Fluff  CDr £5

choc.477

"In the late summer of 2019, Graeme Hopper (Chlorine) and Joe Murray (Posset) met up on Saturday afternoons to jam. With no particular aim in mind Chlorine brought his deconstructed percussion/electronics set up with Posset on Dictaphones, megaphone and vocal jaxx.
After a few sessions a pattern would emerge. The jam would start hectic; everything-playing-at-once ecstasy, an overload of sensory information with the emphasis on texture and rhythm. After some time, busy layers would slope off, colours would become clearer and the vigorous back-and-forth of frantic improvisation would settle into a steady psychic pulse.
These raw jams were further messed with, looped, sliced and taped back together to create the meta-jam you see before you now.
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.
Scour out them tabs and screw in those earbuds. It’s clobbering time yeah?" - Kenny Carstairs

"Made the trees out of my window look weird." - Andy Crow

SOLD OUT

RRS - Cardboard Sane  CDr £5

choc.476

Our beloved Cardboard Prince returns. This time with his corrugated heart worn firmly on his sleeve. Deep takes from an outsider looking in.

"I wanted to make an album that was more specific about really Suicidal mental health from my experience with it in the past, i wanted to crack less 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" - RRS

Edition of 50

SOLD OUT

Labas Krabas - Krabas Musique de Ultrá  CDr £5

choc.475

Odie ji Ghast & Thomas Tyler use dictaphones, voice, guitar, mountain dulcimer, bells, electronics, tapes, miscellaneous objects & baby to tear a sizeable chunk out of your clue hole. Now you haven't got a scooby what's going on. Praise be!

"Those old timers often say youngsters haven’t paid their dues yeah? I gotta disagree gramps. This succulent release is fulla jazz. The jazz is strong in this one yeah?
Pre-language hoffs and quacks spin out of control. Instruments (whatever they are) become worried with hectic rubbings and coated in a sort of headache-y varnish.
I was expecting wrinkle-dubs from this pair of slimy bottom-feeders. But, once again, was wrong-footed by the whiff of hillbilly, a sitting-on-the-porch-barefoot-and-funky sort of vibe that lifts even the dankest, darkest soul.
There’s a canny intertwining going on somehow. Voices whittle like electric kettles, rubber birds sing to high heaven while the neighbours clank about looking for the good frying pan. Occasional electronics mean a finger is jammed deeper into your sense-lobe and the grey matter stirred like a cocktail. Behold! Mitten-enrobed hands rustle various stringed contraptions.
Later I dream of Django, Paris in the 1930’s with pelican-throated hoofers warbling to the wee small hours." - Joe Posset

Edition of 60

Karen Constance - Nothing To See, Hear  CDr £5

choc.474

Coughing Constance presents a companion release to choc.470. Recorded inside Wino Lodge during March 2020 using the same set up as used by Nyoukis. Further dollops of loop damage which aim to disorientate and frazzle in the nicest possible way. Give thanks to the tapes!

"Constance has deft fingers, putting her sounds together with a maestros touch, altering the pace and density so that one minute you’re being subdued by a Victorian opera singer coming though a scratchy cylinder, slightly sped up and destroyed and the next the clip-clop of horses hooves before this all melts into a gloopy swamp of mushy-ness where you feel like your falling through a glycerine filled, glass walled, twenty ton holding tank. I suspect cassette tape and loop machines, the rubbing of strings and things I don’t understand. I also suspect I may have heard one of the best releases to pass through these hands this year." - Idwal Fisher

Numbered edition of 50

SOLD OUT

Fleshtone Aura - Infinity Keystroke  CDr £5

choc.473

Andrew No C Zukerman aka the Toronto Sound Trickster busts out another fine demented piece of tympanic membrane tickling. Recorded in 2014~2015 using tapes, turntable, sampler, modular & Buchla synthesizers he slow bakes the burbling to a perfect blend of heady, psychedelic, paranoid, and warped with a dose of abstract musicality for good measure. The slight of hand and jiggery-pokery will make you want to play on repeat while wiping down the surfaces and yr filthy mits.

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Various Artists - I Am With The Band Of Gurps  CDr £5

choc.472

Band Of Gurps was a one off quintet of Sharon Gal, Dylan Nyoukis, June Whitchurch, Yoni Silver & Ali Roberston who performed at Cafe Oto on 28th July 2018 as part of the Chocolate Monk 25th anniversary two day event. The recordings of the gig were passed onto Cody Brant, Ju Suk Reat Meate, Karen Constance, Hannah Ellul, Rust Ruus, Kenny Carstairs, Posset & Seymour Glass who proceeded to remix/rework/do over. All the huffing, puffing and wheezing weirdness you could hope for.

Edition of 75

SOLD OUT

Witcyst & Prick Decay - custic witch conflictory and in the Pols  CDr £5

choc.471

Recently unearthed unreleased snail mail collaboration made in 1996. Recorded between Blackburn, Scotland and Whangarei, New Zealand. Crud fidelity bedroom recordings made straight to cassette.

"Take a moment to force yourself to forget that this junk-fi epic by Dora Doll, Mykl Veet, and Dylan Nyoukis was created during a time when, and on a globe where, air, food, and water weren’t classified as luxury poisons and it was easy to win an argument about whether fascism was bad or not. It’s not gonna hurt anyone to wonder at the gurgle of a cassette deck trying to pushing forward underneath the weight of someone sitting on it, at the flat-topped frequency range, at distortion eclipsed by its ever-present understudy overmodulation, at fist-filled mouths mimicking the slow death of a water-logged shack by the railroad tracks where teenagers huff glue. But these are 25-year-old recordings, no escaping that, and they snorfle on the very edges of the shadow cast by the influence of charred psychedelic hypermetropia. Oh, the beauty and the damage. Obsolete tools like guitars and piano writhe and grind inside tubes of acidic digestion, decimated on arrival, congenitally defective, esprit-deprived. Very few existential howls from the abyss, plenty of shattered squeals from a mic too close to an amp in the carport. Jacked flutter vistas. Muffled turntable surrender. Wires that shouldn’t be touching. A big ol’ blur of electronic mud-scrape. No one forgets their first." - Seymour Glass


Edition of 75

ALL GONE

Dylan Nyoukis - Nothing To See, Hear  CDr £5

choc.470

Full on loop damage recorded direct to the Wino Lodge harddrive one afternoon in January. I was armed with tape players for the blind, Boss DD20 a small stack of random tapes nabbed from the cluttered and sagging shelves. Much coffee was imbibed. "Focus Nyoukis!"
Are your ears focussed or unfocussed? I present you with the perfect test disk for yr lugholes. Be aware, where there seems to be not much happening there is a wealth going on. Close eyes and give thanks to the tapes.

Numbered edition of 50

LDSN - In Each Act Processing Grief and Longing  CDr £5

choc.469

We are glad to bring you further transmissions from the weird, wet, creative hot bed of the Upper Calder Valley (following on from releases by Roy Claire Potter, The Singing Isle & Embla Quickbeam). LDSN is a poet/writer/teacher/barkeep/dogsbody /collector of dreams/occasionally performing artist based in Todmorden. On In Each Act Processing Grief and Longing she presents lo-fi spoken word pieces with pepperings of the sound of home and countryside. Use words to get your weary arse out the ditch, pal.

Numbered edition of 40

Hannah Ellul - A Kind Of Air  CDr £5

choc.468

Glasgow based writer & artists Hannah Ellul gives us a slighty different edit of the beautiful and strange piece she recorded for Mark Vernon & Barry Burns's Radiophrenia in 2019. A slow moving thing that seems to stretch out time.

"If I were to tell you how I arrived here, I would have to explain the voicemails. The voicemails have been in the back of my mind for some time. They had accumulated over several years, in fits and starts. A waxing and waning of words spoken into the void. For months, I watched them arrive but I did not listen to them. When I eventually did hear the messages, certain things were immediately clear. The condition of his lungs was deteriorating. His breathing was laboured. The messages had never been easy to follow. They were often slurred, because of the drink. But now when he spoke his words were interrupted by coughing fits, more and more so as time went on. By groans and gasps. Belly-speech. Gurgles of outflow." - Hannah Ellul

Edition of 50

SOLD OUT

Cody Brant - Scratch Music  CDr £5

choc.467

The man with the golden ears returns, showing again that he is the maestro of his own strange brew of musical noises and non-music aural frittering. All presented with care and attention to detail for his dear listeners.

"Recorded while laying low in Las Vegas. Using homemade spring boards, hair buzzer, fukuoku 9000, am/fm radio, cicada drones, 2-stringed electric guitar, prepared lap steel guitar, found microcassettes, voice, field recordings and DJ mixer feedbacker. I thought i'd never finish this release because this was pretty much my only escape from the trashy city as the hellish heat boiled brains outside, so I kept recording more and more." - Cody Brant

Numbered edition of 50

SOLD OUT

Neil Campbell - Displacement Activity Terminal 2019  CDr £5

choc.466

The tail end of 2019 was a real fucking downer, even for the ever optimist Neil Campbell, but as the guff rained down here on shitty Brexit isle and beyond the big bear hug giver was determined not to let the bawbags get him down, so on the evening of December 13th he retreated to his luxiourious man cave (secret location somewhere in West Yorkshire) and proceeded to churn out some of his signature euphoric sonics and electronic plod and clang,. He presents the evenings choice cuts here as a blam against the bastards. Apply liberally.

Numbered edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Blood Stereo - Two Paths to Outer Edge  CDr £5

choc.465

Blood Stereo's early 2019 unreleased/aborted album Recordings of a Bedside Traveller was stashed away for 10 months before a well infused listening session took place in November. Both Constance & Nyoukis then decided to retreat to their respective creative hovels and proceeded to each construct tracks mixing the original recordings with ones made at the years end. Both sets of tracks where then mixed one night in December. The borders became blurred and now we have one 30+ minute collage that travels further down the Alice hole of non music/dream mulch. Unmuzzle the mind.

Each cover is handmade and unique. Edition of 50 with insert.

SOLD OUT

Nimmo/Storm - The Business Trip  CDr

choc.464

The Mysterious Nimmo returns with another delve into his vast collection of Calibre Auto Recording Discs. This time featuring some communications back home from a travelling salesman, and business doesn't seem to be going so well. Some straight up recordings before Nimmo puts the whuzz to it. Plus as a bonus we get the lo-fi sounds of aspiring garage rockers Storm. Free with all orders placed in this month of Hell.

Edition of 40

ALL GONE

RRS - The Best of RRS 2005-2019  CDr £5

choc.463

Just in time for the festering season, the Cardboard Prince final bows to the demands of his avid fans and struts out this total stocking thriller. No filler here just all the hits from between 2005 -2019.

"Hailing from milton-under-whychwood, the mango who wouldnt put a sock in it for around 15 years, this is the cardboard prince Robert Ridley-shackleton, for the best of rrs I wanted it to be the catchy pop tunes / hits spanning the releases i would call "albums". the first track Suzy which u may recognise from the card funk lp was actualy first recorded wen i was 17 here is that recording, hope u dig this train through my smash hit singles, im still playing lots of fighting games, theres some coming out next year im excited about, anyway i wont bore u with that, just buy this cdr comp of 14 years of keeping it card xxxx" - RRS

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

EGO DEPLETION - Ego Derpz  CDr £5

choc.462

EGO DEPLETION is a system of hyperextended rumblings designed to break a hole through invisible or undetectable barriers. It goes for the mind, ear, leg, heart, hand and scalp. It’s first impulse is subtracted from the overall net of intentions beyond an overflowing golden toilet. For example, the sound is produced for the sole purpose of abseiling clogged and crystallized hierarchies before finally putting it all to rest. Speakers and surfaces are thoroughly interrogated yielding a steady diet of perpetual come down. For this album EGO DEPLETION (fritz Welch & Adam Campbell) were joined by very special guests Lucy Duncombe and Tony Bevan.

Edition of 60

ALL GONE

Territorial Gobbing - Toon Mould  CDr £5

choc.461

""Many aspects of Toon Mould will crowd your diaper, Bubba, not the least of which is Theo Gowans’s deliciously spatial understatement. Don’t sweat it if the show doesn’t seem to stop at such a relatively humble revelation. It is, after all, competing with an aromatic bouquet of nonrepresentational squirts, fragments of lo-fi scrabbling and uncomfortably close gacque dans la bouche (what the slurp-prone Quebecois call fellating a contact mic), elusive fwips of manipulated tape, and equilibrium-hostile pulsations that’ll totally give you the squeam. Good luck finding another album that twitches with the unforced glee of a coupla goobers who’ve reanimated a mechanical witch from an old-time-y arcade in the woods. With the end of the year and the end of the decade on everyone’s mind (although the latter is debatable), the time is optimal for clacky noisemakers to morph into seagulls getting impaled on punji sticks embedded in sand castles. Plain and simple, this is top-shelf wait-what surrealism from the lower levels of the fidelity spectrum, where the resin is stickiest and sweet, from the expansion and contractions of an underdeveloped bladder covered in a polkadots and fur (see also: leopard fetus, an air pressure hose, rogered by) to the guilt-crippled squid indulging in a midnight snack, rendered from the point of view of doomed jellyfish. So bendy. So unstable." - Mr Seymour Glass

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Karen Constance - The Enlightened Girls  Calendar £8

choc.460

Don't let the ball swingers get you down in 2020. Have the enlightened girls to hand every month of the year to keep hope bubbling. Staple bound 21cm square wall calendar, printed on 130gsm silk stock, 28 pages.

Signed & numbered edition of 50

Embla Quickbeam - Stones That Move and Grow  CDr £5

choc.459

Rowan Forestier-Walker follows up her 2011 Chocolate Monk disk Seven Is In Rhinogs Crown with further excursions into her hidden sound world. Like a fine wine in the morning.

"Recordings made in hallowed ground reveal long dormant, arcane realities. Some instruments used Field Recordings, Vlf radio, Foil, Sand, Crystal singing bowl, motors, copycat, Aeolian Harp, Wood stove, Frequenting animals, Frozen lake. Recorded at The Longman, South Downs, White Lake, Chalvington, East Sussex, Shaw Wood, Knotts Road, Todmorden and Dyffryn Dolman, St Tanwgs Chapel, North Wales."

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Aaron Moore - The Point Of The Equator  CDr £5

choc.458

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Howard Stelzer - Anathematization of the World Is Not an Adequate Response to the World  2 x CDr £7

choc.457

"For me, my "best" (ahem) albums sound like me opening up my mouth and having the music emerge forcefully from my lungs. "Brayton Point" felt like that, and so did "Across the Blazer". Not precious or fragile or austere, not a display of technique or process, but emphatically corporeal and human... reaching out with open arms, filling up a large space with a manifestation of expanding joy. I had a dream once and it stuck with me: I had to play a concert, but forgot my gear... so I got on stage intending to sing. I remember it very well: I took center stage and belted out a single full-throated note for as long and loud as I could, holding a steady tone with my voice long past the point of comfort, unchanging volume or density... it felt great! Though my eyes were fixed on the back wall of the theater, out of the corner of my eye I could watch my friends in the audience stand up, shake their heads and walk out. But for me, that experience felt like happiness. I've attempted to capture the feeling of it ever since. "Across the Blazer" came close, "Anathematization..." gets closer still.

I once planned to cover a Richard Youngs song, "Nineteen Used Postage Stamps", at an art gallery in Lowell MA, by trying to enact the song from my dream. It felt fantastic and sounded horrible. One must, I suppose, practice singing before attempting something as athletic as what I had in mind. My rehearsal took place in the car a few times while going to the supermarket and then again on my way to the gig, certainly not enough to do Richard's song justice. The recording of that gig is buried somewhere on this album, though I forget exactly where. The way that I work, everything gets jumbled. Cassette tapes all over my studio, nothing labelled particularly well...

Y'know, it's not enough to say "the world stinks, everything is dark, I'm gonna retreat into abstraction and solipsism and gloom and avoid awful truths"... even though, yeah, times are dark right now. But humans are real! And most of them are not horrible! As a public school teacher, I cannot believe that the future is grim... heck, all I see every day are children full of curiosity and hope and good ideas... and engagement is more productive than sulking solitude. So: singing. By singing real words and inviting people to join me, I'm looking outwards... collaboration is affirmation that interaction is worthwhile. It's an intentional drawing in, bringing people closer and allowing them to be part of one's experience of being alive. Words are real evidence of humanity, meaning, communication. Of looking at the news and thinking, "Nah, this isn't an accurate description of most people I know. No way. We're better than this, and the insanity of corrupt power will pass and give way to something better. I'm going to sing." Negativity is laziness, a cop-out, surrender. That's not how I'm comfortable interacting with humanity or of declaring my own. I'd rather express monumental joy and make it public. Not naive, but ecstatic waves stubbornly grounded in actual life.

Maybe my music sounds the way I intend it to... I truly hope that it does... but maybe it doesn't! People bring their own lives to any experience of music. All I can do is make the stuff. I've no intention of telling anyone else what, if anything, to take away from it. I just hope they play it loud." - Howard Stelzer

Featuring contributions from Richard Youngs, Pete Hope, Jesse Kudler, Le Quan Ninh, Jason Talbot and Frans de Waard.

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Cloth - Waggon  CDr £5

choc.456

Two thirds of Food People return to Chocolate Monk under the duo moniker of Cloth. Recently observed at Supernormal festival applying salve to hungover Sunday brains they continue the kind act here by beaming in spoken word, spooling tapes, loops, violin, percussion, accordian, wind instruments etc to soothing effect. Only the headstrong & foolish would refuse these intimate broadcasts. Don't be a lunkhead.

"Lila Matsumoto and Matthew Hamblin make sounds and words from cloth for layering or peddling piecemeal. A rouleau of songs, a bluster of raw sedge scuffed and hemmed. Or maybe a sylvan tableau in merit bone weave."

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

The Singing Island - The Door Is In The Valley  CDr £5

choc.455

Andrew J Jarvis fends off the aimlessness, indecision, lack of energy & mental tiredness of the Upper Calder Valley and presents for you this audio postcard. Imagine scribbled upon it:

"Bats in flight, steam and hiss, hammer on stone – a vertical roll.
The floating lady, a cymbal sounds!
Tape loops, rocks fall – the door is in the valley.
Sticks and stones, a womb a warble – the valley is the mother.
Time ticks, past and – centres.
A gong, an owl – the ringing Island.
Stone telling stone."

Moss malady be gone!

Edition of 60

ALL GONE

Plastic Hooligans/Blood Stereo - No Need Now To Live  Booklet, Badge & Tape £10

choc.454

You are alone in a crowded room, making strangers wherever you go but don't worry as Plastic Hooligans and Blood Stereo have your back, so you can have more front.

A long in the making collaboration gives you a three ways to keep fresh.

1. The cassette tape is a split and features both acts delving into the woozy tape and electronics realm, a crud-fi mind reach.

2. The full colour booklet features collage works from all involved tapping into their joint passions (the occult, UFOs, dream states, Victorian LSD, 1970's home furnishings etc) and is designed to go in one brain and out the other.

3. Finally the accomapnying 1" badge tells the world that you are against the horror that is telepathy.

Go forth and spread the good word.

Numbered edition of 50

ALL GONE

Psanck - II  CDr £5

choc.453

"Were the second ChocoMo album by Kev Nickells (violin voice, objects), Chris Parfitt (flute, clarinet, percussion, electronics), and Al Strachan (cornet, electronics, field recordings, found sound) presented to you, me, and the spastic Mennonite as the soundtrack to a film about a sleep-deprived desert castaway struggling with mixed feelings about a residual tail, no one would blame either of us for asking if the rescue UFO at the end seemed realistic. Which is something, given how condemnation of the other is one of our era’s most versatile social currencies. Not to oversell it, but the trio’s ten tracks here are kind of astounding in the consistent economy of their journeys from disparate zones such as distressed whining, daxophonic yoib, synthetic dream-theory, tense tribal curlicues, pizzeria tragedy, and crepuscular harmonics. Without a forced or unnatural move anywhere, Psanck II slips unscathed between the ribbons of razor wire that separate blue chip avant garde chamber ensembles from the nonmusical and unwashed ineptitudes who jostle household objects for a living. Personal experience allows me to assure anyone who may wonder whether residence in the latter is as comfortable a hometown as one could ask for (it is); still, Psanck’s epistles from the outside world are more welcome than guilt-free cinnamon rolls." - Seymour Glass

Edition of 60

Posset & Glands of External Secretion - Obedience To Authority  CDr £5

choc.452

You wanna it?

Huffed synth bubbles float over soapy tape? Language-collapse injected inside a plump proto-punk donut like so much unsavoury butter?

It’s them San Fran goofballs G.O.E.S holding hands across the ocean with the bristly Posset doing a ring-a-ring, or double-dutch or something or other. Whatever the dance steps this is one scatty reel; arms and legs flying, with the good whisky getting spilled all over the parquet floor.

If you have a fancy...lie low in your scratcher and drink it all in. Gobble it down, this rich clotted draft. Leave sense at the door and wipe a flannel across your knotted brow.

Edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Dai Coelacanth - Pterodactyl Bunker  CDr £5

choc.451

Are you familiar with the Radio Graveyard? You may recall Dai Coelacanth. For twenty tears he has been masquerading as a Graveyard Alligator, or a Radio Alligator. Hanging around bus stops. Shouting the odds. Hear him now:
"Cannibal king and her friend the Colonel shook loose in an imaginary dream. Whatever the situation there could be no suspension of broadcast. Suzi handed out nose-plugs. Don’t touch my legs you creep. I don’t have to tell you anything."

This recording should be listened to in its entirety. Don't cheat yourself. Cheaters never win.

Numbered edition of 60

SOLD OUT

Malcy Duff - The Orange Teeth Of The Beaver  Book £10

choc.450

Scotland's very own comic book absurdist and all round weird walker finally delivers a full blown A4 book for Chocolate Monk. A mind melting compilation of his comic strips from 2012 - 2019. 44 pages, A4, stapled, Black and white with colour cover.

"The level of Malcy Duff’s effortlessly cubist draftsmanship is proportional to the peculiarity of his near-silent renderings of odd sentient creatures —with their impossible, soul-questioning postures, moving through situations, sometimes becoming stuck in them. His narrative style is so committed to the periphery of telling a tale, and ricochets across subconscious landscapes with such freedom, it’s hard to say if The Orange Teeth Of The Beaver is one long story, a collection of several, or any at all. You’ll figure it out eventually, but it’s not gonna be handed to you like a recipe for lemon tarts on a 4x6 index card. The inventor of the triangle strutted around marble foyers of yore bragging about his harmony of the spheres (not without good reason, by the way) and as the human race queues up like dutiful customers for our one-millionth end time, we can’t ignore the fact that harmony of the alien DNA is the resonant frequency of our time." - Seymour Glass (Bananafish)

Numbered edition of 60

ALL GONE

The Teleporters - Buzzed In / Past These Herberts  2 x CDr £7

choc.449

The Teleporters is the joint endeavour of Mad Headed Octogram and Russell Walker. The pair met in Coventry in 1999 and have pursued various creative projects together since then, most notably as two members of vulgar rock act The Pheromoans. Their output as The Teleporters is a mixture of spoken word and sound collage, and has appeared sporadically since 2009 when Walker’s own Savoury Days label released the Corsica Nightflight cassette. Buzzed In / Past These Herberts, a double album, sees the pair depart onto two separate fictional voyages, both filtered through Octogram’s crude sound portals.

Numbered edition of 60

  SOLD OUT

Karen Constance - Five Girls  Poster £8

choc.448

Now you can hang a bit of the Shed of Dread in your own home with this healthy A2 (420 x 594mm) poster on 200gsm uncoated paper. Numbered and signed edition of 60

!!PLEASE NOTE!!
As this will ship in a poster tube separately from any other items ordered please use the dropdown menu to include P&P to your location

The Occupant - Twilight Immunity  CDr £5

choc.447

Shane McDonell is known round these parts for having his greasy mits involved in Body Has No Head (choc.287), Talc (choc.375) and Delusuional Reality (choc.420) and here we have his first solo ride out for the label under the name The Occupant. Twilight Immunity is two 31 min collages in the traditional sound diary style. Sounds of voice, viola, feedback, drums, drum stick, bowed cymbal recorded through an old karaoke machine combined with radio, rental car radio feedback, river sounds, contact mic'd Broadway Bridge, keyboard/synth, voice sounds, drunken wedding orators and general party chit chat. Slickles captured all this on his trusty handheld tape machine and then for yr listening pleasure cut stuff into loops, collaged it, fed some of it into his psychoacoustic computer to provide a sense of specific sound direction/panning just for YOU. A stud and a gent.

"Shoutouts to the river spirits and the broadway bridge "before sunrise", in Portland OR for providing useful sounds and a muse." - S. McDonell

Numbered edition of 60

  SOLD OUT

Dylan Nyoukis - The Failing Chase  CDr £5

choc.446

Further stumblings in the direction of dreams/mind gout. Life is a failing chase and we are all living on the frontline but music is everywhere and if you just take a minute to pinch your nose, blow real hard and pop yr ears you can get anchored to your surroundings and hear it appear within the smear. I grew up among a communication of barks and angry gestures so pardon me. Features contributions from Mayuko Fujino, Seymour Glass, Natalia Beylis & Catherine Plenevaux.

Numbered edition of 60

  ALL GONE

Creep Of Paris - Geronticus Eremita  CDr £5

choc.445

Mysterious south coast outsider tape wonk that tries to convince you that our normal waking conciousness, rational conciousness as we call it, is but one special type of conciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the flimsiest of screens, there lie potential forms of conciousness entirely different.

"Creep Of Paris is PsyOps anti-hypnosis tapes Thomas stole from no idea where featuring a cyborg Mrs Mills soundalike. Used for unbrainwashing or "brain dirtying." - Andy Bolus/Evil Moisture

Numbered edition of 40

  ALL GONE

Tony Irving & Adam Cadell - The Partial Obliteration of GMT  CDr £5

choc.444

Proof as if any was needed, that working with Stefan Jaworzyn will drive ye bonkers, Mr Tony Irving of Ascension infamny done a runner some time ago to the other side of our heating globe and was rumoured to have downed tools and taken a vow of silence in the backwaters of Oz. Then we got this disk in the post with a scraweled note that read "In 1894 a mad French Anarchist attempted to blow up the Royal Greenwich Observatory to stop the enslavement of humanity by the regimentation of time. Since 2014 I have tried to finish the job from Brisbane with nowt but a my drums and the fiest of a young fiddler." Put this CD on and smash your clocks.
More time-wrecking racket for tired clock-watchers can be found at https://tonyirvingadamcadell.bandcamp.com

Numbered edition of 50

 SOLD OUT

Teignmouth Electron - Empty Shell  CDr £5

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Maureen Hollomas (Polly Shang Kuan Band, Jettatura, Structure etc) told us she had a set of crud-fi experiments that demonstated the existence "remote viewing", a hithero unvalidated human capacity. We were excited and sure enough on first listen it was a feeling of a snake crawling out of something. A real vivid feeling, but on a second listen it was a cats tail. Go figure.

"A deep dip into the ebb and flow of life's twist and turns is what Empty Shell was born from. Core samples taken over a 6 month period, moments of life." - M. Hallomas

Numbered edition of 50

  SOLD OUT

Mr. Duke Pinch - Mud Hen, Prick And Green Belt  CDr £5

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As far as unsolicited demos go here at Wino Lodge this head healer has to be near the top of the pile. Arriving in a pastel purple envelope that reeked of Old Spice the enclosed CD came with nowt but a hand scribbled note with the words 'Take Back Your Mind!' scrawled on it (in green ink of course). My interest was piqued enough that the disk didn't go straight onto the precarious 'to listen too' wonk pile. No danger pal, it went straight in the CD player and what drifted out? Only the sound of the nimble fingers of the mysterious Mr. Duke Pinch performing Engelbert Humperdinck songs on the zither. Another fine entry into Chocolate Monk's Brain Salve cannon. Many thanks mystery man, lemme buy you a Pickleback sometime.

Numbered edition of 60

Laugh Stains - Gaze Into The Drain  CDr £5

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Lock up your Grandparents as Cody Brant & Jonnie Prey are on the prowl. Two of the Monk family's more scruffy yet colourful members, you know your in for more fun than a knees up at the crack shack.

Brant: Have you ever done any kind of self-surgery?:

Prey: Well yes I have actually, but that can be answered in your second question...

Brant: What's the most wild vivid dream that you've ever had?

Prey: I've been fortunate (and sometimes unfortunate) to have experienced too many vivid dreams to recount here which one is the the most wild, but in regards to the first question, I had a series of dreams that I was doing trepanation on myself with this very Cronenberg-esqe looking device (think the Gynecologist tools from Dead Ringers) I would drill a hole into my forehead and I would see this strange critter/golem type creature behind my eyelids shaking, like he was made out of vibrating organic tissue. He had a big smile and demonic eyes that were crossed. My roommate at the time started complaining of headaches around the time of these dreams. One morning while I was making coffee, I saw him drawing at the kitchen table, I looked over at what he was doodling and it was the vibrating critter/golem from my dreams! He even drew squiggly vibrating lines! It had the exact same smile and evil crossed eyes. I asked him what he was drawing and he said "oh its this weird shaking creature that I been dreaming about" Not sure what that was all about, but it was weird!

Prey : What's the greatest thing you've found?

Brant : I feel like most things I find are better than the last thing I found, mostly because I question each thing like "how did this find me!" I cherish all personal cassettes that I own with personal messages/greetings/life...etc..
I think it's a great way to peek into the "old days". Yesterday I found a piss covered "suicide" letter.

Prey : What is the strangest /most important encounter that you've ever had?

Brant : I can't say this is important or not... But I was on a last minute planned "camping" trip with a friend in Red Rock mountains with a friend. We ended up getting to our campsite way too late and had to go to bed shortly after setting up our site. We had just picked up a marijuana strain called "lamb's bread" beforehand. We smoked some , and went to sleep. When the sun came up the next day we were wide awake. We rolled another joint in the tent. My friend Justin put the joint behind his ear and we both stepped out of the tent one by one. Immediately we saw a man prodding a fire. "Hey guys, want a beer?". We accepted to be nice. After us 3 sitting at his fire a minute, he noticed that Justin had a joint behind his ear. "I haven't smoked that stuff in a long time!". We offered it to him. He accepted. But suggested we smoke it in his van. So we go over to his van...the joint goes around twice, and the man's demeanor changes. All of a sudden he starts telling Justin, whose sitting on the middle panel of this van to pull up the cover of the panel. In there was night vision goggles, a spy microphone to hear from far distances, binoculars, and fake license plates...Then the marijuana takes full effect and he starts telling us that he had been listening to us all night the night before, knew we had weed. Then explained he was running from the law for being suspected of killing his wife. He then explained that his van only had plates on the back, which were fake, facing away from the road. The joint goes around one more time. He then denies it, and gets really paranoid. Deep down I knew Justin and I knew he had probably killed his wife..and he realized he had said too much. "You guys gotta get out of here!!" Very aggressively forces us out. We get out, and walk very fast away from the situation. 5 minutes later as we see our camp and the crazy wife killer in the distance...we see him furiously waving an object at us. We ignore it and wait a good 30 minutes and decide to finally go bank to our site. On top the truck was a boot knife I had haphazardly left on the passenger seat after being ejected from this man's car. The man had left and was nowhere to be seen. We then discussed how we would explain a crazy man with fake plates , spy gear that had supposedly killed his wife to the police...

Numbered edition of 60

 SOLD OUT

Todd W. Emmert - A Serpentine Summer  CDr £5

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Brother Todd returns to the Chocolate Monk bossom for a third time.

"A Serpentine Summer is my 16th full length album since 2015 when I quit using Inspector 22 as a recording name and started recording with my own given name. I am writing this, but I am gonna have to listen to it again. I'll have to refresh my memory about why I think this is good. I think it is a good album. It's an instrumental album. Isn't that good? I have given up on singing because I have said enough with my voice. I don't have many words left to say anything with. A Serpentine Summer is my best work yet, but I always say that. If you don't like vaguely minimal experimental home recorded music, you're not gonna like this either. But I do think it's good. This one is kinda twinkly in parts and it's built for the heat. I hope you like it." - Todd W. Emmert

Edition of 60

Mike Dilloway - Any Old Time Tastes  CDr £5

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Aaron Dilloway and Mike Collino come out stumbling with two tracks of spoiling tape befuddlement with all the groggy side effects of heavy meds. Get to window fast and crack it!

"Don’t be a schmuck, man. Skip to the bottom of this paragraph and scan for the words “sold out.” If you don’t see ’em, just click the add-to-cart button and be done with it. Maybe you need convincing. Well, okay, so when Mike Dilloway disbanded Confiscated Lithium and stole the drummer from The Original Ben Franklin, they formed a power duo that swore to hump the legs of shady murk like a coupla horndog sewer workers on payday. Never has a promise been pinkier. Here are a pair of ten-minute gurglers with all the analog kung-fu darkness you could want, held down with insectoid control. Anything with generous tape g-g-grrmmph and nreeeeum, trudgely metal percussion, screeched kyphosis therapy, and pitchbent tones that warp through all five stages of getting your tongue stuck to the liberty bell — that’s walkin’-around music, the soundtrack of life on the magnetic playground. Oh, look, now they’re all gone. Scroll down and let Richard Youngs gaze at you disapprovingly." - Seymour Glass

Numbered edition of 75

  SOLD OUT

Dan Fröberg - The Common Error Of Ordinary  CDr & Book £10

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After much arm twisting and beard tugging we finally convinced our beloved artist/composer/sound wizard Fröberg to let us release some of his Swedish visual/aural magic. Get ready to get really, really sleepy.

The common error of ordinary.
Jesus is on the mainline.
An extended soundtrack to a movie (by Dan Fröberg), with another title.
Life goes on,
Continuosly speaking in tongues.
Always is always forever.
And one and one is one, by destiny.
By the way, whatever happened to Peter Tork?
If we can't build sideways, we have to go up!
-Is there anybody out there?
To the gates of day.
Now wind and shadows.
-Who turned the lights out?
-But first, are you experienced?
No more terra firma.
Get lost wind.
Whose threatening music troubles polar nights?
-I live only for the rare hours of eternity.
A doorway opening in holy space.
Destination unknown.
-See you there!

Full colour, 24 pages on 170gsm paper, stapled, 250gsm cover
Numbered Edition of 60

  SOLD OUT

Blood Stereo - Two Drams  Cassette & Badge £5

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Blood Stereo invite you to share two drams with them over a mere 10 minutes as they attempt to stretch out time with two focused tape compositions. Violin drones, field recordings and mysterious distant percussion press ruddy cheeks with what sounds like an under water church organ, lo-fi muttering and various creaks, hiccups, sneezes & burbles. More sounds for your Jungian pipe.



Pink cassette in card slip case with paste on art. Rubber stamped. Button badge.
Numbered Edition of 50.

Richard Youngs - Bad Words  CDr & Badge £5

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Richard 'The Riddim' Youngs returns to Chocololate Monk and he is none too pleased. Listener discretion advised.

"Launched at Colour Out of Space 2019, this is 69 minutes of pitch corrected vocal, in the modern style. High concept derives from a conversation with Dylan Nyoukis concerning some popular musical tastes, and the collection’s title is an elusive reference to the lyrical content."



Numbered Edition of 75 comes with button badge.

 SOLD OUT

Darksmith - Poverty Of Will  Book & CDr £8

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"With many of Darksmith recordings, one’s imagination doesn’t immediately conjure a person creating or manipulating sound, but rather drifts toward visions of depopulated areas getting damaged by alien weather events – choked by toxic dust, pelted by freeze-dried rocks of ooze, ruptured by shrieking subterranean trauma. Human agency, when its presence is unmistakable, occupies a position of forced abandonment, like cinematic ghosts unwilling to quit the material plane or an individual dehumanized by efficient banality. Through grit-flecked remnants of grainy field recordings from environs luscious and bleak; weighed down by cackles and croaks blurred by humidity and contact mics; tangled in rusted-over playgrounds dominated by geese and tumors; molested by magnetic tape instability, truncated fidelity, and corrupted modulation fur. As the companion book demonstrates, the lad has an eye for evoking from bland and wholesome portraiture the incipient horror unknowingly embedded within. Darksmith’s stark, high-contrast line art dispenses with gradation, a nice echo of the flatness of the subjects lives immortalized by disposable time-killing entertainment magazines ubiquitous throughout medical waiting rooms." - S.Glass

Black & White, 44 pages on 170gsm paper, stapled, 350gsm cover.

SOLD OUT

Dan Melchior - Squirrel II (The Sequel) CDr £5

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Our favourite Surrey expat returns with his 4th solo Monk disk (not to mention his 2 collaborations with both halfs of Blood Stereo). This time a follow up to his Chocolate Monk debut A Squirrel Could Never Be A Disappointment To Me. I will let the wee man explain..

"Most of the music on this cdr was recorded during a very brown period in my life when I was living in north east Ohio. There is some computerised commentary on the cuyahoga river, along with other weighty subjects that haunt that particular area of the great Satan. Elsewhere there is a very primitive attempt at a ‘Presque Rien’ like recreation of the infamous GIant Eagle supermarket in Fairlawn, Ohio, which was forward thinking enough to employ a bearded lady, and a woman with the exact same haircut as the lead singer of Journey.
If you have never visited the rubber city, take this musical tour as a good reason to avoid it on your future itineraries." - Dan Mechior

Edition of 60

  SOLD OUT

Stuart Chalmers & Neil Campbell - Frog Dreaming Skull  CDr £5

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Hurtling towards the horrors of their biological selves these two ageing Yorkshire based freaks follow up In the Vicinity of the Reversing Pool with an altogether more organic, rolling affair. Chalmers ladles on his signature stuttering tape loops and even manages to dust off his old zither, while Campbell is in a definite Vibracathedral vibe zone on guitar, percussion, toy piano, violin, electronics and voice. A continuously evolving piece, from the opening strum and stroke that will get your chakra shimmering to a gurning sonic joy mess full stop. Listener, you must struggle with glorious reality!

Eject - Zero Return  CDr £5

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Eject is an Italian project shared between Francesco Calandrino and Cristiano Deison. The former lives and works way down in Alcamo in the fields of research music, net-art, language and wine. No doubt guzzling down the good grape while he generates hyper lo-fi sounds from sputtering mechanical systems like his beloved old radio-cassette stereos and wonky walkmans. While the latter has his lab way up in Varmo, where he can usually be found frothing over his Tascam 404, turntable guts and objects churning out skillful tape loop burbles, electronic skittering and field recordings. The whole thing has a great eavesdropping throb that feels like its beaming in from afar. You know they are both part of the ferment of ideas on here but it is a real whodunit. Better get your ear magnifier out, Sherlock.

Edition of 60

  SOLD OUT

Dylan Nyoukis - Life Is But A Smear  CDr £5

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Part of this recording started life as the opening for Fae Ma Bit Tae Ur Bit's year end/Festering Season episode on Resonance Extra, then in a Dionysian haze I realised it was the start of a companian piece for the I Found A Photocopy Of A Dream On The Street & It Sent Me To Sleep cassette. A necessary bleak December/January sound collage purge (with some regurgitation) which may help the listener cast off their rank rotten ruminations. Originally titled Are The Voices In Your Head Weeping Or Singing? it ideally should be listened too as you attempt slumber. Featuring cameos from Crank Sturgeon, Ezio Piermattei, Ludo Mich, This is Yvonne Lovejoy, The Plastic Containers Of Nothing, Joe Possett, Karen, Elkka, Grant Smith, Tina Kerkels, Jonnie Prey, Angela Sawyer and others. No Sting covers. Give thanks!

Hand stamped cardboard cover with insert.

Evil Moisture - Drool Freezers  Book & CDr £10

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Long overdue return to Chocolate Monk from Evil Moisture. A wild insight into bizarro Bolus world. Full colour A5 booklet and CDr in full colour sleeve too. Stick in yr Jungian pipe.

"My long-promised release for the indefatigable Chocolate Monk, with a circa 20 year gap, so I was determined to bust through the wall in style, as it were, if a little en retard.
I spent endless nights, fortified with Chinese bath salt smoothies made from polystyrene packaging materials and shredded pages of "Ohayo Chinpo" magazine, condensing this stuff down on the trusty Bruel & Kjaer, reducing any surplus baroque residue and streamlining the information flow to ensure only the finest and most essential neon worms and dayglo green dog chew toys are highlighted in lsd-sharp-focus-wide-stereo-panorama for maximum ear goops. The 36 page book is in the tradition of those terrible cod-surrealist chess-board landscape cover-paintings on early Klaus Schulze albums like Timewind, and is intended to be stared at while listening." - Andy Bolus

  SOLD OUT

Forrest Friends - untitled  CDr £5

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"In an old issue of a London-based porn mag, the one with Funko Geräte on the cover, an essay attempts to recast Esplendor Geometrico as a Massachusetts freak-folk band. With the appropriate dosage, anything’s possible. Probably. Maybe they changed their name and emigrated from Spain and due to a translation error ended up in Seattle. Who knows what’s real and what’s made-up with that publication.
From Forrest Friends’ opening herald announcing the commencement of a marathon sweat lodge cotillion, where consensual flora gropings and various pagan engorgements run their respective courses until the inevitable dousing of the nethers with ritual electronic ooze, to the spent, post-credits vibe of a homemade horror movie, this album resembles little in the Chocolate Monk catalog. The duo’s debut release for the label was recorded by the side of the road in the middle of the night, naked but for banana-leaf loin cloths bound together with twine, crouching in the mud, staring intently at a nematomorph exiting the used-up husk that had been a typically happy-go-lucky praying mantis before the zombifying parasite took over its brain. This thirty-eight-minute disc’s high-primitive hoot coaxes spirit lizards out of a secluded northern-facing lichen shack and forces them to march on an infinity-symbol-shaped path, invoking visions of communion with First Nations spasticity. Patches of impaired fidelity, damaged by overdriven sound, smear the otherwise intimate recordings with heavy whiffs of opium cinders and Wiccan-roasted genetic structure that’s mustier than an old towel full of three-day-old phat si-io.
Everybody loves the idea of a lost world. Well, here’s one with hypnotic yelping, otherworldly accordion, dreams of the pipe, and processions of re-animated wooden children invoking the great drillbit in the sky to exact vengeance on the new president of Brazil." - Seymour Glass

Edition of 60

  SOLD OUT

Yol/Lloyd/Posset - Basement Tapes  CDr £5

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Using Toby Lloyd's art project ‘Between Eating and Sleeping' as a starting point Hull's Yol (bottled rust), Newcastle's Posset (tape gasbag) and Mr Lloyd himself (energy positive) tear new holes in the dictaphone/metallic junk/throat-war scene. Live from Bradford's Fuse and Leed's Basement Arts Project three heads nod in total-concrete hardcore improv mode. Switches are slipped as eyes roll back in heads. Lean in and taste the magic!

Numbered edition of 60

  SOLD OUT

Translucent Envelope - A Slight Remove  CDr £5

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Andy Bolus's favourite tape wizard (Bob Desaulniers) serves up a collection of low-tech cassette assemblages compiled at home in Oregon in the fall of 2018. Sounds were sourced from tapes and voice memos going back several years, like an audio junk drawer dumped out and arranged into neat little piles.

  SOLD OUT

Dylan Nyoukis - I Found A Photocopy Of A Dream and It Sent Me To Sleep  cassette £6

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Sound collage using field recordings, violin, voice, strings, accordion, orga, Assmann 640 dictation machine and tape players.
"I found a photocopy of a dream and it sent me to sleep. There was a lot of songs in there so I started to Sing some of my own.

salt earth he sarte
salt earth he sarte
salt earth he sarte
salt earth he sarted nam

Pay attention to bells. Recording devices are your friends. Try to be polite on the phone. Give thanks."

Slow Listener - Live At Fort Process  CDr £5

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Robin 'Slim' Dickinson returns from hiatus with this live recording made at Newhaven's 19th century fort. His my first attempt at a site specific set, the first half iof which uses recordings he made around the fort a couple of weeks prior, which sounds like the old fort breathing and wheezing in its old age. . The second half comes from imagining the soldiers sitting there during the war listening to the radio and waiting.

Numbered edition of 60

  ALL GONE

Ezio Piermattei - Gran Trotto  CDr £5

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Beautiful meandering collage piece from Italian sound artist Ezio Piermattei, here using tapes, field recordings, voice, harmonica, organ, bells, objects, piano, etc to weave a weird audiotory place full of head scratch, voices, chimes, sing song and distant sounds. Recorded in Tallinn, Scanno, Helsinki, Santo Stefano di Sessanio, Vilinius, Rosello, Brighton, Campo Imperatore, Jurmala, Barreiro, Ortano, Budapest and Civitella Alfredena.

SOLD OUT

Blood Stereo - Tape Loop Meditations  Cassette & Badge £6.50

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Recorded inside Wino Lodge using cassette tape loops this audio recording is designed to help listeners make the hateful gnashing teeth take flight. It should also counter the persistent attack on the listeners etheric self. After some time of daily practice you will find that problem solving ceases to be frustrating and traumatic. Your head throb will feel salved and the green light of freakdom will pulse out and thwart potential psychic assailants.
Show your commitment by wearing your "I practice tape loop meditation with Blood Stereo" button badge.


SOLD OUT

Beyt Al Tapes - Unprecize Music  CDr £5

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Beyt al Tapes a shadowy outfit hailing from the South of Brussels. Tapes, vocals and rudimentary household objects are its mains instruments. The ghost is a key feature, acting as the spectre for the vitalist poet and the overt Romantic.
'Unprecise Music' is a collection of cuts made over the last three years. It explores, in the most literal sense. The pieces pursue an exploration of Beyt al Tapes’ possible forms, through pure sinus waves, boring repetition and raw randomness. Each piece is a matérialisation of a neuroscientist view on reality - action comes before cause, cause is nothing but a narrative to justify action. In short: the real defines reality, and Beyt al tapes dismantles through a warped process of dialectic failure the notion of the ‘self’ - whereas the self is a projection of a body’s evolutionary survival software.

SOLD OUT

The Russets - Hardship Like Fortune  CDr £5

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Two of northern England's finest purveyors of head scratch, Joe Posset & Sturat Arnot, get together for some real wild brut stylings. Do the avant hunch.
"We’re outsiders here, unworthy uitlanders, carbuncles even; we’re intruders on, about, over and in this Novocastrian soil. One of us is, at least, perseverant; of three decades standing, a good chunk of anyone’s life, worthy of some sort of respect, perverse though it may seem, but the other is painfully unripe, fresh off the boat, all flapping gills and shivering and shrivelling innards. Brazenly, we attempt to appease the local wigs by paying homage as best we can to their rituals, even as we fail to read the native semiotics: we drink ourselves the wrong red and, betweeded and sweating, bray loudly but unconvincingly these half-thought half-songs, misbegotten paeans to their heroic generations; we fall out, trip and fall out onto the moor and down, through the town to the Tyne, garbed suddenly, sullenly and awkwardly in unseemly black, where we desperately expose the ferrous ribbons of our tattered fake books to the corrosive, salty sweep of the northerlies and wail."

Numbered edition of 60

ALL GONE

Delusional Reality - Unreliable Narrative  CDr £5

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Cody Brant & Shane McDonell bust out their warped musical minds for this doozy. Strung out toe tapping tunes and creeped out paranoid shuffle to make yr third eye twitch. Imagine the Puzzle Punks got slipped a roofy by a young pimple faced Rick Potts.
Kill voice to skull. Sometimes good things fall apart, putting the pieces back together. Kill voice to skull. Chewing off the insides of your cheeks. Very suspicious.

Numbered edition of 60

  SOLD OUT

Neil Campbell & Sticky Foster - Enge Chaleur Telegraphique  CDr £5

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Two of Chocolate Monk's favourite old duffers got together for the labels 25 year birthday bash at Cafe Oto recently to cook up a long-distance psychic hook-up. These very old friends, one globetrotter involved in international espionage, the other a suburban West Yorkshire housewife, filled the venue with the sounds of far flung places, piano, electronics, rambling, etc. Disorientation never felt or sounded so sweet. A Daktari for free sound adventurers.

Colin Fisher & chik white - Pacific Rim and Hastings  CDr £5

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I know you mungs like weird, slobbery affairs, so i got something stashed aside just for you. Jaw Harp wild man chik white went hiking with his sax gonk pal Colin Fisher deep into the wilds of the rain forest of Tofino, BC whereupon they stumble across a hermit hut and decided to cook up some jaw harp/voice/sax wonder. But to top of the 6 tracks of sodden wild style we have a improv piece recorded at some improv joint in the squalid neighbourhood of East Hastings, Vancouver. Quite the contrast for ya. Huff it up, pal.

SAX: hermitage humidity.. sleepless morning.. surrounding surf.. amplified microcosm.. temperate drizzling drones.. ancient ground cover.. quiescence, for the undisturbed slumber.. fine gestures now symphonic nature..
HARP: what? brah, I'm awake! I was dreamin' that you slobbered into that horn and made it churn like your insides.. you played with a mouthful of swamp sludge.. or maybe you were a singing worm in the shape of a saxophone.. I was a dozen mosquitoes or a somethin'.. it was cool.. promise.. did you.. hear a plane?
SAX: spittoon buffoons blowin' breezy steezy.. sleazy sounds nature bound firm grounds for mounds..
HARP: back in the city you snored a hole through my head.. a deep listen but made me sad that I couldn't sleep.. now we're here and I can't stop wakin' up, which is cool.. but also means.. well, I'm asleep.. hmmm.. hey, let's jam in that hole over there in the forest. YEAH?
SAX: strapless brahs feral friends forever fellas..
HARP: I concur.. drive me back to town when this is over, will ya? we'll listen to it in the car.

Numbered edition of 60

  SOLD OUT

F.Ampism - Wilson Schmilsson  CDr £5

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Brightons very own F.Ampism ("Yogi Bear" to his nearest and dearest) follows up last years brilliant 'The Unstruck Sound Centre' on Ikuisuus with further treks out into the mind meld zone. Exotic electronics and warm swiggle nurture your sagging chakras. Musical chirps and sonic pulse cleanses your psychic stink eye. This is the Chew Age.

Numbered edition of 60

  SOLD OUT

Claire Potter - Scally Nike Leather Glove Smoke + 1  CDr £5

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A welcome reissue of the long OOP tape on Choclate Monk with a bonus track added for your pleasure. Here is what big bear Byron Coley had to say about the original tape in his fine 'Size Matters' column in the Wire rag.
"Two excellent readings by this Merseyside writer, previously heard on a tape with Bridget Hayden. No music here, just words. And the words are great. Surreal chunks of image forcing their way across your brain, from ear to ear, like a hungry head-worm. Rough, brilliant stuff."

Hair & Treasure- Bijou Bastard Box Room Suite  CDr £5

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Mystery duo Hair & Treasure add a third member and invite you into their brown study for some more contemplative sound probing. Sometimes sounding like Solid Eye twanging and rippling underneath a radio broadcast by a crunked up Lexie Mountain.
"An artist arrives to paint a portrait of the royal family, but Trinket is unable to get her mane to stay in place and chaos ensues when a bird flies off with her hairgrip.
Starring: Gonçalo F Cardoso, Alex Jones, Phil Lane - 3 sensitive gits, tight as a piss purse. This shiny disc is better than your last 27 purchases. Dust ain’t randy no more.
                  (Subtitles) (Repeat)
                        Rating: 6.6"

Dan Melchior & Dylan Nyoukis - Unusual Dealers  CDr £5

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'Unusual Dealers' started off as a long form, hardly changing electronic piece by Nyoukis which he twanged across the Information Super Highway to Durham, North Corolina so that Melchior could work his sonic tom foolery. Once Dan fashioned it with his slick sound pomade he transfered it back over to Brighton, East Sussex where Dylan added in a few more grains of strange before mixing it down to what we have here. A journey on the heals of the unusual dealers and their untimely passing. Break the brain chain. 

Red Brut/Blood Stereo - split  Cassette £6

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Containment of the shadow self is a pointless exercise, friend. After all shit = shadopw and we are all full of it. better out than in right?? Red Brut and Blood Stereo both understand that and present here a side each of tape manipulation, sound collage etc. For fledglings of all ages.

Tindegger - untitled  CDr £5

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Tina Krekels & Grant Smith go hurling round a gnarled crack and show us that German-Scots relations have never been fruitier. They do a fine job of blending (or is that blurring?) Krekel's wonderful skittering and burbling saxophone with Smith's hyperactive and intoxicated electronics on some of the tracks. On others we get no-fi text pieces followed by crunked up tape whirr that eventually tramples ear remnants into the rug. You can add in serious dashes of yelps, spits and sputters and even some fried guitar strum which all helps dishonour your spiritual mentors.

Numbered edition of 60

  SOLD OUT

Food People - vetch  CDr £5

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A new mystery trio emerges from the grimness of shitty Brexit Isle. Lila Matsumoto, Matthew Hamblin & Greg Thomas follow up last years 'Animal Work' cassette on Beartown Records with a engrossing sojourn that pulses, drones, scrapes and baffles. A strange sedative to help you cover that attitude of cynical indifference.
"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 tumours, 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."

Dylan Nyoukis - One Who Seeks  Booklet £5

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Nyoukis scrawls out paint pen reactions to these hyper bonker times. One Who Seeks is about our need for transcendence via either ingesting various plants or fungi, scratching the occult itch, chomping on the bath salts or having some extraterrestrial force lick your forehead. Double down on the Doaism, prod that pineal gland, lick the toad, take the 5-Meo and shatter into a million pieces, punk.
Full Colour, 24 pages.
Numbered and signed edition of 50

Karen Constance - Pin Down  Booklet £7

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For a hot and stinky month Miss Constance put all other art endeavours to one side to spend a sweaty time in her Shed of Dread conjuring up some alternative reality where the erotic throb ain't just triggered by droll video clips of buff bodies bumping. The conventional pin up is peeled apart and envisioned anew for those who like to have there mind g-spot tickled in a more exotic manner. Guaranteed nipple erection and brain membrane secretion (other secretions may also occur).
Full colour, 40 pages.
Numbered and signed edition of 69

Moth - Scintilla  CDr £5

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Mr Tim Alexander of LAFMS/Points Of Friction notoriety presents just the kind of life affirming sound wonk you might expect. Burbling and oozing broadcasts from the mind flap of a madman/maestro. If that don't wet yr dingle dangle then how about the fact that the late, GREAT, Damian Bisciglia makes an appearance? Get to it!

"I try to find just the right perfume for each robot, and to allow the ghosts in the instruments to haunt the soundscape.
Always looking for a balance of intentional and unintentional elements when bringing sounds together that affect me on an emotional level, the ideas and internal logic of each piece is secondary to that inner resonance. It’s an open process of discovery and revelation where beauty and terror may become sublime twins, boredom is self reflection, and confusion is the highest state of consciousness.
The sounds are generated by the improvised playing of objects and mostly broken or prepared instruments, field recordings, and other sources, and those sounds then become the raw material which undergoes a transformation. Multi-track looping, digital tape effects, sampling and pedal effects add new sounds, and take us into their cobbly worlds.
In those worlds, as in our own:
Things look that way as long as you look at them that way."

Jonnie Prey - Life On Bob-Lo Island  CDr £5

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Ye gawds! What is this terrible sight that stands before me?? Bulbous, potato head man with acrid stench stumbling around in a scruff suit. Worry not for it is only Jonnie Prey. Jonnie is from Detroit Michigan. He took a Greyhound bus to Oakland California where he lived and made art and self released tapes for some years. He currently lives in Los Angeles California where he co-runs the experimental arts space Coaxial Arts in Downtown Los Angeles. He remains an outsider lurking in the dreams of discarded mannequins. He recntly performed a 5 hour long performance art piece at Cary Loren’s Punk House at the Mike Kelley Homestead. But what the hell is Life On Bob-Lo Island? Well I will let Mr Stinky himself explain...

"Life On Bob-Lo Island is concept album about an abandoned Amusement Park located just outside of Detroit, Michigan. A very real place, in its heyday it was like a dwarfed Atlantic City, a kid casino with all the trappings of an old school Amusement Park, wooded rollercoasters, a funhouse, drunk clowns roaming about, Taffy Machines buzzing along with the Cicadas and two identical twins on the boardwalk called The Kimchi Twins. Bob-Lo closed for good in 1993 due to folks getting sick from the water when they installed water slides to help boost attendance. Years before the current Flint water crisis, Auto plants had been dumping Heavy Metal sludge into the Detroit River for years, eventually getting into Bob-Lo's water supply. Years later there were rumors that strange hobo's lived in the park, squatting in the funhouse and in the Steamboat that carried folks from Detroit to the Island. This album is about that time, the park itself, and the strange men that lurked with in it. Today it is all Mansions, but for many years it was this decrepit kingdom, a sort of island of the dammed.
Detroit darkness cloaked in a clowns shroud, holes punctured through 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 lurking as co-conspirators with the shadows, machine laugher trapped in the bog, A UFO made of straw slowly crashing into a black swamp, abandoned vacations vacated now by lost men, give one an offering and maybe he'll tell you a story, his life on Bob-Lo Island perhaps.....

Numbered edition of 75

The False Face Society - Half Time 1916  CDr £5

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Hitchin's finest scruff about the square Russell Walker (The Teleporters/Lloyd Pack/Pheromoans etc) does some readings from his upcoming novel, the follow up to his poorly selling 'When New Towns Act Tough'. Not a man shy of wetting his sandwich, Russell here enlists the help of two mates to add sonic saucing. James Tranmer adding his techyes/no beat crud and Tom James Scott adding more of a loopy drone mumph vibe. Come feel the mundane mumble friend.

The Negative Kite - Gone All To The Down  CDr £5

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No fi abstract crunk merchants Steve Clarke & Julian Bradley aka The Negative Kite appeared briefly in the mid-90s, shuffling out of Birmingham to release a 7" and a few limited cassettes before evaporating. Bradley resurfaced in Vibra Cathedral Orchetra etc while Clarke teamed up with Sean Conway (Plastic Hooligans/UFO Antler Band) to further confuse with The Gas Shepherds before disappearing again. He returns under The Negative kite moniker and serves up a 40 plus minute dollop of solpistic sound compost. Is he the only one here? Or is that you?Sounds fade in and out, is there a crumbling counterpoint? Headscratch. Tarot = toe rot.

Numbered Edition of 75.

SOLD OUT

Sick Llama - Snake Code  CDr £5

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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 an appearance. A heavy on the hiss classic that will scribble your mystic centre. Strange zones await unexplored.

Numbered Edition of 75.

Henry Holmes - Twisted Nerve  Cassette £6

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The lowlife behind 2014's Clam Bake and one half of the mysterious Occult Hand is back with another burbling transmission of tape loop damage. Don't let the hawaiin shirt fool you, this is the kind of Uher damage that is going to leave the listeners integrity in a pool of jellied crumbs on the floor. Like a three day chemical chew with no additional hydration aka ferric bruxism. Let the Prince of Dorkness help get yr ass on that dissecting table, baby.

Numbered Edition of 50.

Amanda R. Howland - Mona Cost Returns To Canton  CDr £5

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Continuing the fine family tradition of euphoric ear shred Miss Howland gives Brother Skin Graft a run for his bitcoins with a heavy dose of American Midwest hot sonic gruel which is guaranteed to singe those inner lughole hairs of yours. The four tracks laid down here were recorded live in the Howland practice space while Amanda was working on her novel Don't Fear the Night Duende, much of which takes place in Canton, Ohio, where she grew up. The listener is encouraged to find their own inner Monument Park and get woke. Recorded and mastered by Wyatt Howland. Artwork by Karen Constance.

Numbered Edition of 60.

Todd W. Emmert - A New Normal  CDr £5

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Mr Emmert makes a quick and welcome return to Chocolate Monk with another hot shot of life affirming sonic glimmer that is 100% guaranteed to cleanse your wounds and fill your gut with the good stuff.

"A New Normal is just a quick postcard to people who are suffering from traumas and there is no way out. That's what the title means... finding a new place to rest inside of yourself, because all previous normalcy was destroyed by trauma. It's been said to me in therapy and I have heard the phrase used when talking about about a tragically traumatized person who will never have back what they had before the trauma. There is no fixing things, you have to find "A New Normal"." - Todd W. Emmert

Numbered Edition of 60.

Psychonic Imaging - Time Vaccine  CDr £5

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Philadelphia reprobate Cody Brant is back and this time he has a formidable partner in crime in the form of Tim Alexander (LAFMS, Points of Friction, Moth) so you know you are in for a real ear greaser.

“Skliream so loud that all the tiredneknow inside me, all the sadneknow vanishes in the air."

"I felt immediately after first making noise with Cody in late 2015 that there was something especially complimentary in what we do. We were organizing textures and colors, shaping primal meeting grounds and discovering a soundscape together by taking turns painting in the elements. So often I found myself making horizontal gestures while Cody was working out vertical contrasting marks. Our different paths to goosebumps led to the same place. I’ll be atmosphere and he’ll counteract with a chilling arrhythmia, or something trying to escape shackles. Or if I my Barbie guitar detonated above ground his Fostex 4 track cassette recorder was deep enough in the Cocoon to plan a return to the surface. He was in Portland too briefly for me, and in the Cocoon we were mostly business. We went to work making our sounds, and it worked quite naturally. We are both collagists, of sorts, multimediaists by nature. We had accumulated quite a few recordings and Cody had done considerable mastering work when he rather expertly helped me dismantle a sofa with an axe, and then split for Philadelphia by way of Colorado or Vegas or both in mid 2017. But none of those bits appear on this collection. We met in LA in 2017 for 2 performances at small clubs, which were a blast, and a very special jam with Points of friction on KXLU’s Glossolalia program. None of that’s here either.
Cody put together all this material from the remaining 2016-2017 recordings in Portland, and sent it to me in batches, asking for my thoughts, and for titles.
The way we work is somehow an inoculant to the darker forces at play in the world, and in ourselves.
A Time Vaccine" - Tim Alexander

Numbered Edition of 60.

Robert Ridley-Shackleton - Snack A Delica  CDr £5

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The Cardboard Prince returns to Chocolate Monk for his third outing after Tupperwave and The Opera. Here he presents a fine selection of mostly live actions that really capture his magnetic power. He works hard so you can get down.

"i am reborn new rrs, year of snack a delica, party like your a corrugated funky wannabe, im so sorry this album isnt as good as the opera, but i did try, if u want me to perform for u and the payment is snack just call my name in the night and ile shake on over your way" - RRS

Numbered Edition of 60.

  ALL GONE

Mike Dilloway - Hay Bale Paws  CDr £5

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Aaron Dilloway & Mike Collino give thanks to the Creeping Presence with a series of warped and mangled mini mantras thick on the crude tape vibe with heavy doses of clank, scrape and electronic whirr for added levitation. Be brave, coward!
Aaron Dilloway: Metal, Cymbal, Synthesizer, File and Phonic Mirror
Mike Collino: Violin, Zither and Amnesia Machines

Numbered Edition of 75.

Wizards Of Oi - Pop Oil View  CDr £5

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Aaron Moore (Volcano The Bear) & Brandstifter return for a second swig of the poison after last years Wot It Is Not, which had WFMU's Daniel Blumin frothing from the ears. With full bellies they foray further into the forest of broken music (or is that musical & mental breakdown?) incorporating a wide selection of instruments and guff to create sweet swaggering tomfoolery all with a distinct whiff of Paul McCarthy (those demented sounding vocal ditties) or Mike Kelley (ala The Poetics or early D.A.M). Be brave you sack o' meat, tie one on. The Wizards have got yr ftaback covered.

Numbered Edition of 60.

 SOLD OUT

John Godbert - The Sealed Container  CDr £5

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Three absolute mind melders from the dusty archives of John Gobbert, hand picked by everyone's favourite Yorkshire bear hugger Neil Campbell.
"When I first met John Godbert towards the end of the twentieth century he used to send me the odd tape of solo recordings he'd made on an old karaoke machine, mixed with songs by his then-unknown friend the creepy lounge singer Herb Diamanté. We all know that Herb has since gone on to live a salubrious life of global stardom, whereas John's been so broke and desperate he's even resorted to joining the bloody Vibracathedral Orchestra. Life just ain't fair.
So, what better time could there be to unearth some of those dusty old Godbert recordings, vast aching tableaux where he's wailing on the reeds and causing irrepairable damage to guitars and keyboards borrowed from Matthew Bower? Not enough people have heard these sounds, which is a huge hole in the collective understanding of the whole Northern English heavy liquid infinite blah third eye whatever scene and a crying shame. God Bless Chocolate Monk." - Neil Campbell

Numbered Edition of 60.

chik white - Their Faces Closed  Cassette £6

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"Their Faces Closed is a collection of live recordings from my fall 2017 cross-Canada tour. I didn’t sleep well and my thoughts were uneasy for much of the trip, yet the beauty of the country, especially the mountains out West, put me in a reverent and contemplative mood. I had a lot to work through each night on stage. The tracks I chose for this release all felt earnest and whole when they spewed forth—a mix of comedy and confusion for the spectator, no doubt. But know that I tried my best to acknowledge what was flowing through me in each moment. I was attuned to the jaw harps as well.
The sounds at the end are from a cassette of ocean recordings that I had buried in a salt flat for awhile. It’s a bit gnarled. I took this recording of my home with me on tour and used it as part of my set only once—when I reached the Pacific in Victoria, BC. Eventually it’s all washing over.
Thanks to the folks across Canada who indulged me during this time. And thanks to Dylan for giving these weird introspections a home." - chik white
Chrome cassette in recycled card sleeve with insert.

Numbered Edition of 75.

Sold Out

Meek/Glass - Molasses  CDr £5

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Forty minutes of electronics and loops recorded during an impromptu session at No Spray 205 in San Francisco, named after the 1919 disaster that buried an entire neighborhood of Boston in deadly sweetened ooze.

Numbered Edition of 60.

  SOLD OUT

S.Glass - If You Can't Be Good, Be Reasonable  Booklet/CDr £8

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An alarming, detailed travelogue by The Fourth Chinz-man Of The Apocalypse about his November 2017 trip to witch-trial country, where he played shows with Phil Milstein and Ariella Stok (aka Suppressive Persons) and on his own. CDR includes the trio’s entire set at Feeding Tube Records in Florence, Massachusetts. “The only thing weirder than what comes out of this motherfucker’s mouth is what goes in,” says Roland Woodbe. “Seriously, is there anything S. Glass won’t eat?” Forty-eight pages. The first in Chocolate Monk’s Lunkhead Library series.

Numbered Edition of 100.

FOR POSTAGE PLEASE COUNT AS 5 CDs

Brandstifter - Don't Call Me Dali, Darling!  CDr £5

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German avant madman and all round groovy art hack Stefan Brand AKA Brandstifter returns to Chocolate Monk so soon after his collab with Aaron Moore, The Wizards Of Oi. Here we get an intimate insight into the artist in his natural habitat, sporting nothing but his crumpled Y-fronts and an energy and message that needs to bust out and be broadcast to the outside world. A selection of his infamous thursday morning bedroom recordings done on his favourite Casio keyboards: the SK1 and the SA-21 tonebank unplugged! With vocal ramblings sung directly into the recorder and a splattering of rough toy samples. Fear not though, his pyromaniac tendencies are pure, he just wants to light a fire in our hearts!

Numbered Edition of 60.

  SOLD OUT

Todd W Emmert - A Summers Day & Night  CDr £5

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"No one makes being a visionary seem like an attractive career more than Todd W. Emmert. His beguilingly unassuming compositions slip through the cracks between the cosmic binaries -- your yings and your yangs, the bottom of the aboves and the tops of the belows, the magic hours of twilight and dusk. A Summer’s Day And Night oozes with the sacred perspiration wrung from the garments of the children of the supreme hypno-void getting dizzy on an interstellar merry-go-round. Four opening tracks lull you into a false sense of new age security, better than any vegan restaurant hold muzak, before Emmert goes full ghost story and bakes your head into a wax unagi pie replica in the galley of a Unarius UFO with a series of heavy, scalp-striating distorto drones that have every right to take up entire album sides. A fine, fine distillation of “splashing” and “down.” Huff it." - Seymour Glass

Numbered Edition of 60.

  SOLD OUT

Plastic Hooligans - untitled  CDr £5

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Sean Conway emerges once more from his dank Brum environs to follow up last years untitled debut with another untitled beauty of hiss and warble. Like some kind of mythical hash peasant he cooks up weird sounds that are both musical and abstract, all recorded straight to his dying three track tape recorder. A gentle throbbing thing of dreamlike confusion. Highly recommended for all you garbage eaters out there. Get smart, get saved!

Numbered Edition of 60.

  SOLD OUT

Outréchestra feat. Bryan Lewis Saunders - Sewing Party  CDr £5

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"Three nights in a row I had dreams about parties and/or sewing. Also, the batteries in my recorder were dying and I did not know. So when I went to transcribe the recordings I threw the batteries away. But then after hearing the content (the dreams) I thought this would be perfect in subject and tone for Princess Haultaine III! So then I asked him if he wanted to work with me on these parties. When he said yes, I thought shoot I should get those mostly dead batteries out of the trash and use them to their fullest potential because I thought that might complement the tone and noisy party style of the great duo Outréchestra. So then I milked those batteries for every electron in them. Hundreds of false starts trying to capture every word of the dreams in the state of death. It was a challenging task. And then Princess Haultaine III took those recordings and stitched them together with the music." - BLS

Talc - Terracotta Tributaries  CDr £5

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Talc are Portlandian scruffs Bob Desaulniers and Shane McDonell, Terracotta Tributaries is the product of several stream of consciousness recording sessions spanning the first half of 2017. Indoor/outdoor sound materials subjected to primitive manipulation and collaged in universally agreed upon real time. Talc is the voice of the Bicameral Mind.
Numbered Edition of 60.

Psanck - Psanck  CDr £5

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Word around the twittings is that Psanck were thrown together one evening at the Safehouse (Brighton's regular free music/improv night). Kev Nickells, Chis Parfitt & Al Strachan got so goosed up on the combination of scritchy violin, growling cornet, pingy toys, electronics and sop sax that they yodelled in unison “let’s record”. Finally sometime down the line they did just that, piecing together a thing full of beautiful otherwordly imaginings. Like a less processed Biota with that soft creeping Af Ursin vibe. I applied some strategic Tiger Balm to Mr Nickells and asked for his take on the disk:
"Perambulations, hitherto: procedures of coping, or cobalted errata. Blanched mouldy harmonic relations. File under: improv, but your Mum might find it tolerable."  One for Mother's day then.

Numbered Edition of 60.

  SOLD OUT

Adam Cadell & Carter Thornton - Potential WW3  CDr £5

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Having both done time on the Soft Abuse music label of Minneapolis, Adam Cadell of Australia was eager to meet Carter Thornton of America when he traveled to pick the string brain of Henry Flynt in New York City during a multi-continent fiddle technique inquiry. The two met at the Horse Box, a shitty sports bar, and soon found they both admired the people of Finland, the metal of Mexico, and the kim chi of Korea. A collaboration occurred when Cadell built a small echo chamber out of a fiddle and forced Thornton's sounds into it through a small wire. As far as meetings of Australians and Americans go this was better than the Trump/Turnbull telephone summit that happened at roughly the same time. More Cadell can be found in releases by the Scrapes, while further Thornton can be heard on albums by Gnaw, Enos Slaughter, and Pigeons

Numbered Edition of 60.

  ALL GONE

Lucas Abela & Noel Meek - Benny Does Jets  CDr £5

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An antipodean sound agitation hoedown between wonder scruff Lucas Abela, all sweat, blood and beers performing on glass and the always well groomed Noel Meek, New Zealand's best trimmed beard 4 years running on electronics and voice. Visceral electronic fart tones stomp a happy jig and attempt to crack that code you have floating in yr skull.

Benny Does Jets was recorded live in Sydney at the Tempe Jets rugby club at the edge of Sydney international airport. The space has recently been converted into cavernous artist studios and venue and the local fertile free improv scene has taken over the huge central space for weekend concerts. This was the first time I'd met Lucas properly after being blown off my feet by his solo performance at a Schimpfluch-Gruppe gig in Wellington pretty much exactly ten years earlier. A master glass player, Lucas is one of the most responsive and articulate musicians I've had the pleasure to play with. Huge thanks to Jim Denley for putting the concert together." - Noel Meek

Numbered Edition of 60.

Sold Out

Street Beers - Seriously Hot  CDr £5

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Everyone's favourite blaw bag, Ali Roberston of Usurper, returns with new solo wonk. His take on a "summer album" is like a mouthful of hot pennies.

"A prisoner of the Blighted Isle. What joy can be mined within these hard borders? I heard that it didnae get above seventeen degrees in the central belt last year. Even after electing a gaggle of Scottish Tories it remained pure brassic and we all ken that they make the fucking weather in London. I'd suggest burning the bloated bodies of those browbeaters to warm the cockles of our hearts, but I suspect the airborne grease fae their sizzling pork bellies'd seal up our skins like factor nine-thousand and serve to shield us fae the pitiful meek slivers of vit D that occasionally drizzle though the haar. Might as well get use to cold cockles anyhows. And cold whelks. And cold sea snot. There's your dinner and it's bowfing. "Street Beers? Sounds like you'll be touring with Sewn Leather next!" said Nyoukis, but please speak it in my accent as I'm just trying to celebrate one of the only reasons to remain in the EH postcode zone. An eternal busman's holiday on the tarmac of the 'shire? "That's not my cup of tea" say the English. "That's not my glass of beer" say the Dutch." - Ali Roberston.

Numbered Edition of 60.

Dave Miko - Crumpled Cloud Cafe  CDr £5

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New York based artist (and all round "sound as a pound" gonk) Dave Miko returns to the label after 2009's Doyers Data Dump, heading even further out.Proof he is a singular artist not for the muted of mind.

"Is it what it is? Might the early first experiments with an instrument be a beautiful music? What if they are rearranged and processed with a variety of presets? Can learning a computer program, in the time before a style or approach is ossified, quickly reveal something of the students tastes and intentions? Probably not. The second track, the usual type of vocal thing, was written for and performed poorly and with incident at Abasement5 September 21 2015. This recording is from a better re-performance at Cakeshop December 26 2016." - Dave Miko

Numbered Edition of 60.