KAREN CONSTANCE / DYLAN NYOUKIS
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(Chocolate Monk - choc.543) CDR $8.00
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
KAREN CONSTANCE / LUCIAN TIELENS
...And The Antique African Neck Parts
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.297) Cassette $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
On this companion tape to ...And The German Pillow Menu (Chocolate Monk 2013), a Bren’t Lewiis Ensemble stalwart trades blows with Blood Stereo’s mean queen. “Tarzan Knows We Kidnapped The Baby” is just the kind of audio glurph slathered with loops and cut-ups you’d expect from the Left Coast loon, while “Tied To A Tree In Bankkop” is loop-heavy head-scratcher with fine passages of drony drump and disorienting voices. Get far from monochrome, ya freak. C20. Edition of 40.
KAREN CONSTANCE / ELKKA NYOUKIS
Bicker Sweet
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.355) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Mother and daughter Monk keep the crude and tripped-out tape jams super queasy with a healthy dollop of echo and delay. Loops and manipulation go from crinkled, hissing ear wobble to more in-the-red what-the-fuckery (à la Polly Shang Kuan Band). Numbered edition of 30.
KAREN CONSTANCE / DYLAN NYOUKIS
Day Music / Night Music
(Amerige - Choc.548) LP $27.00
(Chocolate Monk - Choc.548) Split cassette $7.50
Constance the insomniac presents 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. On the flip, synth, tape players, loops and delay squelch and skitter into dream as early bird and morning whistler Nyoukis takes a wee stumble into a low T tower of crud. Recorded during the day live to tape. No nightmares allowed.
LP reissue, edition of 330.
Gudgeon-Snout
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.360) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Blood Stereo’s better half lurches out of the Shed of Dread to present us peasants with a solo disc of tape and loop damage, recorded ten years apart (one half laid down in the shit basket that is 2017, the other during the rosy days of 2007 when the Doomsday clock was a comfy five minutes to midnight. Take a heavy sniff of this doink. Numbered edition of 50
KAREN CONSTANCE / JACKIE STEWART
Jackie Stewart / Karen Constance
(Giant Tank) Split cassette $5.00
Blurred-out fairytale fractures melt on top of warm and limpid music boxes just trying to keep up (including the wind-up ratchet, should you feel compelled to boogie down) in the Smegma / Tenses maestra’s futuristic transmission of indecipherable lullaby residue. An ideal ramp-down into a turntablist ravine where how to properly shit in the woods is the blotto topic du soir. Bears do it, the Pope does it, no reason you should be left in the dark. On the flip, Blood Stereo / Smack Music 7 sister’s mosaic of instructional voice vanishes into and reconstitutes out of parallel tone ribbons and subdural electronic quack. C40
Lalo Mendy
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $7.00
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. Edition of 50
KAREN CONSTANCE / JOSEPH HAMMER / JOHN WIESE
Live At Colour Out Of Space 2009
(Chocolate Monk - choc.233) split CDR $9.00
Split release recorded live in Brighton 2009. Solid Eye’s gloved maestro of live tape manipulation conjures up amazing, smoked-out loop wobble. If you cut the guy, he would bleed Ferric Oxide. Constance and Wiese twist knobs and deliver spectral head scratch of marble-losing proportions. A sweet ear pickle all round.
Nothing To See, Hear
(Chocolate Monk - choc.474) CDR $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
Using the same set up, Little Sister presents a companion release to the Dylan Nyoukis disc of the same name, recorded inside Wino Lodge. Further dollops of loop damage which aim to disorient and frazzle in the nicest possible way. Numbered edition of 50
Old Scar For New Nose
(Chocolate Monk - choc.509) CDR $8.00
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 chance meetings at an early age set her on the path of prevalence: First meeting the Tartan Lads in Blackburn Chemists at the age of seven where “Scotland’s top performing duo” informed her “even a wee lassie can wear a skirt of many colors,” and then just a few years later a caged mynah bird in a Coldingham pub told her “the life of an artist is a fucktard’s waddle!” Numbered edition of 60
Positively Susan
(Chocolate Monk - choc.601) CDR $8.00
“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 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 à vis the lived tasting experience of this disc? Pearls dropping from wet cave roofs, as seen from a static-y 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
The Junk Merchant
(Chocolate Monk - choc.497) CDR $6.75 (Out-of-stock)
Further tape and electronic zoink broadcast from the unfettered mind of Covid Karen. Unlike the recent shorter tracks on Still Awake (Beartown) and 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
KAREN CONSTANCE / DYLAN NYOUKIS
Therapeutic Effects
(Chocolate Monk - choc.533) Magazine + CDR $13.25 (Out-of-stock)
Solo works and collaborations cooked up in both the audio and visual realms. The full-color stapled A5 booklet features paintings, collages and life pointers. The accompanying disc 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. Includes stickers, badge. Numbered edition of 50