Minimum Table Stacks

Body Of Research

Vehicle Wasting Away

Minimum Table Stacks

***"Body of Research make ritual music for a blasted world. Their songs are set in western Pennsylvania’s slag heaps and train tunnels, bat calls and bogs. This isn’t metaphor—the band’s angular thunder begins its life through plein air recordings, the outcome of relentless hike and exploration. Vehicle Wasting Away is backboned by these battery-powered sessions taped in cemeteries, shooting ranges and backwoods. And although decay haunts the songs, the record has a steady momentum which speaks more to the ramble that led to these locations than to the locations themselves. Emerson’s 'the journey, not the destination' for post-industrial rust belt decline.The reverence that Body of Research pays to this exploration is voiced through hypnotic, ominous hooks. A patient vastness, an unblinking persistence that echoes open sky and insect storm. A melodic pressure that pulls and abrades. These hooks are ornamented in wonder and curiosity: wistful guitar work, feathery drum fills, burbling streams of sound. The band's deep faith in variation—in the restless exploration of pattern—is an elegant counterbalance to the desolation. Birdsong woven through the tolling of a bell? Bob Weston jamming with Jewels of Thought-era Pharoah Sanders? Vehicle Wasting Away speaks a devotion that is eternal yet locked into 21st century waste. Commanding yet liberatory. Eerie yet comforting. "—Ethan SwanEdition of 110 Hand-Stamped copies with paste-on artwork and insert in MTS generic label sleeves.

Glands Of External Secretion

Unexplained Bite Marks

Minimum Table Stacks

***"Glands of External Secretion’s third-ever live appearance (at Trapdoor Fucking Exit, a performance series connected to Helga Fassonaki’s Touching Them Touching You - A Love Song for the Dead C), Unexplained Bite Marks took place on May 20, 1994, at legendary subterranean niteclub The Purple Onion, in the Chinatown / North Beach district of San Francisco, where a loveable maniac by the name of Tom Guido holds court whenever and with whomever he wants. Michael Morley (of The Dead C and Gate) happened to be in town, and Margaret Murray of U.S. Saucer (and Manning’s Truth Walks In Sleepy Shadows album) never refuses a challenge, so this utterly impromptu occasion also marked the first and only time Glands of External Secretion was a quartet. The raw and monolithic result is loud, distorted, saturated and more obscured by murk than The Loch Ness monster on a menopausal rampage." Limited edition of 200 copies housed in handmade and hand-stamped covers.

Scissor Fits

It Wasn't Nothing

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***"Hounslow: a seemingly unassuming town with a storied history. Birthplace of MF DOOM. Final destination of the northbound 281 bus. And once upon a time, the stomping ground of beloved post- punks, Scissor Fits. Formed in 1978, with a stripped- down, spiky DIY sound as their sonic template, the band recorded their legendary debut EP ‘Taught? Tense? Angular? And Other British Rail Sandwiches’ before they'd even played a live gig. An instant classic featuring arch but relatable ditties such as 'I Don't Wanna Work For British Airways', 'I Wish I Hadn't Shaved My Pubic Hair Off' and 'Waiting For Your Love In The Shower' the EP garnered glowing press and the inevitable support of John Peel. A second EP 'Soon After Dark' was released in 1979, which found the band adding a poppy, quasi- psychedelic twist to their now beefed-up sound, and a superb final recording from the same era could easily have made up a third EP. In the tradition of so many punky posses of their time however, the Fits called it quits after just two fabulous singles, burning brightly and briefly, and their legacy is now captured here on this career-spanning compilation. Featuring both the band's EPs, plus four sumptuous previously unreleased tracks, this is the definitive Scissor Fits article. Dive in."—(Ed Zed, Strange Flesh)

Midnight Mines

Feel Like I'm Slipping Away

Minimum Table Stacks

***Long-running UK DIY band surface from their regular output of obscure self-released cassettes and backroom performances in their local neighbourhood bars, with this, their third ‘proper’ longplaying record, the culmination of a ‘rock’n’roll trilogy’ that perhaps only exists in their own typewritten manifestos. Augmenting the usual duo of Private Sorrow and Baron Saturday are new additions: State Education on bass, clarinet and pedal steel; and Autodrome on drums. Together they navigate Studio One rhythms, obvious rockabilly riffs repeated metronomically to the point of oblivion, 60s psych covers, chopped up tapes of previous bands, improvised chaos, and even tender ballads. A raw quartet screaming and begging to be let out of the walls of their self-imposed r’n’r prison.“For the third and final LP of the ‘Rock & Roll Trilogy’, Midnight Mines have heralded a Spitfire parade across the skies above their street level hacienda, the shimmering roar reverberating a gleeful din, sending tremors of bewildering euphoria into the enthusiastic gaggle of lugholes below. The winsome cover of Red Krayola’s ‘Victory Garden’ alone sounds like Spacemen 3 trapped inside a Fun House mirror. Midnight Mines deliver their most fantastic blurt yet.”—Tom Lax, Siltbreeze

V/a

Weird Scene

Minimum Table Stacks

***"At first glance, the Weird Scene compilation feels like a head scratcher. What’s the through line uniting a moody, introspective dirge by an Academy Award-winning songwriter ('Devils Paid' by Rossomando, the solo debut of Miike Snow, The Libertines, Dirty Pretty Things-member / Lady Gaga collaborator Anthony Rossomundo) with a five-alarm scorcher from a queer DIY punk band (“4AM” by first president of japan)?The Rossomando and Adam Green tracks are exclusive to this comp and will remain so; but this record’s connective tissue is one Jeremy Willis: the collection’s curator, and creative force behind Willis Willis, a longtime cog in the greater machinations of Brooklyn’s music scene, and a guy who hates that he’s even being mentioned by name.With Weird Scene, Willis is trying to capture something much larger than himself. This record is a snapshot of one moment in time, a fleeting glimpse of the musical renaissance happening around him right now in 2025. The record isn’t so much about him, as it is a love letter to the artists and accomplices he collaborated and co-conspired with over his two decades making music and art in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. They include the hometown heroes, Kyp Malone from TV on the Radio, Adam Green of Moldy Peaches, and Whispering Matt McAuley of A.R.E. Weapons, as well as fresh new voices like Maya Luz and Headfooter."—Maggie Serota

Son Of Dribble

Poking A Hole In A Bag Of Tears

Minimum Table Stacks

***"You know it and I know it: there’s more trouble coming every day. So what are you hoping for in a record? Escape? Encouragement? Endurance? How about a grinning shrug, a wordlessly shared cigarette, a song that says, 'Wow you’ve had a rough year, huh?' This is Poking a Hole in a Bag of Tears by Columbus, Ohio’s Son of Dribble. It’s worn in and memorable, insistent but at a respectful distance. There is so much trouble in these songs: unexplained scars, mistakes repeated, sickness. And sure, Son of Dribble aren’t quite able to repel the despair, but they are very good company in the rain. It has to do with the dogged stomp of the drumming, the lingering melody of the guitars, the buzz and the momentum. And it has to do with that faded croon, a kind of singing that makes the slightest kindness feel life-altering, a kind of singing that makes the worst story you ever heard just kind of drift past you. Poking a Hole really thrives in this push/pull. There’s plenty of space for wallowing and jostling both on this record, but it doesn’t actually do either. The effect is maybe most like a good old dog? That companionable trotting right at your hip, that sense of not quite understanding the details but very clear on the mood. And then every once in a while it can’t resist, it takes off running, eating up ground with such speed you almost feel like you don’t know...

Voyeur's Market

Songs O' Yule

Minimum Table Stacks

***Minimum Table Stacks is proud to present the debut vinyl release from Voyeur’s Market, the solo project of Ashley Pridham of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Locals might recognize Ashley from her previous project, Vacuum Rebuilders, in which she played alongside Arielle McCuaig and Kayla MacNeill who would go on to form Puppet Wipes. In fact, Kayla and Arielle performed backing band duties behind Ashley at the first (and so far only) Voyeur’s Market live show! While Songs O’ Yule is indeed “Christmas music” (and we here at MTS HQ stand firmly on the THUMBS UP side when it comes to said genre), the six songs written, performed and recorded by Pridham are above all incredibly infectious bedroom pop with nods towards 80’s UK indie, 90’s US garage rock and the more minimal 80’s post-punk from both shores. (The track “Henry Kringle” is actually a twang-y ‘contrafactum’ of the Country Teaser’s hit “Henry Crinkle”.) The EP’s six track (sleigh) ride makes stops at K Records, Slumberland, Yoyo Studios and the International Pop Underground, Slant 6’s Embassy in D.C. Pop music with something for everyone. Truly a “Christmas record” to spin year-round! Pressed on one-sided red vinyl in an edition of 200 copies.

Rat Henry

Material Pop Volume One

Minimum Table Stacks

***The debut full-length by this NYC-based solo artist Rat Henry (aka painter and visual artist Ray Zarnowitz). “After a couple of self-released cassettes and a stint as a full band live concern featuring some of the cream of NYC punk, Ray Zarnowitz's Rat Henry project has gestated and bloomed into its most complete form with Material Pop Vol. 1. This record weaves lessons well-learned from the modern American noise underground, the loamy heritage of UK DIY, and punk as lifestyle / vocation into a strikingly personal statement. The comparisons that will form in the mind of the astute listener - This Degenerate Little Town as a mail collaboration between Jim Shepard and Storm Bugs, Afterbathinginturpentine with cutting social critique in the place of dilaudid fog, a production of Bad Lieutenant held on the Street Level Studios soundstage with Pierpaolo Zoppo heading the AV crew—are rendered secondary in light of Ray's vision. Material Pop Vol. 1 wields genuinely idiosyncratic songcraft and rock and roll joie de vivre like corrosive agents, eating away at the tape loop sediment encasing its songs, and at the indignities of modern urban existence.”—Daniel Dimaggio, Home Blitz. Limited to 300 copies on black vinyl. Includes a poster insert and logo sticker designed by Rat Henry himself.

Midnight Mines

Since My Baby Left Me

Minimum Table Stacks

***Avant-garage clang and clatter from a UK/Italian duo operating at the margins of the DIY guitar underground. Heavy tape manipulation and random noises rub up against primitive song structures and repetitive melodies. Features members of Black Time (In The Red) and Virvon Varvon (Girlsville Records). Pressed in an edition of 300 copies, housed in a reverse board sleeve with two inserts: 12 page digest-sized zine and 8x10 hand-numbered print. "Dark mod thump, fuzz wallop and heavy kraut rumble, with the makeup of the surrounding material recalling other UK brainiacs like THE REBEL and the most industrial aspects of THE FALL. Highly recommended."—Mitch Cardwell, Maximum Rock & Roll

S. Glass

Cesspool of the Angels

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***“This solo album by the former Bananafish editor S. Glass is a recording of naturally jarring qualities and intent. The rippling, continuous pace doesn’t allow a whole lot of time for sinking the talons in. Incongruous sound sources are bent, warped, wrung and wrenched between the ears, as if one’s brain is an object to be flossed by Glass’s quietly punishing dentist’s hand. Clattering machines and burnt-out organs fizz as though amplified via baby monitor. Brief, ad-hoc choirs of rendered vocals are drenched in clicky synthesis and, yeah, some train noises are even detectable in the mix. But don’t for a minute ascribe his motivations to churlish desire to throw crap at a kitchen sink, then a wall, with no sense of what should stick. I’ve spoken before about the supreme deftness with which Glass sculpts his sounds and it’s all in shining evidence here. If you’ve paid attention to our man’s offerings for decades via Glands of External Secretion, Bren’t Lewiis Ensemble, This Is Yvonne Lovejoy, and the many various collabs, you’ll recognize a ton of now-trademark things on Cesspool of the Angels, too. We could talk about how painstaking it is to collect speech samples of American Assholes tricking themselves into believing something incorrect, or the nerdily inclined might be keen to know serial and model numbers responsible for the massive palette of often rich, pristine electronics and processes, but the skill of Glass’s editing is more interesting, especially his ear for... production, lacking a better word for...

Sheaves, The

Excess Death Cult Time

Minimum Table Stacks

***Minimum Table Stacks is proud to present Excess Death Cult Time, the vinyl debut of Phoenix, AZ quintet The Sheaves. Previously released as a limited cassette by Moone Records, the album was recorded over the course of a year by the band at The Baby Room, their own home studio. Excess Death Cult Time is the result of Eric Mudd (along with drummer Joe Vittetoe, guitarist Lucas Aguirre, bassist Matt Hamel and Daniel Schurgin contributing drums, synth and organ work) meticulously assembling bits and pieces of various ideas and mixing the sounds to the point that the actual tapes began deteriorating, much to his delight. The result is a scuzzy post-punk blur of Jad Fair-style guitar pop as channeled through the ’80s “UK DIY” sonic disassembling of whatever “punk” was supposed to be. Think: Josef K, the Swell Maps, The Fall, the Homosexuals. Half-Japanese playing Chrome’s “Chromosome Damage.” The Sheaves are not moving the way you are supposed to.

Son Of Dribble

Son Of Drib Against The Wind

Minimum Table Stacks

***On only their second full-length album, Son of Dribble make the case for IMMEDIATE induction into the Columbus, OH Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Not any easy feat when you’re following acts like Cheater Slicks, Great Plains, New Bomb Turks, Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments, Times New Viking, etc. etc. Like their Columbus forefathers, SoD effortlessly take the guts of classic American garage rock and rearrange ‘em inside the body of the darker side of UK post-punk. No one would call The Birthday Party a “blues band”, but it’s there. Beat Happening wasn’t a ‘60s girl group, but that’s there too. It’s all there in SoD. The skeleton holding everything together is SoD’s ability to take all of those moods and create sounds completely unique and their own. The same knack for pure rock’n’roll melody the Strokes were figuring out in 2001 is the same sorta thing you’ll hear from SoD, but with more of a penchant for warped pop weirdness. Recorded mid-pandemic in 2021 by the band and engineer Zac Szymusiak at “Heartbroke Rij” (an abandoned house with no electricity or running water that the band converted into a practice space/studio), “Son of Drib Against the Wind” sees the trio of vocalist Andy Clager, guitarist Darren Latanick and drummer Vicky Mahnke art-garage-rocking through 12 tracks in just under 44 minutes. After welcoming second guitarist Mike Nosan into the band permanently, Son of Dribble begins 2023 with a string of live shows and plans to record new material as a...

Zyklon B Zombies

Skull

Minimum Table Stacks

***"Zyklon B Zombies 'Skull' has been floating around the sub underground for years. Originally released as a cassette on the Japanese tape label, Vanilla in 1993, ZBZ was the musical brainchild of sadly deceased noise legend Hirohito Taneguchi (Seed Mouth) & the equally legendary Junko Hiroshige (Hijokaidan, Genbakukaidan) & if you don't know it, fear not. It's now been formated & remastered to vinyl, courtesy of the Minimum Table Stacks label. Much like Michio Kadotani's Rotting Telepathies recordings, 'Skull' possesses great tremors of blurred clamber that comes directly at you, sometimes sideways. It's hard to know how much is premeditated or just what's driven by organic impulse, which is what makes it such a great attestation of its era. In an instant, 'Skull' can move from a psychotic whoosh not unlike 'Twin Infinitives', to an eerie gait similar to that of Dadamah. Plus, there's everything in between. A true blue-blood of disparate vision, 'Skull' ranks right up there in the masterpiece department with un's S/T lp, New Zealand's Ziggy Stardust Band & those two solo albums from Eric Hysteric. It's not for everyone, but for those who embrace the underground's one percent like a long lost tree, it's the only way to fly."—Tom Lax, Siltbreeze Records. Edition of 300 copies.

Violin Sect

Vile Insect

Minimum Table Stacks

***Minimum Table Stacks is proud to present the first ever reissue of the ultra-rare sole 7” by the Wales, UK post-punk four-piece Violin Sect, expanded to 12” 45RPM vinyl with two additional previously unreleased bonus tracks from the same recording sessions, all remastered from the original 1⁄4” studio tapes. Self-released by the band themselves in 1981, the 7” was of the type only whispered about among hardcore collectors of obscure British “DIY” punk and post-punk, even slipping past the compilers of the mighty “45 Revolutions” book. After years of mystery, band member Steve Walker dug up the original 40-year-old tapes and had them remastered by a friend, digitizing for the first time two additional songs from the same sessions not heard since 1981. Violin Sect’s dub-inflected post-punk/spaced out guitar funk places them firmly in the presence of contemporaries like the Raincoats, Public Image Limited, the Pop Group, Scritti Politti and many of the other early Rough Trade bands. Included with this release are liner notes by bassist Steve Walker along with photos and ephemera from his personal archive, including a full reprint of a Violin Sect interview that appeared in a small UK zine in 1980. One of the best discoveries of forgotten UK DIY/post-punk since the “Messthetics” compilation series!

Smelly Feet

Smelly Neu Pollution

Minimum Table Stacks

***New Zealand legend BRENT HAYWARD aka FATS WHITE is probably best known as the vocalist and guitarist in Wellington and Aukland post-punk bands like SHOES THIS HIGH and KIWI ANIMAL, but when he wasn't collaborating with others he recorded solo as SMELLY FEET. As Smelly Feet, Hayward performed on both street corners and stages supporting such bands as The Clean and even The Fall on their legendary 1982 tour on New Zealand. Hayward released three Smelly Feet 7" singles and a handful of cassettes, all around the year 1981. Most were simply given away to friends and fans, while the rest were only available at a few local record stores. The music of Smelly Feet is sardonic, chaotic DIY folk on the surface, but much deeper than that is a legit artistic genius baring his soul using just his voice and acoustic guitar. Tuning is often an afterthought. It's the message that counts: prophetic, apocalyptic, cynical, passionate. Brent is one of the few artists who really, actually, TRULY plays like his life depends on it. Smelly Neu Pollution compiles all three self-released 7" singles from 1981, as well as various tracks hand-selected from the last small archive of Brent's cassette recordings from the same time period and recording sessions. Features liner notes by BRUCE RUSSELL (The Dead C). One-time pressing of 300 copies.