BASKET FEVER
Evil Sword

There used to be a whole bunch of them, some playing music and more doing I don't even know what. Banging pots and pans around, climbing up and down ladders, throwing garbage out of a sack, reciting their lines and performing strange dances. Now it's down to just two, but they're still throwing things and flashing lights in your eyes, so it's not all that different than before. The thing is, there's hardly any instruments in this group, but they make such a racket you'd never know it. The bass and the percussion sound like they're having a great time, telling each other jokes. Then the words come in and it all locks together in these strange, hypnotic rhythms. I just listen to the stories and laugh and cry and get scared and wonder what they were ever thinking.

It took them a long time to make this record, with all the tracks and the special effects or whathaveyou. Electrocuted bells, backwards parts, rusty horns; I'm pretty sure I even heard a clarinet in there somewhere. There's this one part where it all seems to come back around, where they took some gang vocals from the very first demo they ever recorded and slowed it way down. I remember when they first started; I thought they were some goofy kids making music about the end of the world, back when that seemed a little further away, like it was going to be fun. They were all laughing and making these funny ghost sounds, but now everyone's older and the ghosts are real, a great whoosh of bygone spirits and cold air. It's bone chilling.

The last one is a drinking song, a goodbye to a lost time. It reminds me of a place we used to call the Great Wild, a big open field full of flowers and weeds and thorns and animals. Me and my friend Criminy Yickett would sit on the porch all day, watching the vegetation bob in the wind with all those squirrels and weasles prancing around until it got dark and the fireflies came out. It's gone now; when I look out there I just see a kind of hazy gray emptyness instead. I don't know why. It could just be me going blind, and sometimes I hope that's what it is. Criminy keeps telling me I should be angry about it, maybe do something unsavory, but I just tell him no like always, and stare out into the void and whistle a song to myself. Because that's the power of music, it can dispel the bitterness. There's plenty to be upset about, but it’s not really an Evil Sword song until that grimace has been twisted up into a smile.

- Old Man Yumble

Release Party October 13th, 2023, 7PM
at PhilaMOCA, 512 N. 12th St, Philadelphia PA

12" Black Vinyl made by Softwax Record Pressing in Philadelphia

$25 - Available at Bandcamp



MILES OF SLIME AND SMILES
Joe Grillo

Edited by Ben Furgal
Foreword by Jim Drain


This collection captures an iconic body of Joe Grillo's work, assembling drawings used to make his contributions to the legendary Paper Rodeo newspaper. Presented here as a facsimile of the original sketchbook, alongside all of the full-page collages that appeared in Paper Rodeo.

Release Party May 6, 2023, 7PM
at Magic Pictures, 618 Hoffman Street, Philadelphia PA

124 pages
8.25 x 10.5 inches
ISBN 9780988535428

$30 - Available at Neoglyphic Media



YOU WILL LOVE AGAIN
Kate Ferencz


This is music to cry to. You could maybe also dance to it. Either way, the goal is some kind of catharsis.

Recorded alone at home using a combination of computers and tape recorders, these fuzzy analog beats wrap you in a warm blanket while the words get into some heavy stuff about grief and loss. It's been a weird, intense couple of years, you know? Kate Ferencz is an unreliable narrator whose tone alternates between comforting, confiding, encouraging, sinister and sometimes threatening.

The overriding theme is the question of how to keep going when things are absolutely not OK, and this often involves sitting with uncomfortable truths. The opening track, Can You Heal Me, questions the extent to which music can effectively combat despair. It might not be enough, but sometimes it's all you have.

Released December 2, 2022

12" Black Vinyl made by Softwax Record Pressing in Philadelphia

$25 - Available at Bandcamp



AGONY OF THE WART GOD
Evil Sword


Magic Pictures is proud to present Evil Sword's full length album Agony of the Wart God. Deep inside the hideous forest, between life and death, laughter and slaughter, you'll find Evil Sword. Vocalist Kate Ferencz and bassist Ben Furgal carve out a shadowy world of percussive horrors. Bells and idyllic whistles give birth to otherworldly squeals and squawks which soon degenerate into cries of anguish and rattling chains. Will you scream in terror or dance in delight as the world burns? One thing is certain - Once you've listened to Agony of the Wart God, you'll never be the same.

Released October 25 2019

12" Smoke Vinyl made by Softwax Record Pressing in Philadelphia

$25 - Available at Bandcamp