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Variant Literature

BeachSloth — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 22:34:46 GMT

Writers exist on all levels. Much like the job applications people write with AI, then send to HR, which then rejects them with AI, there are many levels to the writing game. Think of it like the game Go. You must think locally and globally at the same time. Long ago, writers needed to concern themselves with one or the other thing. Kafka barely traveled, yet had legions of fans in his Czech Republic weirdness, where audiences snacked on marzipan, pilsners, and whatever other foods exist there. I know plenty of writers who are big in their cities but barely venture outside. Sometimes the specific humor of a region does not translate well outside it. When it does, like what Scott McClanahan does with West Virginia, it is a magical thing. You need to support that shit.

Variant Literature supports that shit. I appreciate the effort. You would think that being an established writer is easy, but I have heard it is not. When you achieve that level of success, you get haters. The haters multiply, in their little rabbit holes like horny little rabbits. It is a horrible thing. I thank goodness every single morning that I am a writer who has achieved no success whatsoever in the last fifteen years. Having success as a writer sounds inherently stressful, and, if I can be real for a moment, I am much happier being one of those hangers-on (via upside down in a tree) than having anything quantifiable.

Being an unknown writer is very easy. All you need to do is write. You do not even need to care about the subject matter. Nobody is reading anyway; you are mostly doing it for yourself. To me, true freedom is the freedom of knowing there is no audience, no one paying attention, and reading. You have nobody to answer to except yourself, and even that is a variable. You may pump out the content on the content farms for your entire lifetime, never to return to it, just letting those little mustard seeds grow until they become massive.

I appreciate Variant Literature having a classroom’s worth of contributors, editors, and their ilk. They go for all levels. No mere single-story ranch with a Michigan basement, there are levels to their style. Beginners, intermediates, and advanced writers – all are welcome. Given the insane levels of gatekeeping that have been an inherent part of all literary scenes since the beginning of time, it is nice that they choose a different path – a quality-driven, viewpoint-agnostic one. I appreciate the level of honesty they bring to the table, and perhaps it is a path that more ought to travel, but what do I know? I am a sloth.

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“Have you ever been waffle fried? Well, I have.” – Jimi Hendrix

Waffle Fried

BeachSloth — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 02:33:51 GMT

Waffle Fries are a curious enigma to non-American readers. American readers get it: America has led the way in satisfying junk food for well over a century. Remember World War I? You probably don’t because everyone who fought in it is long dead. I don’t mean this as a history lesson, but the Americans, known as doughboys for their flavorful toppings, created the almighty donut for their European counterparts to consume. I am not saying World War I was a good war, but it did give us doughnuts, so there’s a silver lining.

A waffle fry is like a fry cubed. Do you know French fries? Waffle Fries take the concept of a French Fry and turn it into four dimensions. There are parallel dimensions to ours, and it is doubly refreshing that the splendor of the waffle fry captures this intense scientific and philosophical idea. I appreciate this writing duo paying homage to the ways of the fourth-dimensional fry experience.

Speaking of the duo, the duo is a motley bunch. A therapist and a union organizer in charge of a literary magazine? Yes, please. I am a proud member of a union, and have been pro-union for a long time. Thanks to my union for fighting for me, and to everyone who continues to fight for worker rights. Unions are not an abstract concept either – they can get you healthcare, weekends, holidays, the ability to pee in a restroom, etc.

I do not want to diminish the power of therapy. Based on my experience in the Online Literary scene, more people need to see therapists. We get a literal literary shit storm about every other month, so maybe people need to learn essential conflict resolution tactics. I am not telling Kelsey Edwards how to live her therapist life; I am just saying there is a market need for therapy among those wordsmiths. I cannot say that online writers are a wealthy bunch, but maybe one or two of them are.

The duo has been putting in the good work to get everything done. They have a Patreon, which is like copying the Medici sponsors but for the online age. I recommend them, as they also respect the fine American tradition of filling your face with delicious, fatty foods.

Waffle House is a virtual institution and a source of comfort for anybody in the South looking for food during inclement weather. Waffle Fried does the same thing with their word-based little structures. Please show them some love.

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08.30.2026

BeachSloth — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 15:03:33 GMT

Good Morning,

This is Beach Sloth. Below are this week’s albums:

· Editor’s Note – Moving forward, anything that is abnormally loud and noisy beyond what a ‘reasonable person**’ would subject themselves to will be prefaced with a *Volume Warning*. Thank you.

Basil Manenberg Coetzee, Lionel Pillay – Plum And Cherry

Lionel Pillay plays the piano on Plum And Cherry. Imagine swing, bebop, and rave-up techno coming together under the tutelage of an absolute master pianist. That is what you can expect from the latter track, Plum. An absolute beast of an experience, it goes on for ten minutes in some of the most satisfying piano work you will hear outside of Bill Evans. Bill Evans played it very cool. Lionel Pillay plays it very hot for a duration that seems superhuman, and, if you listen to the last ten minutes of Plum, you will experience exactly why. Obscure, painfully neglected, you will question why nobody outside of 1979 South Africa crate diggers and Cape Jazz enthusiasts has ever heard it.

Before we get to Plum, there is Cherry. Cherry is the mellow introduction. Things keep things smooth. Pillay is on the organ, and Coetzee is on the tenor saxophone. Keeping the mood like a breeze off the South Atlantic, near the Cape of Good Hope. Bass work courtesy of Charles Johnstone anchors the rhythm section, making the bass almost lyrical. The bass work leans melodic, making it like, though not identical to, dub itself. Here, though, this is considerably cleaner than anything dub would engage with. Organ tones have a soft, soothing texture. Rhythm-wise, it is slow-moving, languid, dreamy even. This will be in stark contrast to Pillay going wild on the latter half of Plum. For now though, he conserves his energy. Cherry serves as the warm-up. Even here, though, Pillay’s work on the organ attests to his work heading up his trio, his work in the Mankuku Quartet, and his poppier organ work on the Anglicized variant of his name, Lionel Martin, where he played covers of ‘60s bubblegum pop with Organ Discotheque. Pillay took the stage name Lionel Martin because he played what non-white men were deemed officially incapable of playing. Apartheid later would erase any contributions Pillay had, even as he appeared as a session player on the South African Broadcasting Corporation. However angry this makes you, you will be even angrier when you hear how he played.

Basil Coetzee had a much higher profile career than Pillay. Outside of this track, Coetzee was a member of Dollar Brand, Black Disco, Pacific Express, Oswietie (remember they are in South Africa where they speak that weird Dutch variant), among others. Unlike Pillay, Coetzee at least received some level of recognition for his talents, though being a saxophonist in apartheid-era South Africa was probably egregiously bad. One of his nicknames, “Mannenberg,” references a low-income housing settlement outside Cape Town, as well as the song he is best known for, and it helped launch his career to a large degree. Over the course of Cherry, a nice melody is explored in an infinitely looped form with slight variants, kept nimble and shockingly bright at all moments. It is the sound of optimism, and the duration of the work makes it nearly trance-like.

Plum shifts things immediately. Found field recordings of, well, a field; introduce you to the teeming ecosystem. The rhythm settles slowly, and the buildup to the latter half of the track is probably one of the top ten best buildups I have ever heard in music, regardless of genre. I personally like the organ work Pillay does here, with little fun staccato flourishes. Coetzee’s saxophone is absent on this track. This really, 100%, is Pillay’s show, as his keyboards take center stage. At first, the rhythm takes a loose, swinging approach. Various little moments hint at what will be expanded upon in the second half of the track, which is easily the highlight of the whole album. At almost twenty minutes long, having the first eight minutes work as buildup may seem excessive, but it is very much necessary. Pillay must work himself into the trance, because it really is a trance that he puts everyone in. I have heard few piano players who come close to approximating a rave within their hyper-energetic activity, but Pillay is one of them. The themes are danced around, as Pillay teases the listener with delicate groupings of the chords. Around the seven-minute mark, things shift. You may think to yourself, oh, there’s no way any reasonable human being could maintain this energy for ten-plus minutes, and you would be wrong. Bill Evans played it cool, but Lionel Pillay comes in blisteringly hot. Within the chords there are elements of swing, bebop, and several scales that really feel as if Pillay made them up. Maybe he did. The rhythm section becomes a support system as Pillay becomes the driver of the rhythm section. When I say mind-melting, I mean it. This is some expert work, given a tragic hue by the fact that whatever accolades this guy received during his lifetime were not nearly enough. In fact, the inherent racism baked into apartheid-era South Africa virtually ensured that he would never receive his due, nor has he. Given how pianists are often sampled, you could probably make multiple albums out of the samples from this ten-minute stretch of piano playing. To say that he was let loose would be the understatement of the century.

The latter half of Plum reminds me of dance music, which wouldn’t arrive for another decade, before house scenes sprouted up across the world. I think the dance aspect here carries discernible weight, as the way that the piano drives the rest of the band is gorgeous. You can shift your focus away from Pillay and realize how exhausting it must have been to even keep up with this sheer force of nature that he unleashed. For the Plum on top, the last two to three minutes have Pillay transition away from the piano back onto the organ. Is he playing the piano and organ at the same time? Probably, dude could really play.

Coetzee died before the turn of the century in 1998. Pillay passed in 2003. Yet together, the two of them managed to create an absolute beast of an album. This is a brilliant, very overlooked body of work, and Plum alone is better than the output of entire careers. A wild journey that builds and builds until it explodes.

farmersmanual – sustainably disrupt

Raymond Scott as remixed by a computer virus. farmersmanual embraces a simultaneously abstract glitch aesthetic mixed with slapstick humor on sustainably disrupt. I figure the album title references start-up culture with that buzzword of disruption alongside the desire for sustainable energy. Personally, I like conserving energy. I sleep a lot. I am a sloth.

Here they cut this whatever-you-want-to-call-it into relatively accessible, bite-sized chunks. It is easy to tell that this is their album; they have an obvious sense of humor and have shown it since their early days at Mego, back when it was Mego and not Editions Mego. So you get that macro emphasis on narrative, an unspoken warped one, but something nonetheless. All that data-crunching and twisting shows that they have evolved from their more straightforward origins into something much more particular, psychedelic even. With speech that is always just a few milliseconds spliced together, they show they’ve been paying attention to the state of the digital avant-garde. Nods to Jung An Tagen (another Austrian) and RM Francis (from the US) are here.

Elements have a commercial quality gone wrong, very wrong. They still have some accessibility, even as the tracks race by at a pulse-like speed. Naturally unnatural, the sounds display traces of an uncanny valley that farmersmanual felt this need to cut up. I even understand the impulse, having cut up a great many sounds myself. Yet they are stuttering, sputtering sorts of rhythms, melodies, and beats. Anything resembling traditional music has been stripped clean away from the bone, resulting in these unstable structures. The unpredictability makes it somehow less coherent than even noise; at least noise has the decency to stay in one place most of the time. While writing this, I am frustrated by a fly in my house I cannot kill. I try to learn its ways, try to find a pattern, and wait for one to emerge, but it never does. Playing this album might as well be the perfect soundtrack for my life-loving fly that refuses to be predictable. I have opened the door, the window, on occasion, tried murdering it; nothing works. My only hope now is the prevalence of spiders in my house will finish the job.

I like witnessing how the group has evolved over the past several decades, always flying way below the radar. A nod to the internet’s early utopian roots before it became corporatized and rent-seeking, farmersmanual might as well exist on another timeline, where the promise of the democratization of technology occurred rather than having it turned on us in a massive global surveillance state. Somehow these weird, stupid, and silly noises give me hope that glitch’s roots continue to bear more fruit, with error now being seen as more human than perfection. In that sense, maybe farmersmanual points toward a messier but kinder, more liberated version of technology that works for people as well as surprises them.

Aliya Ultan – Looks Far Woman

Darkness includes physicality. Aliya Ultan makes it so with the sheer tension of Looks Far Woman. She refers to herself as the Nocturnal Cellist. Honestly, I appreciate this level of self-mythologizing. I am a sloth, after all. Nothing more was ever offered to me in this life besides being accomplished versus being lazy. I am sure anyone in my position would take a similar path.

Aliya Ultan lives with her three cats in upstate New York. Looks Far Woman gives off that hopeless, doomed vibe that Upstate New York nails effortlessly. I have stepped foot in Upstate New York before and can attest to a level of hopelessness that few can comprehend. However, to be fair, it is cheap, and to be an experimental cellist, well, there are bills to pay wherever you live, but those bills are awfully small in a part of New York that has been subsidized by New York City for the past century and a half.

Looks Far Woman brings physicality into the experimental form. These are rhythmic works. Percussion cannot compare to the sheer heft she brings. Plus, the line of attack she utilizes rules. You simply must play all of it quite loud. Additionally, it builds on her previous works, which were handmade and self-released. I love cassettes as much as the next guy, but having vinyl feels necessary given the strength of the sound. You need that spinning wax disc to get these sounds down pat. They are primal in a way, and that’s perhaps the greatest appeal of the work.

She messes with the listener on that first piece, Road Song. For whatever reason, this reminds me of Nick Drake’s Horn off his swan song Pink Moon. It too makes silence an essential ally in tension. You hear literally every single gesture of her playing. Quiet music, it does well to provide the low-end register to the high-end cicada buzz that surrounds my house. The natural amplified approach makes it invigorating as the song gradually softens, as if something is coming into focus ever so slowly. This is the part that reminds me of Upstate New York too, as it is spread out with barely any populated areas. You see nature for hours until your destination, when the nature lets up for a moment. For me, the most beautiful work is Wind Song, which reminds me of windmills. I know that the current American President hates windmills in a Don Quixote fashion, but I quite like them. They make sound, and they have a soothing presence to the small sounds they make.

The muscular early half of the album gradually gives way to a more haunted experience. It embodies the stomach-dropping autumnal quality I love in cellos, and she perfects it throughout. Yes, I can hear the nocturnal side of the cellist, for these are songs made for the darkness. Bright light simply cannot reach these sounds, and they’re fine with that arrangement. I have music I consider seasonal, and I feel the dying colors of dead leaves go well with the aural palette she takes on here.

Released by Kou Records, which recently also released her sister’s album (a flutist), it proves how much of classical music remains to be discovered, of all the techniques that continue to work for eternity. Harrowing yet ultimately rewarding work, a glimpse into heavier atmospheres.

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BeachSloth’s Music Profile | Last.fm

**Your idea of a reasonable person, music-wise, I’m sure, differs from mine. **Still, if you’re already here, you’re already unreasonable by sheer virtue of your attendance, and I thank you for that. **

Last.fm

08.28.2026

BeachSloth — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 19:11:47 GMT

Basic Channel serves as a veritable institution for minimal and dub techno. Back in the early ‘90s, when techno was far more on the high-energy side, they stripped things down and slowed them to the …

SillyGoosePress

BeachSloth — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 22:11:14 GMT

Literature can be fun. I have been saying this for literal decades at this point. SillyGoosePress has heard me, apparently, though I never knew they existed before this very moment. During one of my leisurely strolls through the social media landscape, I stumbled upon them through a shout-out Twitter Post (something I need to do more of). The name appealed to me, so here was another rabbit hole I was about to go down. Given the plethora of rabbits in my general geographic area, all I needed to do to go down that rabbit hole was go outside, a tall order for someone horribly addicted to being online. Oh, the things I do for literature.

The website is adorable. It feels like I have entered some grade school classroom. We’ve all been there before, of course; we were all once children. Children love that whimsy stuff, and, if I am being honest, adults need whimsy too. Just because you’ve grown older doesn’t mean you need to be serious all the time. The Joker always asked “Why so serious?” in that documentary, and while I can’t condone his actions in The Dark Knight, he was onto something. Humor is a part of a balanced lifestyle diet; suffering should never be. If your life revolves around suffering and the constant reflection on the concept of suffering, well, partner, you are living life wrong. You could have it so much better.

A duo is responsible for this lovely little slice of online paradise. Lexi Rosen does their thing, with at least some connections to one of America’s Greatest States, Vermont. You should go to Vermont, in all seriousness. Lovely people in a lovely place, I cannot recommend Vermont enough. I would recommend Vermont more if they paid me, but I’ll do this little advertisement for them free of charge. She also currently lives in the Chicagoland area, which is what they call the area around Chicago. Why it is called Chicagoland, I will never know, but it gives the urban living experience a nice medieval twang. I appreciate the medieval reference, and wear my chainmail proudly for the eventual battle Chicagoland will have against the House of Indiana, an easily winnable battle, as Indiana is Indiana, which nobody deserves.

Parker Dean is the other integral part of this online flock. I think I remember his name from my time at Beach Sloth 1.0. I believe he wore glasses, though I may be confusing him with another individual, in which case, apologies to both. If he is the same person, kudos to making it as long as you did; not every writer can go on this long. Take it from me, I’m a sloth and know exactly how much time I devote to this work.

Whimsy is near and dear to my heart. I literally cosplay as a sloth online; everyone on the Beach Sloth staff does, and we wear it with pride. We are always happy to promote any whimsical fervor from any artistic practice, and we are glad this lot was able to continue fighting the good fight.

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Contronimo Magazine adheres to that ancient Trent Reznor proverb:

Contronimo Magazine

BeachSloth — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 02:24:00 GMT

“Are you here for a good time? (to which the audience responds with an affirmation) Too bad, that was the last band. We’re here for a bad time.” And then he presses the bleepy-bloopy buttons on his synthesizer for a pure industrial aesthetic. The crowd, needless to say, went wild.

The bitterness and happiness of life intertwine. Some people get lucky. Most do not. Contronimo Magazine explores the relationship between sweetness and bitterness. As someone who cannot taste bitterness, I have heard it is bad. Nothing good comes from it. Coffee is bitter, but I would never know. To me, it tastes delicious (always has), and I have nothing but love for it for that very reason. Anybody who has spent time around me knows how much I enjoy eating things that others would not dare, specifically the darkest of chocolates. I am not referring to that 70% cutesy stuff, I mean the 99% Dark Chocolate that went on a killing spree in one of America’s most killing-spree states, South Carolina. Unsure why that State is so murder-centric, it just is. Lots of rage coming out from that state, and, if anybody wants to pinpoint it, I would be most appreciative.

Contronimo Magazine operates far below the radar. I like this concept. Lots of literary magazines have this ‘publish your friends’ aesthetic that I never got behind. Other literary magazines unpublish those with political takes they disagree with. Yet others publish inflammatory pieces for the sheer gusto of it, to get that internet clout bag. Internet clout rarely, if ever, translates into regular money. Conversion rates have always been terrible. Besides, there is an inflationary effect – the more people chase clout, the less valuable it becomes. So, that clout that once got you a whole hotel room, free of charge, for your job as an influencer, now barely gets you a Diet Soda, the soda of sociopaths.

You need to reflect upon the choices you have made in your life. Have you met the right people? Did you use those connections well? Some never learn, throwing away those connections like Kleenex Tissues. Here at Beach Sloth, we, too, have cut off connections to avoid clout-chasing and to ultimately show that certain behaviors will never be tolerated. They are, in fairness, few and far between, and worked very hard at breaking the pretty lax moral codes here at the site. To determine the sweetness and bitterness of moments of your life, write about them and send those finely honed sentences to the grand old folks at Contronimo Magazine.

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Doe by Conor Hultman

BeachSloth — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 01:51:46 GMT

Conor Hultman sheds light on unsolved deaths in Doe. These are not simply unsolved; they lack names. When you die, you typically keep the name you were given at birth. Yet, with an unusual death, you cannot be adequately identified. Such is the way of the world. Whole centuries have gone by with nobody being able to identify a body. Unknown soldiers are protected by known soldiers, who possess social security numbers, checking and savings accounts, all that stuff that makes a person real. Strip all that away, and you’re left with simply the body. It hurts, but that is the truth. We created numerous online profiles and numbers to make ourselves feel bigger, stronger, and more critical. After all that is gone, though, you are the same way humans were centuries ago – just some flesh and bones.

The meticulous documentation feels brutal. That is the point. Writers have explored these concepts before. Authors have read off the autopsies of deceased individuals at readings. Kenneth Goldsmith comes to mind. Other writers explore even darker impulses than Doe, though Doe is certainly a sadder story. At least with violence, there is the catharsis of knowing that ultimately, the responsible party will be caught. Shows such as Unsolved Mysteries and their ilk reside in that not knowing, the lack of understanding. Motive remains impossible to determine, if there even was one. Responsible individuals are never brought to justice. Even when the responsible party is brought to justice, not every individual is identified. Sometimes, in the case of a serial killer, the serial killer forgets everyone they killed. They’ve been killing for so long that they forget who they killed. Had they been organized, there could have been a spreadsheet, but, given they were serial killers, they were probably ill-suited for that office lifestyle.

A testament to death, Conor Hultman’s Doe feels like it would be the kind of thing read at a party to bring the mood down. Sometimes parties get rowdy, and what better way of leeching the energy out than reading descriptions of unknown dead people? I think Conor does manage a degree of sympathy, almost nostalgia, in certain instances, as these cases are ancient. Descriptions of that immediate pop culture reference, whether on the clothing or tattoos, are to show the extreme fleetingness of life itself. We do not need to go quietly into that good night, but sometimes we are not given a choice.

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Friday Fun 08.21.2026

BeachSloth — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 21:53:33 GMT

A shockingly personal genre for me for reasons I struggle to properly articulate, Bossa Nova might be one of those out-of-left-field interests that I developed out of nowhere. I began the journey wit…

three for mcrb by Kristin Lueke

BeachSloth — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 14:08:04 GMT

Survival of the fittest is how they sell gym memberships. Those memberships, let me tell you, are worth every penny. I, despite my name, am quite buff, shockingly so. Everyone at Beach Sloth is, in a form of cosmic irony. We as a people need to stand up against tyranny. You may consider a variety of things as tyranny, but for all of us here at Beach Sloth, it has always been about pop music. Pop music is the world’s ultimate salve, and it fails to challenge us. Despite the technology, few musicians participate in this sense of gleeful abandon, opting for wild times. They choose mild times instead, listening to people in their 30s sing about what high school love is, which feels particularly creepy. We can do better as a society: get fit, get buff, and eventually overthrow the entire pop-industrial complex to make way for the Polka Noise genre, as God intended.

Locusts were God’s original weapon of mass destruction. They destroyed crops. The locusts freed millions. Consider them annoying? Well, they are necessary. Sometimes, to have victory, you need to piss off your enemies. Enemies are hard to defeat, but pissing them off? Shockingly easy, and this is why I listen to grating, ear-piercing noise – for protection from the world. I am far from a predator, falling on the prey side of things. However, I relate strongly to the sloth (obviously) and the cat. I appreciate how the cat domesticated itself, allowing the world to be charmed by it. I understand the impulse completely. I have domesticated myself for mass consumption; that’s how I landed all these lucrative positions I have held over the years. Also, like the cat, I eat birds, though these are of the chicken variety, and sadly, I have no farm from which to hunt them, though that is a dream of mine.

You must have been asked about your dreams when you were younger. I still ask people about theirs. The question fascinates me. I love dreams. Dreams are often more vivid than reality, and that is because we are supposed to make our dreams a reality. You may need to downsize those dreams as needed. Feelings inside dreams reign supreme. Technology does not work in dreams, so you must confront the truth without allowing mindless distractions to cloud your judgment. Nothing can be more mindful than literally living inside your head without moving for a couple of hours, maybe a third of the day, possibly less. We share our thoughts, try to export them, try to charge for them, adjusting free advice to market price.

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Escape From Parrot Head Bay by Zachary Swezy

BeachSloth — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 00:18:30 GMT

To be a Parrot Head is to be dead inside. Boomers are angry. All the chill vibes they were promised were destroyed by them. Wealth extracted, week-long hangovers- these are the things that Boomers left our society with. Society has yet to recover from that classic AM Pop Track. Jimmy Buffett did quite well for himself, peddling escapism from the rat race.

Margaritaville is less a place and more a state of mind. Think of it as a religion, only emptier and with more of an emphasis on alcohol. I do not want to necessarily take away from the alcoholism that exists in other religions; that would not be fair. They have created traditions out of it, fine rituals. Jimmy Buffett is the L. Ron Hubbard of chillaxing. You want to chillax? Jimmy Buffett devoted his entire life to the concept of chillaxing. Think of Buddha, but he lived in Florida and lived off inherited wealth. That is what Jimmy Buffett represents.

Alcohol consumption varies from state to state. This is why America created the interstate system – so those looking for a drink did not have to suffer living in a dry county for long. Florida appears to be a state with a strong affinity for alcohol. Wisconsin is another one, though much colder. Therefore, it could be argued that, at least in Wisconsin, there is a survival mode to be met, unlike in Florida, where hydration (due to the tropical climate) is a much more pressing need.

Sugar consumption is an oft-overlooked part of the Jimmy Buffett story. He wanted, nay demanded, that diabetes become part of the lifestyle of all Americans. Thankfully, Americans are a patriotic bunch and met him fully. All those Margaritaville mixers held in various party settings certainly helped in getting everybody on board.

To escape Margaritaville – that is to waste away. The song lyrics make it abundantly clear. A true celebration of the sin of sloth (a sin I have a strong objection to), the idea is to be in this permanent haze. Paying attention is outright impossible, and there is nothing to pay attention to anyway, besides drunken ramblings and diabetic comas. Had Jimmy Buffett become President, perhaps the work ethic at the heart of the American experience could have finally been defeated by icy, alcoholic slush. Sadly, no party was ever willing to nominate Jimmy Buffett as a serious political contender, a stinging indictment of the two-party political system that continues to strangle America, all without delicious boozy concoctions.

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飛び込む jumped in 音 sound 古池や old pond 水の蛙 frogs of water by Conor Hultman

BeachSloth — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 21:46:17 GMT

Color-coded consonants spill out of Conor Hultman’s 飛び込む jumped in 音 sound 古池や old pond 水の蛙 frogs of water. You read these aloud. That is the only way to do it. I did. Hearing the words out loud serves as a translation device to get to the various threads contained within the economical lines. Hultman lets the reader interpret things, though narrative elements exist. Repetition with distinctive phrases and the capitalization of specific words ensures that there is at least a breadcrumb trail to follow.

A messy beauty cascades. You get the blurs of meaning within them, the language left deliberately ajar. The beeps your car makes when you open a door without turning off the car are an alert to make you pay attention. Repeated phrases within this collection work in a similar fashion, as there are characters left unnamed. Unlike his previous DOE, which dealt with the grisly details, he goes in the opposite direction here. Nothing is specifically described; no context is given; you, dear reader, are left to sort it out.

I appreciate the color-coding included as the title of each poem. Being color-blind, some of these colors elude me. The characterizations of these unmentioned individuals leave much room for interpretation too. Language using the word daddy has multiple connotations; it can be loving in myriad ways, wholesome and unwholesome. Likewise for the word torture, which initially has a violent meaning but due to the hyperbolic nature of online discourse, that meaning too has been stretched, made elastic, able to fit almost any possible setting.

Suggestive language emerges out of these various dollops of words. You get word choice that indicates eating, possibly something dirtier than food. Other parts repeat as if there are themes, hidden from immediate view, that only become clearer after the whole thing has been read a few times. Perhaps this is the goal, to force the reader to become an active participant within the work itself, to try and decipher meaning out of it.

Conor Hultman shows respect for his readers (always has), and 飛び込む jumped in 音 sound 古池や old pond 水の蛙 frogs of water features a constantly evolving series of meanings.

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08.16.2026

BeachSloth — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 16:51:55 GMT

Good Morning,

This is Beach Sloth. Below are this week’s albums:

Los Sara Fontán – Consuelo

Los Sara Fontán establishes the genre of post-everything with Consuelo. Everything you may want out of an album is here. Aural creatures from entirely different ecosystems coexist peacefully in an endless array of stylistic twists and turns. Among the genres listed are children’s lullabies, white noise, jungle, post-rock, glitch, modern classical, IDM, pre-rock, dub, junk noise, free jazz, acid techno, rave music, folk, and too much more to list. The emotional resonance ranges from a downright sweet, charming, melody-rich environment to taut glitch-noise funk workouts. Despite the insane range that they veer into, the album feels light and bright. Even on the darkest pieces, they maintain a degree of cautious optimism. According to their Bandcamp, they present this music as a relief (that’s what Consuelo means in Spanish) from the world’s hardships. Given how insane the world has gotten, Consuelo feels direly needed.

The musicianship here is mind-melting. Sara Fontán is the violinist, Eli Pou the drummer and electronic effects noise maker. As a duo, they craft a whole ecosystem. Entire forests grow out of these tracks over the forty minutes, which is doubly refreshing considering they are from Spain, a place rarely identified for its vast forests. You get vocal snippets, plucked precision, uncanny melodies that feel plucked from your most positive pal, and rhythms that change at the drop of a hat. All of it works, and it feels heavily organic, even when they get into the nitty-gritty of things. Rare is the album where I can point out influences from 2000s-era Raster Noton, Elektro Guzzi’s live-band techno, and the post-punk English band Pozi. Yet here we are. In a sense, Pozi offered the dramatic, bleak descent into a post-democratic, ultra-rich money-grab world, harrowingly describing how much worse it was going to get, and it, in fairness to them, got a whole lot worse. But whereas Pozi were intensely negative (with good reason), Los Sara Fontán see a bit of comfort over the horizon, for things got so bad, but we are in this misery together. And you know the saying, misery loves company. It does. We are in this together, and there are more agreements between people now than there were seven years ago, though it does not always feel that way.

Bandcamp states if you like this band, you may also like Angine de Poitrine, and indeed, the methodology is quite similar. Highly skilled, highly crafted works by a duo that manages to sound eight to nine times its size. The resulting physicality that Angine de Poitrine has is there. Fortunately for us, Los Sara Fontán appear as themselves rather than the theatrical presence of Angine De Poitrine. Then again though, Angine are as Quebec as they get, and I mean that with all kindness. You get in Los Sara Fontán All the Bastards which starts out with the Elektro Guzzi groove with drunken 7 dwarves whistling included because why the fuck not, before the strings settle into a horror theme with an overwrought bass that would make Ben Frost proud. For me, the real heart and soul of the album comes through with the longest piece, Mecanismes d’Obediència. Here there are snippets of Tigerbeat6’s punk rock approach to IDM before it descends into Alva Noto’s most funk-friendly Transrapid EP series, before going for an echoed dub that would be right at home on Farmers Manual’s debut album No Backup. Yes, it goes into all of that. After that heart, the album further lightens up, as if it needed to combat darker energy before it really embraces the light.

Artwork features a loving embrace of a grasshopper. Oddly, this fits the music’s style perfectly: silly, surreal, and magnificent at the same time. Released on vinyl, all of which has sold out, this might be one of the hopeful and experimental things I have had the pleasure of listening to all year. Music custom-made for the reassurance needed in these trying times.

SOUND AND EXPERIMENT X MUSEUM BRANDHORST

Various artists’ collections tend to get glossed over even by the most hardened of music fans. Yet, they document community. Close geographic proximity in some cases, aesthetic alignment in others. One of my favorite compilations of this variety that meets both criteria is the No New York collection, which cataloged the extreme oddity of the Lower East Side No Wave scene. A short burst of activity, and the long shadow that followed well past inception via Sonic Youth (most notably), alongside occasional bursts of renewed interest, makes it a fond, memorable experience, even if many of the compositions can be relatively difficult listening.

SOUND AND EXPERIMENT X MUSEUM BRANDHORST invites multiple artists to come together under the aural experimentation side of things. You might think, oh, a series of songs based around abstract painters and midcentury experimental composers, this will be harsh listening. When you get right down to it, the actual sounds contained within are shockingly soft, downright beautiful at times. They go less for the overwhelming and blowing your mind side of things, more for the exquisitely crafted oddities. Melodies are here, genuine, deliberate movements, and even recognizable instrumentation lies underneath it. Conversational snippets and found sounds give the experience an organic quality, even as the music is heavily steeped in the digital.

I get reminded of the late ‘90s/early ‘00s when the emphasis was on the tiniest of sounds, the microsound aka lowercase sound. While these are audible, they play with space in a similar fashion. Speakers are a must to get that full presentation that these pieces must have initially gotten all the way in merry old Germany. A nice variation of different palettes too, because the collection goes from treated piano to the hyper-elastic sensibilities of Florian Hecker at his most listenable.

The transport to another realm is the unifying theme. For the experimentation, they utilize a great deal of elegance. The emotional impact is tangible, from the gradual increase in intensity to the extreme, almost obsessive focus on detail. Many of these artists have appeared nowhere else either, which makes the experience even more fascinating. Put simply, you come into the universe about as blind as possible, since familiarity with this involves deep involvement with art installations within a very, very small sliver of the European art world, something that honestly is alien to basically anybody encountering this, which is what makes the collection all the more valuable.

Plenty of the works use the human voice too, in a myriad number of ways. I appreciate this, as vocal studies remain criminally underrepresented. Madalyn Merkey is doing her absolute damnedest to bring that to the forefront, and even Dan Deacon tried at an Orioles game singing the Star-Spangled Banner. Yet, these are exceptions. We are human beings, and celebrating life is a beautiful thing. Art can and should represent our sense of togetherness, the importance of spirit. The way that they craft the sounds feels almost ancient, circling back to the conservatory side of midcentury experimentation, and it is a deeply moving experience.

Worth seeking out, as many of the artists on here are at the beginning of their careers, and what better way to greet a person than at the beginning of a great career?

qwizzz – Tender Tangles

Faded as fuck, qwizzz explores the outer regions of long-forgotten genres on Tender Tangles. The detangler certainly might help with those tangles, but I get it. Matted hair is a hairstyle, albeit a regularly frowned-upon one. Sunburnt sadness tinges the edges of the tracks, as there’s a heaviness there, a loss that the lyrics reflect upon. Western twang behind the guitar gives a strong Baba Stiltz sort of wandering, as if qwizzz is right in the middle of something he’s trying to decipher.

I appreciate the directions-core aesthetic of songs such as two L’s don’t make a right….but three do. MapQuest gave you directions with this sort of M.C. Escher dream logic. Plus, the four periods instead of three, that’s a choice. Takes a lot of balls to use four periods to represent a pause, especially in English, a notoriously finicky language where rules guide you until they don’t. Compare that to the highly structured German, the highly structured Dutch, which is basically German with some extra consonants thrown in for good measure, particularly js and ks, and you realize the courage that’s at the broken heart of Tender Tangles.

Slowcore reigns supreme. I personally miss that humble ‘90s genre, so seeing it resurface long after its brief flirtation with popularity makes sense. Given the ego death that occurred with slowcore, it fits its belief system that it would take decades to be noticed. qwizzz stays in touch with this train of thought, hopping the trains, searching for love in all the wrong places, such as train depots and train utility buildings. I hear bits of Low’s special serene sound, the heavier tragedies of Codeine, even pieces of Elliott Smith’s output. The Smith comparison is, of course, the Roman Candles era, not the later Beatles-influenced stuff. Gentler, more folk-bound works delve into some of Red House Painters’ early discography, with a raw, almost uncomfortable level of intimacy between the performer and the listener.

The electronic samples mixed with the live instrumentation draw from Four Tet’s tenderness and Fog’s general stoned demeanor. Many of these songs go for the hushed whisper of Fog’s chart-topping The Girl From The Gum Commercial. Vocalizations mirror the tumultuous emotions, making qwizzz’s stomach all queasy. You get a sense of working through things put to music. He’s hurt but hopeful at the same time, making the experience a fascinating study on misery alongside the attempts to escape it.

Haunted twee pop creaks and odes to trying to figure one’s feelings out center qwizzz’s Tender Tangles, and I hope one day he untangles them all.

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Friday Fun 08.14.2026

BeachSloth — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 20:31:59 GMT

Friday Fun is devoted to those out-of-time experiences I get. Time is a construct anyway. I do a lot of exploration and research into stuff in the past. Here is a perfect place to put those releases …

The Softs by Jean Hartig

BeachSloth — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 12:33:50 GMT

Soft power goes hard. This is the way of winning over minds. A welcoming presence, letting the marketplace of ideas take over. Everything here rules. Ice cream features a similar softness, as do most sugary treats. Collectives embody this sense of kindness, characterized by a gentle spirit. When you become absorbed into collectives, it happens so gradually, being rocked to sleep by the community.

Love can be soft. Love can be hard. It depends on where the head’s at. Basement Jaxx sang about this, asking people where their heads were at. The ‘90s were a more peaceful time, before the world went insane. Internet connections were landline, none of this Wi-Fi nonsense. You get disruptions from the Internet regularly. Few people ever truly experience a life lived fully connected. I doubt that any of them, if ever given the chance, would select such a methodology.

Repairing relationships happens with a delicate touch. Feelings are fragile things. We love those connections to people. We crave them. Nobody is a hermit anymore. Everything requires the right degree of attention to feel properly important. Offline, nobody can see your online clout. That is another soft power, too soft to withstand even the gentlest of breezes.

Your therapist recommends breaks from the Internet. You know, the person you pay to listen to you. Friends could reduce your therapy bills to nothing by having reality checks. All of yours bounced. Debtors are there to collect. They are not soft; they need that access to cash now. Cash flow matters for reality. That is mostly what reality is based upon – the coming and going of vast quantities of funds.

Summer requires nothing more than being outdoors. Comfort zones need an escape to warmer climates. You can see your reflection in the vast seas. The sandals of the world have a similar sweetness, an approachability that the boot lacks. Boots are such oppressive footwear. Why people choose the boot over the sandal eludes me, but then, I’m a Beach Sloth, not a Boot Sloth. I hate boots, and my toes deserve to be free. Yours do too, in a completely non-foot fetish context. Please do not send me pictures of your feet. I will block you on all social media platforms.

The return can be a quiet, subtle approach, the kind of thing that happens after years of online dormancy, ready to return to the greater world, the World Wide Web. I felt the rain of the outdoors and realized I was prepared to renew my digital consciousness, though maybe less hard now, perhaps a little softer this time around.

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Please Take Your Love Away From Me by Vivi Hayes

BeachSloth — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 15:17:15 GMT

Flirting with signal durations sounds sexy to Autechre. They made a career out of it. Science of sonic architecture done right, with the temptation of collapse right on the periphery. Many different elements come together to make the doll feel precious. Vocals are of the throat-singing variety, the kinds that draw the listener into the steppes of Central Asia. When you’re in Central Asia, you read the money of 13th-century poets; that’s how wild the place is – that it celebrates poets on the currency. No other countries have the same reverence for cultural figures. Their biographies are mysteries to those who have never been to that part of the world. Far from anything else, they have remained distinctly themselves in the era of mass homogeneity.

Weeks, months, years, millennia have passed us by. The earth shakes. People live on those fault lines through fault of their own. Of all the places to live, we choose some of the most insane ones. Humanity likes to come together for basic creature comforts. Linen sheets are a hot thing for cool bodies after a hot connection. Ankles stretched out from those sheets, indicating that the sheets were stretched thin. In a way, though, we are all stretched thin via capitalism. Everyone here at Beach Sloth can attest to the hard work they put in, working so many jobs for the sake of readers like you, so feel free to become a paid member of Beach Sloth today!

Floaters are what is seen today, yesterday, and tomorrow. It is impossible to describe a floater in front of your eye to someone without the affliction. Essentially, think of trying to look at something, and it never gets clearer. Whenever you try to focus attention on it, it simply avoids detection. Such a terrible thing; it can be annoying. However, it also teaches patience. If you can handle the presence of the floater, you can handle a lot of things. That’s the purpose of the floater: to make you realize how irritating life can be. You have no control over many of the problems you perceive, so the important thing is knowing which battles to fight, which is given to you by your intuition. Thank you for failing your eyesight today, as it taught you a valuable lesson.

Ailments consume your money. What are the things that frustrate you the least? Those are the ones worth keeping. The problematic ones are the ones that require the sending amount, with or without the proper discounts.

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1411, 1001 by Mike Kleine

BeachSloth — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 18:12:20 GMT

Mike Kleine imagines a world that we fail to connect with in 1411, 1001. The consumption is conspicuous and deliberate. Various bands, such as Sunn O))), Aphex Twin, and Godspeed You! Black Emperor are referenced indirectly. Each one captures a different sense of post-industrial loss. Sunn O))) is the monolith that simply embraces a deep, booming caveman-like drone. Aphex Twin occurs when music gets broken; the melodies are in there but hidden beneath squalid percussive mess. Requiem for Earth itself is captured through the highly politically charged Godspeed, right down to the collected snippets. So, when the character notices a vast world, mentioning blockers to block out the sun, it feels shocking but not entirely surprising. We do that now; we simply call it sunblock, sunglasses, and move on.

We are spoken to by the narrator. I always enjoy how Kleine takes their characters’ point of view and messes with it. One of his books is put in the second person, referring to the reader as ‘you,’ which rules. Some of his other books feature similar, though not identical, stylistic choices. Mr. Yoshihoro is the only character named. Nobody else, just him. Individuals interested might be happy to learn that the name comes from a brand of knife. When this guide (we never learn what Mr. Yoshihoro exactly does) cuts through the fat to get to the heart of the matter, the deliberate name makes sense. His weaknesses are laid bare too, as he looks through his bags for fixes of a drug-related need.

The interesting thing about the book is what it leaves out. Whole areas are explored, a collapse on Earth occurred, and it remains unclear what precisely happened. Yet Kleine includes the type of music they listen to, Russian Techno, and the bit rate they listen to it at, 192, CD-level quality for those audiophiles in the audience. I personally prefer the 320 Gold Standard, even FLAC in a pinch. FLAC simply takes up too much room, and my external hard drive space has limits, though sometimes I wish it was infinite.

Evil things start to happen. No elaboration; he presents the information to the audience. You simply accept it. I like how the story forces the reader to create their scenarios, to elaborate upon the structure. This is fun, and I appreciate Kleine’s ability to trust in his readers to riff off the setup. Just enough is explained; the rest is left up to the reader. In this way, it feels like drugs, like jazz, in that we pay attention to everything not there.

A uniquely unusual story, fun, and with plenty of oddness that makes 1411, 1001 a narrative that could only be crafted by Mike Kleine, as he writes in an instantly recognizable way.

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Friday Fun 08.07.2026

BeachSloth — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 21:37:39 GMT

Out There by Michael Charles Hansford

BeachSloth — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 12:50:26 GMT

Words get erased. That is how they were taken care of by children. Older people used white-out. Special services, governments, they do the redaction route. Unable to state that nothing ever existed, they can state that something existed, but the public cannot handle the truth. Despite society containing more than a few good men, these redactions have continued well into the modern day. We do not understand why we can’t handle the truth, but it is what we have been told, so we have no choice but to accept it.

Our lands are lands of milk and honey. Peter BD wrote a book called Milk & Hennessy, so like that concept, but with a slight difference. The thing about good lands is that they eventually transform into the bad lands, where nothing grows. Lots of deserts define this concept. Yet, people have an easier time living in deserts, as indicated by Phoenix, Arizona’s existence, than in places of pure abundance. Rainforests house people, but nothing like those crazy urban jungles, places of concrete. Cities are cathedrals to progress, and humanity enjoys worshipping itself. We used to worship more abstract things, but, in our old age, we’ve mellowed instead. Even God did the same thing – the Old Testament God really was feeling himself, but the New Testament God got all soft, not turning people into salt, not flooding the Earth, letting his kid die, weak stuff.

Freezing water, now that’s hard stuff. Have you ever been hit in the face by a ball of ice? I have. I played Saturn in my 3rd-grade elementary School play. When they filmed a performance, I had to stand with my right side away from the camera to avoid showing the red swelling that had affected that part of my face. It stung, and, even thinking about it now, still stings. I was unable to do the line “I’m Saturn, see my rings, they are the most fantastic things” justice due to the swelling. Later, I received feedback from my parents that I was “cute” regardless of my injury, but watching me with that redness on my face was vaguely depressing.

Serenity comes after depression. We all suffer from depression and generalized anxiety. Should we? Probably, life is rough. The innocence of childhood is lost quite quickly, often hidden in jacket pockets or underneath beds. Our goal is to stay safe, safeguard ourselves from the world’s impurities, and find a lovely place to rest our heads in the evenings.

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The Last Therapy Session You Will Ever Need by Ron Arbuckle

BeachSloth — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 19:00:27 GMT

Therapy is a hell of a drug. It makes you feel good. You have a lot going on in your life, which is why it is essential that you explain that in detail with a therapist. Picking out a good therapist is hard, but with BetterHelp, help is just on the other side of the screen. Over five million people have been helped with BetterHelp, and 82% of BetterHelp patients recommend their therapist. While that may sound low, it is not. That’s a solid B, not anything my parents would have been proud of, but they would not have poked and prodded me about it.

Ah yes, my anxiety all began with parental expectations. I was raised in a loving family of eight children. We grew dandelions in the garden, and it was my job to pick them for salads. For those who have never eaten raw dandelions, you do not know what you are missing. However, when picking dandelions, avoid areas heavily polluted with heavy metals. Heavy metal might be fun to listen to, but heavy metal in your digestive system can cause a litany of medical problems, including colon cancer among many others. My parents expected high grades, and, when I did not deliver the goods, I was forced to eat lawn clippings rather than the far more restorative and nutritious dandelions. Yes, you could call me a flower child; that’s how much I loved eating dandelions, but the expectations on grades were far from flowery. Eventually, I graduated from school and, to this day, I feel the compulsion to make everyone around me happy.

Ron Arbuckle understands that for some, BetterHelp is a stepping stone. Those interested in getting further help might want to go to him. With techniques seen on infomercials and horror movies, Arbuckle can poke the brain until the pain is gone. Remember Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? It is something like that, just less emo. Your own private Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind will not star Jim Carrey and Katie Winslet; it stars the far more affable individual of yourself. Of course I could have mocked you, said you were less charismatic than those two, but you are amid a mental health crisis and need all the support you can get.

You need the services of getting your brain removed and restored. Think of a used computer. When you get it, you run a scan on it, get Antivirus Software, and clean the drives just to be sure. Why, oh why, can’t you treat your original hard drive, that of your mind, with that same level of respect? Ron Arbuckle can help; he documents it in poem form for all to browse.

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