Limited Edition Vinyl Recordings & Handmade Musical Artifacts from Tucson, AZ
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Michael Nau - Marble Blur - ST 10" PIAPTK - 295


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Marble Blur (Michael Nau) - Marble Blur Instrumental 10 song 10" available in two formats. Black Vinyl with Pentagonal Glitter center label and Hand Painted Psychedelic Pic Disc.

Michael Nau is ridiculously prolific when the world is open and he is touring almost fulltime, but now that everything is shut down and touring is cancelled, he has been downright on fire. If you haven't heard the demos album he released on Suicide Squeeze, which pulled together the demos of his first two solo albums, or So On So On, his self-released home recorded quarantine album, you are really missing out. On top of that, he recorded a long distance collaborative quarantine album with Seth Kaufman (Floating Action), which we are STOKED to be releasing in the fall. And, in addition to all that, there are probably another 100 songs that he isn't showing anybody. Now that Wooden Wand has retired, Michael seems poised to take JJT's place in the PIAPTK Pantheon as the overflowing conduit to the lyrical otherworld. Anyway, enough of my yappin'.

Marble Blur - Marble Blur EP is a ten song 10" of instrumentals that Nau recorded at home during quarantine. It is available in two formats. Standard Black 10" in black sleeve with diecut glitter sticker or mega deluxe unique painted double sided 10" with trippy irridescent, glitter and/or black light paints with embedded glitter stickers inside the disc in a pic disc sleeve.

It is probably the most PIAPTK release I've released in a long time in regards to the circumstances of its' birth. Upcycling garbage, fuckups, heartbreak, redemption, more fuckups, family, quadruple the work, perseverance, etc.

So basically here is how it went:

1) 3 years ago I ordered $1500 worth of 10" CNC routed plastic circles from a new supplier and every single one of them came in warped and unusable. Unable to throw away pretty much anything, they sat in a pile on a shelf in the studio.
2) three weeks ago I had a lucid dream that gluing them back to back with opposite warps would flatten them out. And it WORKED!
3) So, I enlisted my daughter Ryer to help me paint the discs. We sat around, made all kinds of designs using the paints, had a good ol' time making about 120 copies, and watched 4 of the 8 Beethoven the St Bernard movies.
4) The next two days were my personal cutting days at the studio (sat and sun), which coincided with Ryer being at her moms', so I went down to the studio and spent about 12 hours each day cutting the audio.
5) Later in the week, I discovered that because I hadn't let the paint dry, and because we had used SOOO much paint that it had oozed out of the center hole and the edges and tiny paint flecks had gotten on the platter mat, and then onto the A-side of a LOT of the records, causing one or two (or more skips). So I play tested about 50 of them all the way through (and only found 2 usuable ones) before finally giving up and throwing them all in the trash to start from scratch.
6) And, in true me fashion, there was no fucking way I was going to let ANY project get the better of me, so I decided I was going to make them again.
7) However, because I no longer had useless plastic to work with, and each disc required two CNC routed 10" discs, meaning that each one requires not only about an hour of work to make the disc and the embedded sticker and to cut the audio, but also $13 in material cost. And since I give the artists 30% of the run as payment, just to break even and pay myself 1988 Burger King starting wages for my time (a pact that I made myself when I decided to not close down PIAPTK in 2016 (I did NOT charge myself for the 25 hours of labor wasted on my fuck up, tho)) I had to price these at $29.99. So, I talked to Michael and we decided that instead of doing 100 painted discs, we would do 50 painted and 50 standard discs at $18.99 so people could still own it for a more reasonable price.
8) Then I had to spend another grueling 24 hours cutting them again.

Sample it here: https://soundcloud.com/piaptkshop/sets/new-piaptk-releases-aug-2020

Pressing Information

ltd ed of 50 black vinyl
ltd ed of 50 hand painted unique psychedelic pic discs