The Luyas - "Spherical Mattress". I considered apologising. She had gone into the other room already, had put on a record she knows I don't like. I stood in the hallway hearing it, piano-notes like a dripping tap. No, I thought, I won't. I started putting on my sneakers but then stopped, untied them. I slipped into my rainboots. The door slammed behind me. Outside, the sky was heavy. Cars snarled past me. I could feel the rubber soles of the boots and the lines in the asphalt. My heart was pounding. I wondered if she was still listening to that record, or whether she had turned it off now that I had gone. I imagined her alone at the table, eating an apple, baring her canines. I imagined me sitting at the other end of the room, leaning on the fridge, eating an ice-cream cone. Eating an ice-cream cone and grinning, maple ripple rolling down my arm. (MySpace/from the Luyas' forthcoming new album, and a 7" to be released on You've Changed)

Ast0r - "So What" (Miles Davis). The moon floated like a bored Podoboo. It was hot. Too hot. I know something was up in Mushroom Kingdom and I wasn't going to wait for that peachy minx to tell me. I patrolled the tubes, visited the usual Shy Guy haunts. No sign of the Hammer brothers or even the Phanto from the other night at the castle. Sweat dripped off my moustache like the trailing fizz of an invincibility star. I stopped in at the Toad House and got the usual runaround from Lemmy Koopa. I told him to go flip on his back. I knew Bowser had been there, even if Lemmy wouldn't say so. I was on my way out when who should I see but Yoshi, lurking behind a pillar like a goomba on a bad day. His day had just got worse. I scurried over there like a Bob-omb that was about to go, swallowed my fire-flower and then jumped on his head a couple times. I wasn't going to let this be a repeat of World 3-4. Listen you salamander, I said; tell me what happened to the raccoon-tail. I was bigger than he remembered. I dared him to stick out his tongue. [buy the chiptune take on Kind of Blue, Kind of Bloop]