On the Record is a series of poetry chapbooks with accompanying records by authors curated by Katie & Joe. The projects are deeply rooted in collaboration between the collective and the authors.

**:: Dark Nature, Joe Carlough :: order here** ::

What would you do if you found yourself alone in the woods and everything seemed just a bit...off?

That's the story of Dark Nature, a horror story told through poetry from Joe Carlough. Dark Nature follows a person who's warned not to go into the woods, but their curiosity proves too much, finding themself watched, stalked, and eventually driven mad by the woods themselves, more-so through their own carelessness than that of any of the myriad odd occurrences and creatures they encounter.

The beautifully-rendered chapbook, presented with the poems imposed on full-color, high-resolution plant images, was designed by Joe and printed by Fireball Printing right here in Philadelphia. Accompanying the chapbook is a leaf-shaped 7" record with a 5 minute reading of the full chapbook by the author, recorded on vintage analogue technology to match the dreamy, lost nature of the poetry. The records are embossed by Joe in his home studio using a restored 1937 Presto 6DSP record lathe. The B-Side of the record features a reinterpretation of the reading by Icelandic sound artist and composter Íris Thorarins.

**:: Bone Tears, lauren.napier :: order here** ::

A reverie of the natural world juxtaposed against human nature,

Bone Tears is a 28-page, full color chapbook accompanied by a 10-inch scalloped lathe-cut record of lauren reading and singing the poems that she has set to music. The chapbook and album cover feature lauren's stunning original artwork.

To make the album, Lauren interpreted each of the poems in the chapbook as a musical composition, coaxing delicate and melancholy tones from her guitar and cello to highlight the spare beauty of her poetry. We here at Consonant Collective HQ then put lauren's recording onto 10-inch records using two different record lathes: a 1937 Presto 6DSP and a 1947 Rek-O-Kut Challenger TR43H. These lathes create records one at a time, in real time, by using a sapphire-tipped stylus that pushes the music into the discs.

Lauren has previously worked with us on cassette releases of her albums Mourning Moon and its acoustic counterpart The Mourning Moon Hangs Quietly, as well as The Desert Echoes, her beautiful duet album with Vic Ruggiero (frontman for The Slackers). We're so excited to be able put out this new album of poetry-set-to-music on vinyl.

:: How to Make Money, Ali Liebegott :: order here ::

A beautiful and stark realization of how intense life can be,

How to Make Money and Other Poems is a new poetry collection by Ali Liebegott, a poet, painter, and television writer currently residing in Los Angeles. Ali is also an accomplished exhibiting artist, and her paintings are featured on the cover and throughout the chapbook.

Ali's books include: The Beautifully Worthless, The IHOP Papers, Cha-Ching!, and The Summer of Dead Birds. She is the recipient of two Lambda Literary Awards (2006, 2008), a Ferro-Grumley Award (2008), a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry (1999), and a Peabody Award (2015) for her work on the television series Transparent. Katie has been a fan of Ali’s work for years, and we had the honor of meeting her several years ago when Katie read at the RADAR Reading Series in San Francisco, of which Ali was managing director. We were so pleased when Ali agreed to participate in the On the Record poetry series.

The beautifully full-color, 32-page handmade chapbook How to Make Money and Other Poems was designed and printed by us in-house. The book features a cardstock cover, a lovely separation page of vintage paper, and inner pages printed in lo-fi to give the colors a vintage, slightly blurred look, similar to the warmth you get on an old TV playing a VHS tape.

In addition to the chapbook, we have a clear, 10" lathe-embossed record of Ali's reading. The records are created one at a time on our vintage record machines, and the old technology gives the records a wonderful, vintage character while retaining the clarity of the poet's voice.

:: Hour of Blue Sky, Vanessa Berry & Katie Haegele :: order here ::

A few words over tea between friends,

Hour of Blue Sky was written and recorded by Katie Haegele and Vanessa Berry in October 2024, in East Falls, Philadelphia.

In 2013, we made a split zine, Winter Here, Summer Here, sending each other questions through the mail, between Philadelphia, USA (Katie) and Sydney, Australia (Vanessa). Another split zine (Mugs, 2019) and many letters followed, until Katie and Vanessa finally met in person in 2024. To celebrate, we went for a walk in the Laurel Hill Cemetery and wrote these stories.

The records were lathe cut on Katie and Joe’s Rek-o-Kut and Presto machines on a sunny afternoon a few days before Halloween.

The zine was printed in Philadelphia or Sydney, depending on which hemisphere you are in, designed and laid out by Katie and Joe, with illustrations by Vanessa.

The record comes with a zine and download.

Presto 6DSP

We are collaborating with artists to release poetry chapbooks accompanied by a record we emboss at home using a circa-1937 Presto 6DSP record maker. The record lathe works by using a sapphire-tipped stylus to emboss grooves into plastic discs, literally pushing the audio into the record.

Rek-O-Kut Challenger

We create two discs at a time. The second disc is created by a circa-1947 Rek-O-Kut Challenger TR43H. This machine also uses a sapphire-tipped stylus.

Dark Nature

Our first release in the On the Record Poetry series is Dark Nature, a horror story told through poetry, written by Joe Carlough. The story follows a man who resists the advice of others and becomes lost in the woods, eventually becoming the woods itself. The book also contains an essay from Joe about the nature of nightmares, mythology, and personal experience. The book is accompanied by a leaf-shaped record of a reading by Joe recorded on cassette using a microphone from 1970’s.

Bone Tears

The second release in On the Record Poetry is the haunting Bone Tears by poet, musician, writer, and model lauren.napier. A reverie of the natural world juxtaposed against human nature, Bone Tears is a 28-page, full color chapbook accompanied by a 10-inch doily-shaped lathe-cut record of lauren reading and singing the poems that she has set to music.