EAR•WAX Newsletter 004 | September 2026
Tracklist:
- Theme of the newsletter: Shorties
- Short Audio Fiction and Music Updates!
- Jeff on the Silver Sound Sonic Dash podcast: Dishwasher
- Notable recent EPs
- Portraits of Tracy - Q: From Where Do Our Primal Instincts Originate? A: MTV!
- Michael Christmas, Chris Crack, & Girl Talk - Don’t Come to My House Sharing your Location
- Frost Children - Tweaker Poem
- Sex Mask - Sex Mask
- Micro-fiction audio drama reviews
- The Fundamental Magic - reviewed by Hannah Wright
- Depressed Horse - reviewed by Jeff Van Dreason
- Miss Shipton’s Traveling Tea Shop - reviewed by Bob Raymonda
- Coming Up on the Flipside
- Also out today - Drama Club
- September 16th - Any Major Dudes
Shorties: Short Updates!
Audio Fiction Announcements:
Cassette Tapes from August - Back to Basics: A Live Readthrough: September 22nd | Free!
Join the cast of the original queer sci-fi audio drama Cassette Tapes From August for a live reading of their 2022 Pilot episode, with Q&A to follow. Join them online for an awesome event where they will dive right into the heart of the story with a live read through session. Register here!
Sidequesting: Season 4 - Kickstarter Prelaunch
Friend of EAR•WAX (and official member of the Drama Club) Tal Minear has launched a Kickstarter for a new season of Sidequesting - and you can check it out here!
Sidequesting follows Rion, an adventurer who’s willing to help anyone out—as long as they’re not being asked to deal with the scary wizard that everyone keeps talking about. Seasons 1–3 are released, and Tal is looking to release Season 4. Help them out!
Lauren Shippen Wants your Music
Specifically, the Bright Sessions creator wants old 90s recordings from that band you jammed with back in the day. Have any unreleased demos or live recordings or studio experiments just sitting in a harddrive somewhere? Lauren wants them for her exciting new show Phantom Pulse. Learn more here!
Music Shorts:
New Song You Must Hear: Teilz - 17
I discovered this song too late to pick it as my song of the summer, but wow is it a bop.
New Single: K-Man & The 45s - "We Won't Stop"
K-Man & The 45s’ new single “We Won’t Stop” is the first shot from their upcoming album Heed The Call (out October 9). If you’re in for a raucous stomper from Montreal ska-punk lifers with serious road miles, check out the single and more information here!
Dishwasher: Short audio fiction and Silver Sound Sonic Dash Podcast
Earlier this year, I submitted a two-minute piece to the Sonic Dash from NYC studio Silver Sound. A bi-anual event, The Sonic Dash gives creators a prompt and 48 hours to create something related to the given prompt, with no established sound, music, dialogue, or AI.
The prompt provided was “Go for Broke” and the piece I created—called Dishwasher—was selected as a finalist. I spoke to Cory Choy from Silver Sound about the place for the short audio fiction piece in 2026. You can listen to Dishwasher (which was created with the help of Drama Club) and the whole interview here. A brief segment below!
Review by Hannah Wright
The Fundamental Magics is a microfiction podcast, the first few episodes telling the story of a magical engineer who travels between the great peoples of his world to install a sort of fancy video phone, in order to connect and cultivate harmony between those people. There is something terrifically Victorian about the style of narration in this show, which works well with main character Zurich’s curious but ultimately condescending opinion of the “savages” he works with. I would say that Zurich’s opinion changes over the course of the story about the dinosaur-like Pangeans he interacts with, but awe and admiration do not replace respect, and it’s hard to say if Zurich respects his new colleagues.
Mostly, it’s difficult to determine Zurich’s opinion about much because of the writing. I don’t mind sparse prose or morally gray characters, but fairly consistent misuse of words—like, words being used for definitions they do not carry—makes me think the way Fundamental Magics skims over characterization or politics or implication is more a function of inexperienced writing than building suspense or complexity. And that’s a real shame because the best part of this show is its worldbuilding.
The idea of magic schools (and thus entire cultures) based on manipulation of gravity or electromagnetic energy is fascinating, and the show does a decent job exploring how such things would affect the way people interact with their world and each other. The flowery descriptions of how a Pangean city looks are delightfully whimsical, but so much is unexplored that it leaves me wanting. Can all Pangeans do magic, or is everyone’s manipulation of gravity a function of arcane machinery? If Sofia is Zurich’s “companion” or “second-in-command” or “former bodyguard,” does that mean gender politics in this world is more equitable? And if so, why, in a world that carries rather Victorian ideas about the progression of societies? Why is it so important that Ank’s horn was fake? Does that mean that anyone could be Ank now, and that Ank has absolutely no distinguishing features? Is that meant to be suspenseful?
If you want to see a fun and unique magic system applied to an interesting culture clash, The Fundamental Magics is worth a listen, but it does require some generosity in the listening.
Review by Jeff Van Dreason
Well, I’ll say this for Depressed Horse—it made me feel depressed. I don’t think that was the goal, though. Then again, I don’t think it has a goal. I don’t know what it is. I’m not sure it even knows what it is. A Bojack Horseman spoof? A reason for its admittedly fun theme song to exist? A joke between friends with senses of humor that …exist?
Here’s the setup of every episode of Depressed Horse: A theme song that runs longer than the actual content of the episode. Then, it abruptly cuts off short (although in some episodes it plays for longer), then there’s some poorly edited sound effects—a horse galloping and the sound of a ticking clock. We’re in a therapist office. The therapist asks the patient a question. The patient answers referencing his dream about a horse. The theme song kicks in. The show is over.
Now…keep in mind I was listening to this on a platform that had ads. Ads at the beginning and ads at the end. In the case with every episode, the ads were longer than the actual content of the show, except for maybe the ones where the theme song played at length.
I would argue that it’s an audio fiction equivalent of a botched knock-knock joke, but that’s doing botched knock-knock jokes a disservice. It just feels like it exists for the ads at the beginning and the end, but the idea of this thing getting monetized seems downright insane to me. There’s no characters, no growth, no story, just this weird setup and punchlines (I guess?) that land like pianos in the middle of the ocean. Noisy, meaningless sound, swallowed by the waves before you can even register the crashing chords. My advice? You’d spend your time better listening to a therapist or nearly anything else.
Ms. Shipton’s Traveling Tea Shop
Review by Bob Raymonda (Note - Oliver Morris of Skadi’s Symphony and Adam Cecil of Local Files Club are both writers for EAR•WAX).
Ms. Shipton’s Traveling Tea Shop by Skadi’s Symphony is a microscopic pastoral masterpiece. Spending a half hour(ish) total with the titular tea-witch was dreamy and warm, even if sometimes the climate of her conversations felt a bit cold. It’s a perfect rainy day listen, with powerhouse performances (like Greta Clarkson & Karim Kronfli!), delightful music, and a beautifully still-beating heart. That the story to me felt like a composite of Miyazaki’s filmography and the caring robot tea-witch adventures in Becky Chambers’ Monk & Robot duology made it all the better.
Now, I’m entirely biased here because I’ve worked closely with Oliver Morris on Jeff Van Dreason’s The Perfect Sentence, but his work excites me explicitly because of how punk rock it is. I remember when we were collaborating on those tracks that made up the album, and Oli would talk about distributing these stories as an audiozine, and it lit my brain on fire. Rather than chasing another microscopic RSS feed, it found its way into the audience’s hands that it deserved. And now, in its new form, as a Local Files Club exclusive, chocked full of bonus commentary and footage, has taken on a whole new life.
I want to sell a script to a soulless corporation and pay my mortgage with the earnings as much as the next burnt out creative living under the hell that is capitalism, but this DIY-until-I-die kind of ethos has always resonated with me. Stories like this happen because they need to. Because they’re a balm in the midst of the other stories we’re wrestling through; made with love and care by people who admire one another and trust the process of the work. It’s weird and wonderful and I really wish more people would listen to it. It honestly has my own wheels spinning about resurrecting a potential project I’ve been toiling away at for years…
Short Blasts of New Music - Extended Plays (EPs) you should Play
-Jeff Van Dreason
Portraits of Tracy - Q: From Where Do Our Primal Instincts Originate? A: MTV!
An EP usually gives a short taste of what an artist is all about, but the latest from Portraits of Tracy feels like a double LP worth of material crammed into a handful of songs, including genre hopping song to song and within songs. Take Caught in a Jam, which starts as a R&B-tinged post-punk bop and shifts to soul singalong halfway through and back again. Endlessly entertaining and powerful—I am making it my mission to convert as many people as possible to become Portraits of Tracy fans.
Michael Christmas, Chris Crack, & Girl Talk - Don’t Come to My House Sharing your Location
Two MC’s(Boston’s Michael Christmas, Chicago’s Chris Crack), one DJ (Baltimore’s mashup master Girl Talk), and one EP that’s an instant house party. Christmas and Crack have natural chemistry, one-upping each other like two funny friends trading barbs and bars, while Girl Talk keeps the focus on them, favoring big drums and glitzy soul sample beats. A good time guaranteed for all.
Frost Children - Tweaker Poem
Recorded in one night after electronic hyperbole sibling duo Frost Children fled native NYC and holed up in a studio in Japan to escape a stalker, Tweaker Poem captures the feeling of a party that’s pushing people past the point of exhaustion but too fun to quit. Breathless lyrics and EDM beats pound into you without mercy, and if you have a pulse you can’t help but be moved.
Sex Mask - Sex Mask
Australian post-punk outfit Sex Mask pulls influences from The Fall, Bloc Party, and Interpol, and somehow sound fresh and exciting. Their new self-titled EP manages to feel both catchy and unhinged. A band to watch for sure.
What short blast of sound have you been vibing with? Email us at mailearwax@gmail.com and let us know or hit us up on Instagram, Tumblr, or Bluesky. No, we’re not on X. F X!
