Sleepytime Trio - Memory Minus Plus Minus (Hand Screened Covers + "Ugly" Vinyl)

Limit One Per Order. Orders with move than one copy of this hand-screened edition will have the extra copies refunded. In addition to hosting legendary house shows throughout the mid and late 90s, the residents at 1208 West Franklin Street in Richmond, VA, staged a recurring series of exhibition events dubbed “Art Gone Wrong.” The shows consisted of discarded, thrifted, and salvaged works that the house amassed, hung, and titled. One notably unsettling, half-finished painting retrieved near a dumpster was christened “Necktan", and became an instant classic that only grew in renown each time they hosted another Art Gone Wrong event. Over time, the painting became the Mona Lisa in 1208’s Louvre, complete with a security guard and velvet rope, and they even screened t-shirts with the image of his face, including those shitty, incomplete lips. Cut to—a couple nights before Sleepytime Trio (STT) and Four Hundred Years (FHY) were about to leave for a three month European and U.S. tour. A couple members of FHY were living at 1208, and the STT/FHY split seven inches arrived there in the mail. The cover, which was supposed to be embossed on cardstock like some of those gorgeous Chicago/Louisville band records, had been reduced (for budgetary reasons) to a photoshop effect on cheap paper, and looked…bad. Rather than concede to a compromised layout, the bands chose to weaponize the flaw. Utilizing the existing t-shirt screen, they hand-pulled Necktan’s jarring portrait directly over the cover, doubling down on the bad graphics beneath in an act of pure aesthetic defiance. Nearly thirty years later, history repeats itself. Faced with a batch of Memory Minus Plus Minus jackets carrying scrambled and incomplete lyrics (as well as an incorrect tracklist), the band didn't throw them away. Instead, they once again invoked Marcel Duchamp, treating the mistake as an opportunity for an act of "high art". Inside the gatefold, two hand-pulled impressions of Necktan—screened in vibrant baby pink and baby blue—partially obscure the misprinted text. The typos remain partially visible beneath the ink, turning a manufacturing blunder into a neon-bright, dual-tone palimpsest. Paired with chaotic and unpredictable “random remnants from the factory floor" colored vinyl that embraces pure visual entropy, the album renders the traditional concept of the 'collector's item' absurd—elevating flaws in the production process into a glorious visual celebration of failure. Limited to just 100 copies available through both Solid Brass Records and Lovitt Records.