Cardboard Club was founded by the Cardboard Prince – aka Bristol based musician Robert Ridley-Shackleton – in 2014. Operating with a DIY approach, releases come adorned in ramshackle black and white sleeves, photocopied collages which feature naïve doodles or photos of the Cardboard Prince flexing a bicep. The sound matches the visuals, Ridley-Shackleton’s own work released alongside that of a wide range of musicians which comprises “noise pop and everything in between”. These tracks were selected by Ridley-Shackleton from albums released in the last five years.

The Networks
“Go To The Park”
from Technolab (2023)

If it’s possible for a label with such a wide sonic range to have an archetype, then this is as good as any. While “Go To The Park” sounds like nothing else Cardboard Club has released (of course, nor does anything – the label deals in sonic idiosyncrasies and outliers) it does perfectly convey the ‘feel’ that pervades the label’s output. That is to say, a sense of surrealism emerging from the cracks that appear when you give the ubiquitous a good shake. In this case, The Networks – the music robot L30N M1.0 alongside his manufacturers, Mary and Steve – combine a low, farting bassline with the vocals of a child who becomes increasingly agitated about being allowed to swing on the swing, From the mundanity of a childhood tantrum, The Networks alchemise an abstract clatter that is next door to Adam Bohman in terms of its surreality.

Robert Ridley-Shackleton
“Come Back Special 2 Turbo”
from I Fell Far And Died Alot (2023)

Submerged in toy microphone fuzz, “Come Back Special 2 Turbo” struts a Casio keyboard beat alongside muttered interjections and half-crooned blurts from the Cardboard Prince, as though he’s accidentally dialled someone while singing behind the wheel of a car. Like Ridley-Shackleton’s on stage persona – which lands somewhere between skewed Clubland performer and surrealist performance art – it’s about dismantling familiar tropes. In this case – and in the case of the majority of his work – the tropes being dismantled are those of mainstream pop, the cheesiness of its canonical performers’ groinal woahs and yeahs highlighted by his shambolic delivery.

Lil' Pludders
“Arrest Me”
from Monkey Juice (2020)

In The Wire 494, Ridley-Shackleton explains how the properties of cardboard are central to the label’s aesthetic, not simply in terms of its ubiquity and DIY versatility, but also its physical texture, the crumple and smut of the material well-used. Lil' Pludders’ “Arrest Me” feels like a slice of that material, grubby and thin – but thin in the best way, stripped down to a single sheet of grotesque information, its alien vocals and jabs of ersatz organ registering like The Residents, but photocopied multiple times until all that remains is a terrifying sheaf of bilious horror.

Ida Coelacanth
“GRAVEYARD SLUG DROWN IN TEARS OF DEATH (excerpt)”
from GRAVEYARD SLUG DROWN IN TEARS OF DEATH (2020)

Ida Coelacanth feels like a Northern, wordier cousin to Ridley-Shackleton’s brand of curdled spoken word, a John Cooper Clarke to his Adam Bohman. Here, a series of steadily escalating non-sequiturs spit at each other without taking a breath: “A crab!”; “Are you the king of calypso?”; “Best not to look”. Like lots of stuff to emerge from Cardboard Club, it’s both amusing and disturbing.

BAND
“Small Song”
from placeholder name (2020)

The label’s output often veers towards compact vignette rather than drawn out epic; immediacy and ephemerality over the self-important pomposity of a 20 minute droner. On “Small Song”, BAND – aka Cowtown’s Hilary Knott and Theo ‘Territorial Gobbing’ Gowans – perform a sonic smash and grab, their explosion of percussive rumble and pained yowls lasting less than 90 seconds. Alongside Knott and Gowans, the label is scattered with similarly notable names in their own DIY scenes, such as Todmorden based artist Lauren de Sá Naylor and Edinburgh’s Ali Robertson.

Yol
“Spring Bird”
from Welcome 2 Cardboard Club (2024)

At the more caustic end of the Cardboard Club spectrum (or any spectrum), Yol’s rageful vignettes feel sharper and heavier than much of the label’s output. That said, they don’t feel out of place; on “Spring Bird”, Yol transposes the disappointment of not being able to fly from idle whimsy to full existential meltdown, the shriek and growl of his voice offset comically by the optimistic chirp of birdsong. If the label excels at conjuring abstraction from mundanity, Yol’s pieces are a kind of sonic Curb Your Enthusiasm, providing vicarious experience of what happens if the disappointments of unfulfilled daydreams are handled with pure, uncapped rage.

The Vending Machines
“Luxury Scarab”
from Welcome 2 Cardboard Club (2024)

That said, the label does offer more sedate moments, The Vending Machines’ “Luxury Scarab” being a prime example. It’s a radiant beauty, with banks of shimmering drones which move discretely before fusing together in heat and light. While Cardboard Club usually delivers things with a sideways slant, these straighter, more sincere moments ensure an essential tonal balance.

RRS & The Card DJ
“1980 U (snack machine 1)”
from Snack Machine (2021)

More piss-takey, crotch-grabbing rockist vocal expulsions of “Ouch!” and “Yeeeaah”, but this time with a full band. Comprising some or all of Carnivorous Plants, Wendy Miasma, The Sned and The Card DJ, alongside frontman RRS, the result is a kind of fucked up iteration of James Brown and The JBs, Ridley-Shackleton occasionally halting the rolling groove to say something about putting crystals in a time machine.

David K Frampton
“Ping Pong Tronix”
from Welcome 2 Cardboard Club (2024)

Another lynchpin of the almost-no-underground to release via CC is David K Frampton; his piece here – “Ping Pong Tronix” – is a flexing bicep of lo-fi synth and deadpan sport taunts. It’s also Cardboard as hell, the pomposity of its 1980s robo-electronics punctured by the daftness of its subject matter and lyrics such as, “I’ve been practising my serve”, delivered by Frampton in laconic sprechgesang.

SPRAT
“LIPSTICK”
from VICSAWAY (2024)

On their Bandcamp page, there are references to SPRAT sounding like Suicide and Silicon Teens, which is basically spot on. On “LIPSTICK”, the Bristol outfit set up a high energy keyboard bounce over which the vocals loll and slouch – it sounds like The Fall covering Sigue Sigue Sputnik’s “Shoot It Up”. As Ridley-Shackleton explains in The Wire 494, “pop music is my heart and obsession. My mum got me into 80s synth pop when I was a teen and it set my brain on fire”. Where other labels might opt for arch abstraction, the Cardboard Prince chooses to release pop, albeit a subverted, ‘cardboarded’ version of it.

Read Spenser Tomson’s full Unlimited Editions report on Cardboard Club in The Wire 494. Wire subscribers can also read the article online via the digital magazine library.