"Zaius Tapes is proud to announce the repress of Jim Shepard's dark, cathartic masterpiece, 'Picking Through The Wreckage with A Stick' lp. Originally released by Siltbreeze in 1995, it seemed no plans were in order to see it in print again, so we took matters into our own hands. And you will all be the better for it!

'Wreckage bears little to no resemblance to Shepard's proto metal-prog rock band, Vertical Slit. If anything it follows the trajectory of his debut lp, 'Slit And Pre Slit'. Both albums were made in the midst of grievous personal trauma & play out like Burroughsian cutups, interspersing Shepard's gallows wit against his distinctive sense of forbode. Or in the parlance of these dark times, something for everyone. I cannot think of any particular release or artist with which to pigeonhole, but it is certainly in the orbit of other unassailable iconoclasts such as Jandek, Kenji Haino, & Jackson C. Frank. As Shepard himself writes in the liner notes, "Space is deep, El Fukko.""

Zaius Tapes, 2024