Electrostatic Sensitive Device

Electrostatic Sensitive Device was a 7” EP released on November 5, 2010. It was put out by Henry Owings at Chunklet Magazine and the people at Soundscreen Design. Soundscreen Design had just released the Touchable Sound book, a graphics-heavy tome that celebrated the labor intensive 7” record packaging and design that permeated the 1990s.

Paying tribute to ridiculous, completely cost inefficient packaging, the record came in a plain white sleeve with plain white center labels that were hand stamped in black ink. The records were then placed inside a static shield bag with a square of circuit board that acted as a stiffener. The circuit boards were donated for the project by Diego Kirsch of Athens, GA. Star Crunch personally hand cut each of them. When assembled, sometimes the record ended up on the front side of the circuit board, sometimes it was on the back. The bag was sealed at the top with a dated sticker. Here is a picture of an unwrapped record posted by Flickr user Maxonemillion:


Notice how the stamped center label on the record itself is off-centered. The rest of the graphic was over-stamped onto the paper inner sleeve, a simple fact that makes each of these records one of a kind.

Here is a candid shot (lovingly borrowed from Henry Owings’ Facebook page) showing the records being assembled. Note the black ink on the center labels:



The single was limited to 300 black vinyl copies. Many were sold at the MOAM? concert at the 40 Watt Club in Athens, Georgia on November 5, 2010 (this was the source of the date on the sticker seal). The rest were bundled with the copies of the Touchable Sound book that were sold through Criminal Records in Atlanta. Here is a shot of the flyer from the show at the 40 Watt, the record release party, if you will:



These two songs were not newly recorded. They had both been released before. “Earth Station Radio” had previously appeared on the Jabberjaw No. 6 compilation box-set. “Updated Theme To Supercar” had appeared on 1998’s All Punk Rods compilation from Gearhead/Lookout! Records.

There were six test press copies of this single. The only visible difference between these and the records that ended up in the static shield bags is that the test press copies were stamped with red ink instead of black ink. Here is my copy: