It’s easier to describe this eight-song EP as an artwork than as a conventional recording, so I will.

Thomas Negovan, founder of the Art Nouveau and Symbolist gallery Century Guild, sang and played a 12-string guitar into a two-foot metal horn. The sound was recorded (really etched or carved) to a wax cylinder at Borri Audio Laboritories. Any mistake meant that the cylinder would have to be shaved and heated in order to begin again. No electricity was used in the recording process.

For the album, the cylinders were transferred to tape with LA-1 tube compressors. From the tape, the songs would go to United Record Pressing. The results are completely analog.

The package was released in three different packages. 500 were released on “Blood and Ink” vinyl with a wet-plate photograph taken on an 1800s camera. 100 were released on black vinyl with silkscreened art by Jeremy Bastian of the acclaimed Cursed Pirate Girl comic, and 50 on transparent red vinly with Bastian’s art. The sleeve features extensive notes by Negovan and a lyric sheet printed on animal-free parchment style paper.

Music comes across as ghosts of songs. Without the lyric sheet, you would be hard pressed to understand Negovan through the surface noise of the wax cylinders at times. The guitar occasionally disappears. Which is completely appropriate. The lyrical theme might be summed up in the subtitle of the fourth song on the first side, “Viva Las Vegas (And Love Went Away).” Love leaves you. Chances are longed for.  All you have are scratchy memories, represented by songs that are just barely there.

Which is to say that “By Popular Demand” is a thoroughly evocative piece.

Copies are available at the Century Guild Etsy.com site, where you can also find the wax cylinder single for “The Divine Eye” from the album.

Mr. M plays theremin and other oddball musical devices in the old-timey mad scientist band The White City Rippers. He also spins the amber oldies with the Lords & Ladies DJ crew.