“You must provide the other side,” intones the voice calmly, and with that the needle skips up out of the groove into the hiss-and-pop of vinyl infinity. Finbar lifts the record to see that it’s true: its reverse is completely unmarked. He nods, and gets a knife.

He digs the groove by hand for three weeks. He sings to it, and wonders if the vibrations will emerge ghostlike in the finished product. He meditates about it; he bathes it in moonlight. At last, he sets it reverently on the turntable to play.

It sounds like a giant zipper farting.