The Dischord crowd has an amazing ability to form, break up, and re-form bands when most of the rest of us can’t get the first one together (trumpet players with a love of Miles Davis are encouraged to contact me, in care of this paper). From the ashes of Circus Lupus and Las Mordidas rises Monorchid, a quintet featuring former Lupus sufferers Chris Thomson and Chris Hamley. While I have no idea what post-punk means (really—isn’t everything post-punk now?), Monorchid’s sound is just that, wired and Wire-y, chiseled and Chisel-y. The A-side, “Distortion,” is choppy like Lupus but more propulsive, and Thomson’s day job as band booker for the Black Cat seems to inform his lyrics on the B-side, “Babies.” In a fine approximation of Mark E. Smith—with allergies—Thomson sings, “Babies-ah/I think you’re wastin’ my time-ah!” Monorchid’s album, Hypodermic Inglesis, a Simple Machines/Dischord split release, is due in January. The 7-inch is $3.50 from Simple Machines, P.O. Box 10290, Arlington, VA 22210-1290.—Christopher Porter