"Strange Caffeine" Zine Set

Includes cassette (with unique serial number, signed bookplate, digital download code), zine, instruction card, and limited edition keychain.

Wang Heping's aural book, "Blame It On The Caffeine." An overdose of hyperactive factors, nowhere to go, blending into a twin poetry collection. Amplifying the chatter in the mind with a microphone, language transforms in stutters, loops, and magnetic tape. Poetry as text, poetry as instrument, poetry as a mutant baby. All the introverted circumlocutions are rolled into one 56-minute cassette.

The poet picks up fifteen poems from her previous work, "It’s The Caffeine Dancing," and outputs fourteen tracks. If the music of poetry is untranslatable, can syllables connect you? Will all gems eventually be recognized? What is this, speaking to the wall after the door closes? Can air and light be kept, while shadows are sent away? She asks.

The cassette cover collaborates with Taipei artist Tsai Jui-heng, authorized to use his original work "Ghosts and Robots," with binding design by artist wen gum gum. The musical style wanders between slow rap, quirky electronics, queer folk, Sapphic pop, sound collage, and ambient music. "Blame It On The Caffeine" is a narrative space opened by poetry and colliding with sound. Vocals in Cantonese, Mandarin, and English create temporal disarray, attempting to flicker between intimate language and unfamiliar syllables. The album begins with a dog bark and ends with piano music from a café, with some bright rhythms and some hesitations in between. Talking poems, accidentally sung poems, poems broadcast at parties, knocking poems. "Blame It On The Caffeine" is a variation of poetry, and also a restoration of poetry.

The original poetry collection "It’s The Caffeine Dancing" won the Chou Meng-Tieh Poetry Award First Prize and the 2024 OPENBOOK Best Book Award for Chinese Creation of the Year.

Format: Cassette
Total Length: 56 minutes 19 seconds
Languages: Cantonese; Mandarin; English
Genres: trip-hop; spoken-word poetry; electronica; alternative; acoustic
Label: So Queer Records
First Edition: Limited to 200 copies
Cassette Production: Made in Canada
Release Date: October 20, 2025