Magpie Bites/The Bonnie Black Hare

Tunng save some of their finest creations for their non-album releases, and this vinyl-only single (limited to 1000 copies) is a great example. "Magpie Bites" is an especially sprightly number for the group, with chiming, minutely spliced guitars and cheerfully fidgeting clicks and cuts, despite some singularly disturbing lyrics ("the broken sticks have found their way into your covered eyes/the rabbit's throat is open underneath the swollen sky.") The flip finds them taking on an actual bona-fide traditional English folk song, "The Bonnie Black Hare" -- a revealing enterprise more than anything for how readily it could pass for a Tunng original, though their treatment of it is more heavily inundated with electronics than most of their own English folk-styled numbers, with especially creepy, distorted vocals by somebody called "Uncle Ric Wilde." Highly recommended, if you can find it.