Hospital Productions – none
Sunday, February 20, 2022
Thursday, February 17, 2022
Wednesday, February 16, 2022
Tuesday, February 15, 2022
Monday, February 14, 2022
The Kiwi Animal - (2019) Mercy
DIGITAL REGRESS – DR41
Digital Regress's foray into the fabled NZ underground hops over to the North Island for two exquisite pieces of acoustic DIY and shadowy, cracked pastoralia. After a few years spleen venting at the front of Wellington art brutes SHOES THIS HIGH, BRENT HAYWARD struck out on his own, self-releasing a few EPs as SMELLY FEETt before forming THE KIWI ANIMAL with JULIE COOPER in 1982. The duo released their first album, Music Media, on Massage Records (their own imprint) in 1984. With the addition of PATRICK WALLER on cello and sundry other instruments, 1985's Mercy finds an augmented Kiwi Animal trying on what at first glance is a more refined, melancholic sound. But the group's experimental bent, largely restrained on Music Media, soon shows its hand. Pinprick ur-folk guitar themes, blinking on and off, buffeted by radio interference and toy piano; woozy bedsit slow-burns; the arresting croak of Hayward's penpal, William S. Burroughs; even a foray into dosed synth-pop: MERCY presents a unique yield of fraying, autumnal DIY songcraft. The music of The Kiwi Animal, moody and intelligent and often abruptly gentle, works subcutaneously, propelled by guitars that churn and weave – no jangle here – and a his 'n' hers vocal delivery for the ages. Digital Regress is happy to make these essentially perfect records available again.
Midnight Mines - (2019) Create Disturbance In Your Mind 2xCD
| Independent Woman Records – I.W.R C.D 005 Midnight Mines started between 7 and 10 years ago. Neither of the core duo of Sorrow & Saturday can remember now. Both endure busy lives in the tunnel hive, so the concept was hatched of occasional meetings to record spontaneous compositions, subsequently chopped up and dubbed into shape. Improv attacked with a primitive garage band mentality and a love of the endless prism of the JA version excursion - the same material re-purposed and looped to make something new. We’re grateful to Independent Woman Records for this opportunity to present a selection of tracks from our tiny universe of homemade fun. |
Scorched Earth Policy - (2020) Keep Away From the Wires CD
Medication – 004
SEP followed the Victor Dimisich band and lasted from '82-'86. Stapleton and Mary Heney continued on from VDB but the most important new element was Brian Crook... Brian Crook's guitar playing sounds like the result of a thirty day wander through a desert. It's psychedelic in the way that alchol poisoning and sunstroke are. I don't even think they have desert in New Zealand, but if they do - even 10 square feet - I'd wager Crook has toured it extensively, and frequently on hands and knees. The Scorched Earth Policy sound wasn't quite as obvious as the name - a baked, churning mixture of punk rock, 60s garage and psychedelia and a tinge of country. The lyrics began taking a turn from the arty to the bad trip and horror movie side of things. Male/female vocals and some of the most excellently raw production in my memory gave the music a sound that is somehow 1960s, somehow timeless. Not "paisley revival" bullshit, this, but an atavistic rebirth, a slavering and weird new thing from old roots.
Alastair Galbraith - (2020) Seconds Mark III
A Colourful Storm – ACOLOUR028
Seconds Mark III is the third iteration of a unique work within the remarkable, ever-sprawling discography of Alastair Galbraith: poet-dilettante, improvisor extraordinaire and one of the most important figures of New Zealand's storied DIY underground.
Commencing his collaborative musical activities in the early 1980s as part of Flying Nun outfit The Rip (with Jeff Harford and Robbie Muir), it was almost a decade earlier when Galbraith first invested in the violin, an instrument that would accompany him throughout the rest of his career. "I think it was much like the kind of thing I do now, because it was a solo occupation". Established at the end of the decade in response to The Nun's growing affiliations with major music labels, Xpressway - a relatively short-lived operation formed together with Bruce Russell (The Dead C) and Peter Jefferies - proved to be crucial in exposing the trio's activities to the rest of the world, forging relationships with US-based labels Siltbreeze, Drag City and Ajax while releasing seminal sides by the likes of Sandra Bell, Scorched Earth Policy, This Kind Of Punishment and The Terminals. It was during this time that Galbraith honed-in on his intimate, intricate style of songwriting detailed on Morse (Siltbreeze, 1993), Talisman (Next Best Way, 1995) and the first Seconds tape (1994).
Gathered from source material recorded during a fertile period of touring and collaboration and re-imagined as a brand new work, Seconds Mark III elucidates Galbraith's hushed yet commanding presence felt on Mirrorwork (Emperor Jones, 1998), Cry (2000) and Orb (Next Best Way, 2000), culminating in Mass (Siltbreeze, 2010) - his last solo album. Despite being rooted in psychedelic traditions of narcotic time-dilation, Galbraith's dealings are distinctively out of time, out of tune; dismantling and eschewing notions of song and structure for small, affecting gestures and fragmentary glimpses. The result is a world of fragile, quietly enveloping poetry embracing fleetingness and intimacy, undulating between hope and pain.
The Chills - (2013) Somewhere Beautiful CD
Fire Records – FIRECD298
For a band who haven’t released any new material since 2004 (the apparently 'stopgap' EP Stand By) and haven’t issued a full length album proper since 1996, a triple vinyl recorded live at a private New Year’s party and issued in collaboration with artist Shane Cotton may seem a slightly esoteric way to reintroduce New Zealand’s finest pop band to the world.
Yet the erratic prince of the Dunedin sound, Martin Phillips, has never been one for ease of travel when it’s come to The Chills' scattershot career. Comparable only to The Fall in terms of personnel turnover and with a tendency to allow drug issues to trip up musical talent, his, and therefore The Chills’ story is one of early tragedy (in the form of the death of their original drummer Martyn Bull in ’83), homeland successes, international cultdom and, as Phillips so brilliantly depicted on Soft Bomb’s ‘Song For Randy Newman Etc.’ a lifetime’s work doomed to be celebrated more by critics than by the public at large.
Somewhere Beautiful holds 20 songs pieced together from a ramshackle performance from the band’s current line-up (five years and counting - impressive). It’s not of the highest sound quality, nor is it perfectly played – it’s clearly a nicely brushed up bootleg and the band, in the finest Dunedin tradition, play with looseness and feeling rather than precision and directness – yet regardless, it is absolutely, unquestionably wonderful.
When Phillips cries out “I’ve no patience for anyone, anyone, anyone but you”on ‘Wet Blanket’ backed by the most glorious, tin-can guitar sound in the world it’s instantly evident that you’re dealing with a songwriter that understands yearning and desperation almost as well as he grasps melody and instrumentation.
That song’s original 7-inch b-side ‘Nothing Else To Think About’ crops up a few yards down the road and opens the gates wide – frantic, bafflingly tuneful, unerringly gorgeous and weirdly moving it’s like REM in their prime, shorn of Stipe’s veil, emotion openly presented rather than listener inferred.
If you’re after three and a half minutes of unutterable heartbreak (Christ knows what kind of New Year party this was) reach out for this here version of ‘Submarine Bells’. Led by a crushing, how-much-can-you-take piano line, Phillips whispers sonorous poetry like “I can watch in wonder as your gaze shifts past my shoulder / Just a glimpsed abyss that flashes at me”. More? Try the chorus on: “I know deep down hidden in you submarine bells chime / Gold and groaning, sunlit toning, submerged sound sublime.” It’s a mid-album moment of reflection that ranks with all-time showstoppers like John Cale’s ‘Dying On The Vine’ or The Go-Betweens’ ‘The Wrong Road’.
The 1992 nearly-hit ‘The Male Monster From The Id’ thrashes wildly and tunefully, a rampage of self-deprecation and frustration, next to the band’s iconic ‘Pink Frost’, its ‘Love Buzz’-like bass riff as rousing as it was in 1984, its woodsy, almost gothic pop sensibility as unsettling as it gets – a murder ballad slathered in regret, tarted up with tune.
‘February’ offers the rackety, rickety kind of pop that Darren Hayman used to belt out in his Hefner days – all smart, sweet and damaged. The choice to throw in a cover of Cat Stevens’ ‘Matthew And Son’ that could best and most generously be described as ‘energetic’ is perhaps the only mis-step on the whole record.
In the last quarter we get the majestic double of ‘Heavenly Pop Hit’ and ‘I Love My Leather Jacket’. The former is as jaw-dropping as it was the first time you heard it and will leave you with the same sense of wonder, joy and confusion at just how it’s possible to write a piece of pop music as perfect as this. The latter absolutely thunders – a roaring, garage-glam stomp that pays tribute to the aforementioned Bull.
Let’s not overlook the glorious packaging and prints involved in the vinyl version of this release – they are genuinely impressive and great care has clearly been taken to present the album as a document of great import both to the band and to Shane Cotton. You’ll lose no points here for trying to give your fans something special.
In the final assessment what we’ve got here are a set of pop songs that are almost uniformly brilliant, captured in a fashion that harks back to the band’s beginnings, presented beautifully and with pride. If The Chills never do get around to releasing that new album, Phillips never does get recognized as the master of melody that he is, the world never does collectively stand up and realize this band’s greatness – at least there’ll be this to play out endlessly, marvelling, eyes fixed on the stereo as another tune rises, thinking wordlessly – how the fuck does he do that?
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