Grouper - (2021) Shade LP

 

Kranky – krank 233

Liz Harris's 12th album is a heart-melting anthology of songs written over the last 15 years. A mixture of 'Dragging A Dead Deer...' emotional rawness and 'AIA' -style tape-dubbed sonic fog, it's a timely reminder of why she's one of the crucial underground voices of the era.

When Harris's early Grouper material began to emerge thru the cracks in the wall of wyrd folk CDRs and hand-made cassette tapes, we could already sense it was something different. There was a bare quality to it that set it out of time: this was music that sounded as harmonious with Slowdive's melancholy shimmer as it did with the Olympia and Washington DIY set. 'Shade' is a career-spanning set that accurately charts her evolution thru the years, running a course that broaches ambient music, Laurel Canyon folk, grunge, dream pop, and everything in-between.

Her music is unified by its unique spirit and personified by Harris's voice - a ubiquitous element that's sometimes an elasticated, ghostly whisper and at others a spiraling coo. On opening track 'Followed the ocean', it's an assured driving force, but her powerful tones are reduced to glowing cinder beneath the burn of overdriven, tape-distorted noise. Words are present, but indecipherable - it's like hearing a song taped from radio and endlessly re-duplicated for heightened ghosting. The fog dissipates on 'Unclean mind', harking back to 'Heavy Water' with a grunge-y strum and angelic moans.

'Shade' is a good title, because the interplay between openness and insularity lies at the heart of the album. From track to track is sounds as if Harris is revealing herself and then retreating under a blanket of tape hiss. 'The way her hair falls' is so clean you could hear a pin drop, making out every nuance in Harris's voice. The biggest surprise is the album's closing track 'Kelso (Blue sky)', where her vocals are finally given a grand treatment, drenched in reverb but completely tangible. The result is a glimmering slice of lingering acid folk that sounds divorced from time and space.

CTM & August Rosenbaum - (2021) Celeste

 

Posh Isolation – Posh Isolation 254

Vanessa Amara - (2021) Music For Acoustic Instruments & Feedback

 

Posh Isolation – PI-257

Jim O'Rourke & CM von Hausswolff - In, Demons, In!

 

iDEAL Recordings – iDEAL189

'In Demons In!’ offers a transfixing peek behind the curtain of pure black hole drone dynamics by visionary collaborators Jim O’Rourke & CM Von Hausswolff, meeting on common ground after 26 years of international correspondence. It amounts to a vitally definitive entry in both artists’ catalogues, marking right up there with the most engrossing wonders of O’Rourke’s Steamroom volumes, while manifesting some of the most fascinating results from Von Hausswolff’s ongoing investigations into drone music’s paranormal properties. In other words: it’s Grade A+ zoner music, essential listening for followers of Roland Kayn, Jaap Vink, Deathprod.

Initiated in Tokyo 2016 and completed over the proceeding two years in Japan and Sweden, the uncompromisingly adventurous results are galactic in scope and visceral in presence, conjuring scales of abyssal bass and diffused, atomised, abstract dark matter that make the listener feel like a speck of stardust floating in infinity.

Using sound as a magickal tool for psychic transport and to finely model notions of the metaphysical that typically elude human comprehension, these two extended pieces feel to collapse billions of years into a glacial moment. Location recordings made in Kathmandu lend a barely-there iridescence, like microbial filaments flickering in the endless darkness, to their plunging, subharmonic basses and vaporised mid-upper registers, where spectral forces comb thru the piece to very gradually alter the weightless keen of our perception.

It’s a masterclass in Cybernetic drone, a universe of sound created in a closed system gradually shifting within its own parameters, mutating into infinity.

Inferior Passions - (2021) The Patrician CS

 

Chondritic Sound – CH-380

Stephen Cornford - (2015) Empty Reels CS

 

Vitrine – VT14

John Wiese - (2020) Magnetic Stencil 1 CD

 

Troniks – TRO-314

Jeph Jerman - (2019) Site Map CS

 Throne Heap – TH035

Kam Hassah - (2012) Private Conversation Vol. 1 CS

 

Joy De Vivre – JDV014

Schakalens Bror - (2018) Omelette Of Disease LP

 

Förlag För Fri Musik – 008

Monokultur - (2017) Ormens Väg LP

 

Mammas Mysteriska Jukebox – MMJ002

Private Arms - (2017) Your Words Drip Like Wet Saliva LP

 

Förlag För Fri Musik – 006

Oroskällan - (2020) Två - Ett Barn Glömmer Ingenting LP

 

Förlag För Fri Musik – 017

Loopsel - (2019) Sounds From The Spiral

 

Amatör Kassetter – 002

Leda - (2017) Gitarrmusik III-X LP

 

Förlag För Fri Musik – 005

Amateur Hour - (2016) Amateur Hour LP

 

Förlag För Fri Musik – 003

Blod - (2017) Leendet Från Helvetet LP

 

Förlag För Fri Musik – 007

Blod - (2018) Knutna Nävar LP

 

Förlag För Fri Musik – 010

Knutna nävar was a communist progg band from Gothenburg, Sweden. They were active during the 1970s.

Blod - (2021) Missväxt LP

 

Grapefruit Records – GY11-5

Blod is the solo project of Gustaf Dicksson (Enhet För Fri Musik, Oroskällan), a prolific and crucial figure in the Swedish Underground scene radiating out of Gothenburg and centered around a number of independent labels and including bands such as Enhet För Fri Musik, Monokultur, Oroskällan, Loopsel, and Neutral. Blod has released various home-recorded cassettes and a handful of LPs since 2014, all mercurial in nature, exploring various facets of Dicksson’s preoccupations. The melodies borrow from tradition and possess a lonesome quality inspired by Swedish melancholy, close relations, and white trash culture. Combined with intentionally banal artwork, the experience can be beguiling and sometimes bleak but at the same time warm and humorous.

Missväxt is Dicksson’s greatest work yet, exploring the myth of ancient Swedish being and misery but with a sound that is uniquely ecstatic. Inspired by medieval folk music, it’s reminiscent of Fairport Convention’s marriage of traditional folk music and psychedelic rock.

Missväxt features guest appearances by Elin Engström (Loopsel, Monokultur) on drums, Astrid Øster Mortensen on vocals and flute, Joakim Karlsson (Facit) on production and synth, and Magnus Jäverling on flute.

Roy Montgomery - (1998) And Now The Rain Sounds Like Life Is Falling Down Through It CD

 

Drunken Fish Records – DFR-41

Perhaps, of all the records New Zealand guitar wizard Roy Montgomery has ever released, this is the one talked about least. Not because of its lack of quality -- it's as good as any of his other material -- but because musically it is also markedly different than his other material. While the swirl and weave of layered and knotted guitars is everywhere -- it's the man's trademark after all -- so are a number of vocal tracks that express sorrow, grief, survival, and transcendence; these are the first vocal tracks Montgomery has issued on a solo record. Also featured here are sparse, haunting piano tracks such as "No, She Never Made It to Japan," which opens the album, and "The Opportunity Passed Us By in Less Than a Minute," as well as open echo effects not hidden by other sounds. There are also more straight "rock" runes on this recording, such as "Down From That Hill and Up to the Pond," where multiple layers of guitars go striding through intricate chord progressions and engage a tape looped lead line and piano, which carry listeners deep into the track and never allow them the courtesy of leaving by a back door. Percussion, as well as found and natural sounds, is employed in the creation of other sound sculptures like the title track. Montgomery's vocals are put to improvisational effect on "Kafka Was Right." Here, his deep, plaintive tone makes sounds like a Jew's harp, while another, higher-pitched voice basically weeps throughout the song as a textural backdrop. Guitars and keyboards make the effect more tenuous; they sound as organic as bells and whistles as they flit through the mix like life fleeting before the eyes of a condemned man. The track "A Little Soundtrack for Epic," for the late Epic Soundtracks, is another grief song, albeit an unconventional one. Progressions of guitar lines enter after a solid backdrop of feedback has been established. The tension between the sweet dark melody line, a drone, and the noise is excruciating but exquisite. The final two tracks, beginning with "Ill at Home," offer views of how wide the experimental streak on Montgomery's back is. Here hushed, indecipherable vocals are sifted through a mix of distorted pianos and guitars at a snail's pace for over 12 minutes, only to have the entire thing completely turn inside out for the two and a half minutes of "In Another Time," which closes the set; simple open-tuned chords are played through one another in a collage that is airy and light as a summer breeze. It shifts the feelings of alienation, grief, and resignation into a space where hope itself is once again possible..

Thorium Remix 2011

 

2h 23m 3.83GB .VOB file

While researching means of powering a NASA space colony, Kirk Sorensen stumbles across ORNL's Thorium Molten Salt Reactor. History of this design is recounted as well as the politics (and lack of weaponizable byproduct) which killed it.

Chris Heaphy / Roy Montgomery - (1999) True CD

 

Kranky – krank033

In a way, True almost the third Dissolve record partnering again with Chris Heaphy (lead singer, guitarist for brief NZ mid-80's garage band, The Remarkable's). Also sounding more relevant or interesting today than in 1999, showing either signs or my aging compromise, or most likely, my increasing patience and palate for the more soothing and new found attention for the small details (I am hearing here all sorts of amazing backdrop noises now, check the amazing and all too brief "Picnic Time" - gorgeous). Recorded Sept-Oct 1996, tracks 4-7 featuring the duo of Chris and Roy. All remixed by Roy in 1998. Debuted in theatre in October two years prior shortly after being completed. A highly understated work, great to revisit here again now. I'm fairly certain I've never shared this one before just ripping tonight for what seems like the first time. Another standout.

--------------------------------------------------------

"With True, Montgomery has turned to composing music for the theater to accompany acting, dialogue and stagecraft. True matches the introspective, unfolding melodies that graced Roy Montgomery's previous albums with stark, edgy guitars and some stripped down melodies. Montgomery and Heaphy bob and weave their guitars across the soundfield or unravel wiry melodies. True is an involving, sometimes uneasy listen."

Bruce Russell & Roy Montgomery - (2012) Split LP

 

Grapefruit Records – GY2-01

Roy Montgomery: In keeping with the aesthetic principle at one time espoused by the Residents and their Theory of Obscurity (as applied to the work Not Available) which dictated that work should not be released until its makers had completely forgotten about it I had notions of using this 1994 piece as one side of an album at the time but then I forgot about it for a decade or so. It came to light after the earthquakes of 2010-2011. Recorded on Tascam Porta One using same gear as that used for Scenes from the South Island and Temple IV.

Bruce Russell: My piece was recorded at a show I did with xNoBBQx (I think that’s the correct ‘spelling’) in 2009 at the High St Project, and alternative artspace in Christchurch, NZ. You can hear the high ceiling and wooden floor. Live guitar, through two signal chains and two amps. Now that building, like so many in this city, has been demolished in the wake of our 10,000 earthquakes.

Undertheradar Review:

It’s an odd irony that many local bands or musicians, well known here, crave and struggle to achieve international recognition while on the flipside there are New Zealand artists who are better appreciated overseas than they are at home. This release is an excellent example of such phenomena. Thanks to the American label Grapefruit Records Club, we now have this excellent vinyl-only pairing of two of New Zealand’s finest experimental musicians: Roy Montgomery and Bruce Russell.

Arguably the lesser known of the pair, Roy Montgomery nonetheless posses a rich and lengthy musical history. Initially a member of the Pin Group, on Flying Nun in the early 1980’s, he was later in Dadamah before embarking on a solo career that produced a number of fine albums including 1995’s Songs of The South Island. His solo guitar work is typically lo-fi in production and consists of layered drones and chiming guitars. Montgomery’s contribution here Tarkovky Tone Poem is true to form. Lush and beautiful, Montgomery’s music is inviting and peaceful. There is a mesmerizing and meditative quality to his sound that effectively suspends time, recalling the early works of American minimalist composers such as Terry Riley or La Mont Young.

Bruce Russell is well known for his work with the Dead C but has had a strong involvement with local music going back as far as the late 1970’s, including label work as well as music-making. While consist with the theme of homage to dead greats, Russell’s side entitled Mistah Chilton, He Dead has little in common with Big Star. Recorded live in 2009 at the High St Project in Christchurch, the recording has a spaciousness not confined to just the environment it was made in. While naturally abrasive, Russell is on fine form on this occasion and this piece of howling freeform noise is typified as much by its restraint as it is by its excesses – it is dynamic and oddly tuneful. It’s a different world from the one evoked by Montgomery but one possessing a certain rugged beauty that is charming nonetheless.

This really is a good split. If you are already an aficionado of improv/noise music, then this is an excellent pairing; it is quite remarkable how complementary the two sides are, despite the stylistic divergence. If you are merely noise-curious then this could be an excellent inroad. Either way, this is a refreshing reminder of our often-over-looked greats.

Roy Montgomery - (2018) Suffuse CD

 

Grapefruit Records – GY8-1

Despite praise and acclaim throughout his career, Roy Montgomery
hates his singing. From his point of view, it’s done out of necessity,
when he doesn’t have anyone else around to substitute. Roughly one
quarter of Montgomery’s epic multi-album 2016 release R M H Q had
his singing, and those are his least favorite tracks.
Grapefruit has done the best they can to argue that his basso
undertones are the center of his appeal throughout his entire body of
work, from the first The Pin Group single on Flying Nun in 1981,
through his work in Dadamah, Dissolve and on to his legendary
’90s solo releases. However, is it a surprise he jumped at the idea
of composing an album for other vocalists? This began as a series
of alternate takes of the material on Tropic Of Anodyne, the tracks
with vocals off his last release. That concept morphed into assembling
vocalists to sing on new songs, and he conceived instrumental material
that would fit each singer. Half of the songs came together, resulting
in Suffuse.
The album charts a slow progression from those who share
similarities with Montgomery’s rumbling vocal technique to those
who come at singing differently, with minute contrasts throughout.
Haley Fohr (Circuit des Yeux) and Jessica Larrabee (She Keeps
Bees) bring the first two tracks, with Katie Von Schleicher following
with a raw expression of emotional loss, and the sisters Clementine
and Valentine Nixon (Purple Pilgrims) expressing emptiness
by stripping away words, weaving their voices together through
Montgomery’s elastic webbing. Julianna Barwick adds drive and
nuance to the foamy sonic waves of “Sigma Octantis,” as “Landfall”
crashes in slow motion chaos over Liz Harris’s (Grouper) multitracked
layers. These compositions generously embrace their guest
leaders, and for the first time in his career, Roy Montgomery has made
a cogent artistic argument as to why he shouldn’t be singing these
songs himself.

Emma Johnson & Roy Montgomery - After Nietzsche

 

Aguirre Records – ZORN62

After Nietzsche is a response to Nietzsche's assertion in Twilight of the Idols that “Without music, life would be a mistake”. Roy Montgomery and Emma Johnston recast this as “Life is a mistake set to music” and they take issue with one of Nietzsche's principal tenets concerning fate.

After Nietzsche is in a way the sister-album to last year’s Suffuse, where Montgomery composes songs for guest vocalists. Only this time it’s in close partnership with Emma Johnston. Montgomery's distinctive, interweaving guitar play is set as background for Emma Johnston’s angelic vocals & experimentations. Swimming through the four tracks of the album, it’s surprising to notice how different they are. The opening track could have been plucked from one of Montgomery’s 80s projects, while the rest of the a-side takes us into more shadowy territory, Realm Of The Senses with it’s slow strumming and echoing vocals evokes Grouper (who points to Montgomery as being an influence of her work) and the title track After Nietzsche with dramatic vocals and strings, cleverly builds up to a climax that never happens. The last song clocking in at 21:10 is a post-postmodern duet between the two musicians in a dark philosophical mood. Tell me does it get any better than this?

Roy Montgomery - (2016) R M H Q: Headquarters 4xCD

 

Grapefruit Records – GY6-8 It’s been over a decade since Roy Montgomery’s last album, and R M H Q is a hell of a return. This release contains four distinct records of new material. Listening to any of his work is a visceral experience—repeating phrases swell and decay, immersing the listener in the cyclical narrative of his compositions. Montgomery was in his rock band period in the eighties, when the dark, minimalist post-punk of The Pin Group lead into the gloriously open-ended freedoms of Dadamah. After a quiet spell, he returned in the late nineties, producing towering spires of guitar lines that exposed fragility between the strums. With his solo releases and in collaboration with Flying Saucer Attack, Bardo Pond (Hash Jar Tempo), and Chris Heaphy (Dissolve), his focus shifted from the truth-mining of rock music to epic celestialism. His ambitious yet humble tracks outstrip their origins, and Montgomery toured the world sitting cross-legged on the floor, playing twenty-plus-minute compositions. A long period of silence followed, marked only with a split album with Grouper (who lists Montgomery as a primary influence), involvement in Torlesse Super Group, and a couple thematic variations serving as soundtracks for films. Instead, he focused on his personal and professional commitments. Unfortunately, two horrific events preceded his return: the Christchurch earthquakes of 2011 condemned Montgomery’s entire neighborhood save for his home, stripping his street of a community; and, as a volunteer firefighter, he saw first-hand the destruction and loss of life in the city center. Additionally, since 2014, illness in the family has dominated his life. Self-expression once again demanded an outlet. R M H Q is four albums conceived and recorded over a very short period, each of them carrying a distinct focus and mood.

Roy Montgomery - (2018) Refuse LP

 

Grapefruit Records – GY8-2

Refuse is a limited LP edition of tracks that didn't make Suffuse. They were made for specific vocalists, like the songs on Suffuse, but things didn't work out for some reason or another. This LP is strictly limited to 70 copies.

Roy Montgomery - (2021) Island Of Lost Souls LP

 

Grapefruit Records – GY11-1

Island Of Lost Souls is the first of four new albums by Roy Montgomery coming out in 2021 to commemorate Montgomery’s forty years in music. His debut release was also Flying Nun’s first, the Pin Group 7-inch from 1981. Roy Montgomery, a pioneer of the NZ underground, believes there is always new sonic terrain to investigate. His latest album for Grapefruit marks forty years of rigorous exploration in which he’s managed to navigate disparate genres, scenes, and atmospheres, always at the forefront of experimental independent music. Island Of Lost Souls follows his acclaimed 2018 LP Suffuse—a novel departure in which he consigned all vocal duties to ambient / experimental peers Liz Harris (of Grouper), Julianna Barwick, Purple Pilgrims, Haley Fohr (of Circuit des Yeux), Katie von Schleicher, and She Keeps Bees. But the veteran evolves again. On this release Montgomery creates resounding, aerial compositions for guitar. Where some might be inclined to relax and lean into their legacy at this stage in a sprawling career, Montgomery’s new music continues to seek and challenge, moving like the eye of a storm. This latest album cries out like a chorus, though there are no vocals on the record. Its tracklist instead builds upon the lonesome and polyphonic dimensions of guitar in order to express universal feelings of communion and isolation, resisting conclusion but never resorting to fatalism. Life is all about navigating these contradictions and everyone is with Montgomery on this island whether they’d like to admit it or not. Here, the artist has created a work of wisdom and grit, a searing beauty, a new masterpiece for an uncertain and restless time.

Roy Montgomery - (2021) The Best Forgotten Work LP

 

Grapefruit Records – GY11-2

Roy Montgomery, a pioneer of the NZ underground, believes there is always new sonic terrain to investigate. His latest series of albums for Grapefruit marks forty years of rigorous exploration in which he's managed to navigate disparate genres, scenes, and atmospheres, always at the forefront of experimental independent music. To commemorate, Grapefruit will be releasing four new Montgomery albums in 2021 which can be purchased individually or via subscription. The first installment, Island of Lost Souls, arrived to great acclaim in January. The second and latest album His Best Forgotten Work features Montgomery’s rare, brooding vocals across nine gorgeous tracks recorded from his home in Christchurch, New Zealand.

His Best Forgotten Work follows the intense, all-instrumental Island of Lost Souls. It departs in spirit with darkly buoyant variations on popular songs, including two highly anticipated covers of legendary songs by the Carpenters (Superstar) and Tim Buckley (Song to the Siren). Montgomery shows us that these influences aren’t such strange bedfellows after all; one need only listen closely.

Where some might be inclined to relax and lean into their legacy at this stage in a sprawling career, Montgomery’s new music continues to seek and challenge. His compositions are beautiful as well as disconcerting, and often speak to precarity and dread. His Best Forgotten Work is a title with tongue planted firmly in cheek, alluding to the artist’s position of enjoying a peculiar bit of fame in relative obscurity. But listen to his dry wit and rich voice, you’ll find it isn’t easily forgotten.

Roy Montgomery with Emma Johnston - (2021) Rhymes Of Chance LP

 

Grapefruit Records – GY11-3

Roy Montgomery, a pioneer of the NZ underground, believes there is always new sonic terrain to investigate. His latest series of albums for Grapefruit marks forty years of rigorous exploration in which he’s managed to navigate disparate genres, scenes, and atmospheres, always at the forefront of experimental independent music. To commemorate, Grapefruit will be releasing four new Montgomery albums in 2021, which can be purchased individually or via subscription.

The third release of the series, Rhymes Of Chance, is the darkest entry of the four. Songs sound particularly spacious and minimal, with two tracks centering forlorn melodies around trusty collaborator Emma Johnston’s singing and two others sung by Montgomery himself. While Side A presents the six-part “Rhymes Of Chance” suite, Side B’s “Aspiratory” holds a clue to Montgomery’s approach on this record; a floating dirge stretches time, much in the manner Mark Hollis (to whom the song is dedicated) approached music.

Marisa Anderson - (2013) Traditional and Public Domain Songs LP

 

Grapefruit Records – GY3-4

Solo guitar renditions of traditional and public domain songs. Recorded August 2013 for Grapefruit Records, with the support of the KBOO Artist In Residence program.

Simon Joyner - (2019) Pocket Moon LP

 

Grapefruit Records – GY9-4

“‘Singer-songwriter’ is a frustratingly confining term; to truly understand exactly just how confining, look no further than the recorded works of Simon Joyner, an artist whose work consistently transcends the narrow parameters of genre classifications and record shop bin cards. Though his music has always honored, reckoned with—wrestled with—the tradition set forth by his songwriting forebears (Cohen, Van Zandt, Ochs, Dylan, Reed to name a few), Joyner can always be counted on to defy expectations; as a lyricist, melodicist, and arranger, Joyner likes to keep us on our toes. “For his new album Pocket Moon, Joyner opted to engage in a risky artistic challenge. Instead of leaning on his fertile pool of Omaha musicians (the amorphous Ghosts band), he asked friend and frequent collaborator Michael Krassner to assemble unknown players on his behalf specifically for this recording. He then traveled from his home base to Krassner’s ‘7-Track Shack’ studio in Phoenix to record the album, abandoning the literal and figurative comfort zone of old habits and home field advantage. Simultaneously sparser and more immediate than 2017’s obliquely topical Step Into The Earthquake, Pocket Moon is instantly one of Joyner’s finest albums since his redoubtable 2012 double album masterpiece, Ghosts, or to some ears the excellent, sonic 180 he managed with his follow-up, Grass, Branch & Bone. Krassner’s wrecking crew is sturdy, versatile, and complementary. Utilizing a wide range of instruments and textures, the band contributes additional nuance to each of the ragged, sublime songs here. The result is another song cycle stylistically unified, dynamic and rich.”

Dadamah - (2020) This Is Not A Dream LP

 

Grapefruit Records  – GY10-1

This Is Not a Dream is a double album collection of every song released by the legendary Dunedin, New Zealand quartet Dadamah, including the This is Not a Dream LP, and their three 7” singles and one unique compilation track. Grapefruit’s release is a thirteen song collection with the full album on one LP and all the 7” and compilation tracks on the other. Inspired by the Kranky label’s CD compilation of Dadamah’s existing catalog in 1994, this vinyl version includes two additional songs from a posthumously released 7” and it’s been sequenced and designed by the band. Before Dadamah, Peter Stapleton played in The Terminals, Vacuum and The Victor Dimisich Band as well as The Pin Group with guitarist Roy Montgomery. Singer Kim Pieters and organ/synth player Janine Stagg had never been in a band before Dadamah.

Dadamah only played live three times, devoting their efforts to four-track recording. Nevertheless, word managed to get out about the band and they were asked to contribute to the 1991 Drag City single “I Hear the Devil Calling Me” which featured twelve songs hovering around one minute each by a who’s who of the then current New Zealand underground music scene. They released their only album in 1992. Jay Hinman (currently of Dynamite Hemorrhage) noted Dadamah's solitary place in the NZ underground in his Superdope fanzine:

"Dead C. might blare and scrape, the Terminals might twist and wind, but Dadamah positively shimmer with beautifully earthy lo-fi Velvets/Ubu sound."

Limited edition singles on the Seattle-based Majora label followed the LP, earning Dadamah praise as "one of the most overwhelmingly great exponents of layer-shifting drone-on master-rock" in the Forced Exposure catalog. Roy Montgomery's soaring droning guitars were offset by Janine Stagg's stabbing organ and gurgling moog synths, and Kim Pieter's vocals ebbed and flowed, somehow evoking Patti Smith, Ian Curtis, and David Thomas simultaneously.

"Synth woosh, organ-wheez, possessed femme voice over, cavernous man-voice under, guitar and drums punch through... into where? Your dreams friend, if you let 'em."

------------------------------

After Dadamah, Roy Montgomery went on to form Dissolve and Hash Jar Tempo as well as maintaining his eclectic solo career which continues to feature intense collaborations like those found in Dadamah (find other Roy Montgomery titles on Grapefruit). Peter Stapleton and Kim Pieters formed Flies Inside the Sun and Peter continued his work with The Terminals and his independent label Metonymic which released tons of experimental and underground New Zealand music through 2009.

75 Dollar Bill Little Big Band - (2020) Live At Tubby's 2xLP

 

Grapefruit Records  – GY10-3

NYC’s 75 Dollar Bill began its prolific career in 2012, after percussionist Rick Brown – a veteran of the indie underground (Fish & Roses, Run On, V-Effect) – and noise scene guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Che Chen – connected via MySpace. Since that initial jam session, when Brown began experimenting with his signature plywood crate drum rhythms, they have released 3 LPs and a clutch of self-released cassette and digital releases. Last year’s 2xLP I Was Real received serious critical acclaim – The Wire calling it 2019’s Album of the Year.

On their first live album, Live at Tubby’s, 75 Dollar Bill assembled a unique “little big band” [Sue Garner on bass, Cheryl Kingan on sax, Steve Maing on guitar, Jim Pugliese on percussion and Karen Waltuch on viola] for the small Kingston, NY club show. Recorded on the last day of their spring tour, the record puts a new perspective on themes from their body of work: a little more intimacy, a little more freedom, a little more controlled chaos. Brown’s idiosyncratic rhythms are all the more hypnotizing in Tubby’s cozy setting, and Chen’s furious guitar work cuts and hums with sounds seemingly only attainable on stage. It's an album both challenging and immediate. The expanded 75 Dollar Bill's affinity for improvisation and the avant-garde even leads to a rousing take on the Ornette Coleman classic, 'Friends and Neighbors' that feels right at home in their own repertoire. The listener can't help but feel present and part of the communal joy and catharsis being shared here in this room. This performance at Tubby’s turned out not only to be the last show of their tour, but the last show possible as the pandemic hit. Originally offered as a digital-only release on 75 Dollar Bill’s Bandcamp, Live at Tubby’s now documents a highlight and closure of sorts; this kind of musical improvisation and community interaction being on hold for the foreseeable future. The double LP on Grapefruit will have to tide us over until it can all happen again.

"75 Dollar Bill has always been a duo of Che Chen and myself, but many of our most satisfying and just plain fun experiences have involved some (or almost all) of our great crew of friend musicians who've worked with us for years and who play on our studio recordings, like 2019's I Was Real (Thin Wrist/Glitterbeat). Live at Tubby's presents a couple of sets recorded just as Spring and the coronavirus were arriving on the scene. We didn't plan for this as a “Little Big Band” concert, but we took advantage of timing and geography - as well as the fact that “everybody knows how to play WZN #3” - and sent out a call for any who could make it to come to Kingston, NY for the night's blowout, the last gig of a short tour we'd done as a duo. The material comes from I Was Real and its predecessor Wood, Metal, Plastic, Pattern, Rhythm, Rock plus a cover of the great and inspiring Ornette Coleman's song “Friends and Neighbors.” Hopefully, you'll agree it turned out pretty good – at the very least, it should be obvious that we had a good time! We sure do miss playing music with our friends and for our neighbors."- Rick Brown

VA - (2017) Milk Of The Tree, An Anthology Of Female Vocal Folk And Singer Songwriters (1966-73) 3xCD

 

Grapefruit Records – CRSEGBOX039

Notwithstanding one or two isolated exceptions, it wasn’t until the mid-Sixties that independent female voices really began to be heard within the music industry. The feminist movement naturally coincided with the first signs of genuine musical emancipation. In North America, Joan Baez and Buffy Sainte-Marie emerged through the folk clubs, coffee-houses and college campuses to inspire a generation of wannabe female singers and musicians with their strong, independent mentality and social compassion, while the British scene’s combination of folk song revival and the Beatles-led pop explosion saw record company deals for a new generation of pop-folkies including Marianne Faithfull, Dana Gillespie and Vashti Bunyan.

Within a year or two, the burgeoning counter-culture saw the arrival of psychedelia and folk-rock as the likes of Pentangle and (in the US) the Linda Ronstadt-fronted Stone Poneys emerged from the clubs and into the charts. But in America at least, burnout soon set in, and the era’s excesses duly gave way to a quieter, more reflective musical and lyrical style. The LA rock and folk communities decamped to Laurel Canyon, in the Hollywood Hills region of the Santa Monica Mountains, to chill out in bucolic, soul-searching introspection. With Sixties stalwart Jackie DeShannon’s 1968 album Laurel Canyon leading the way, workers from the hit song factories of the publishing companies joined the dyed-in-the-wool folkies in a new movement of singer/songwriters that reached its zenith in 1971 with the release of seminal albums like Joni Mitchell’s Blue and Brill Building refugee Carole King’s multimillion-selling Tapestry.

In the last two or three years of the decade, the demarcation lines in British music had become similarly blurred, with amplified rock bands becoming attracted to the more pastoral strains of the folk idiom, and traditional folk club performers developing an affinity with the underground. Folk clubs evolved into Arts Labs, and the burgeoning college/university circuit provided equal opportunity for heavy rock bands, electric folk-rock acts and the introspective acoustic singer/songwriter. Suddenly, the scene was awash with female performers looking to become the British answer to Joni Mitchell, a huge influence on the scene ever since exiled American record producer Joe Boyd had circulated Joni’s songs amongst British musicians in late 1967. Mitchell quickly became established amongst aspirant performers as the singer/songwriter template.

Over the course of four hours and sixty tracks, Milk Of The Tree focuses on the music made in the late Sixties and early Seventies in both Britain and North America by either female solo artists or acts with featured female vocalists. Along the way, we encounter San Franciscan psychedelia, LA folk rock, Swinging London pop-folk, electric folk, progressive folk and even folk club folk as well as (of course) a plethora of singer- songwriters (including various ladies of the Canyon) from the movement’s golden age.

As well as featuring most of the leading figures from both sides of the Atlantic, Milk Of The Tree includes many performers who received little attention at the time but who now have a cult reputation amongst collectors. A significant number of tracks were unreleased at the time, while the set also includes the first-ever appearance by pioneering female rock duo Emily Muff, two American girls who were based in England during the period in question but failed to land a recording contract.

VA - (2021) Peephole In My Brain - The British Progressive Pop Sound Of 1971 3xCD

 

Grapefruit Records – CRSEG076T

Cherry Red's archival Grapefruit imprint has been on a roll in recent years with delightfully thorough multi-disc anthologies celebrating a parade of different U.K. psych, garage, and folk pocket scenes from the 1960s and '70s. Ranging from more-expansive celebrations like Strangers in the Room: Journey Through the British Folk Rock Scene 1967-1973 to hyper-specific moments in time like A Slight Disturbance in My Mind: The British Proto-Psychedelic Sounds of 1966, Grapefruit's mission as intrepid rock musicologists always feels like a labor of love. Falling in line with the latter of the two aforementioned sets is another calendar-year time capsule, Peephole in My Brain: British Progressive Pop Sounds of 1971. Framed in the collection's extensive booklet as a sort of bubbling-up year in U.K. rock, Peephole's 71 tracks chart a dazzling array of forward-thinking acts as they helped merge the underground scene with pop's mainstream.

Morteza Mahjubi - (2021) Selected Improvisations from Golha, Pt. I

 

Death Is Not The End – DEATH48

A collection of stunning Persian-tuned piano pieces cut from Iranian national radio broadcasts made for the Golha programmes between 1956 & 1965...

Morteza Mahjubi (1900-1965) was a Iranian pianist & composer who developed a unique tuning system for the piano which enabled the instrument to be played in all the different modes and dastgahs of traditional Persian art music. Known as Piano-ye Sonnati, this technique allowed Mahjubi to express the unique ornamental and monophonic nature of Persian classical music on this western instrument - mimicking the tar, setar & santur and extracting sounds from the piano which are still unprecedented to this day.

An active performer and composer from a young age, Mahjubi made his most notable mark as key contributor and soloist for the Golha (Flowers of Persian Song and Poetry) radio programmes. These seminal broadcasts platformed an encyclopaedic wealth of traditional Persian classical music and poetry on Iranian national radio between 1956 until the revolution in 1979.

Presented here is a collection of Morteza Mahjubi's stunningly virtuosic improvised pieces broadcast on Golha between the programme's inception until Mahjubi's death in 1965 - mostly solo, though at times peppered with tombak, violin & some segments of poetry.

The vast collection of Golha radio programmes was put together thanks to the incredible work of Jane Lewisohn & the Golha Project as part of the British Library's Endangered Archives programme, comprising 1,578 radio programs consisting of approximately 847 hours of broadcasts.

Γιώργος Κατσαρός - George Katsaros: Greek Blues in America, Vol. 1

 

Death Is Not The End – 022

Death Is Not The End present a two-part collection centred on two emigrant Greek artists recorded in New York during the 1920s and 1930s.

'Greek Blues in America' explores the recordings of George Katsaros and Kostas Dousas, who mainly recorded solo, accompanying themselves on guitar in a unique finger-picking style. This, along with the sub-cultural subject matter of the rebetiko, reflects somewhat of a cross-continental echo of the American blues - captured in the USA following a wave of immigration from Greece and Asia Minor, just as the new demand for regional and ethnographic music in the recording industry was beginning.

Kostas Dousas - (2018) Greek Blues in America, Vol. 2

 

Death Is Not The End – 023 Death Is Not The End present a two-part collection centred on two emigrant Greek artists recorded in New York during the 1920s and 1930s. 'Greek Blues in America' explores the recordings of George Katsaros and Kostas Dousas, who mainly recorded solo, accompanying themselves on guitar in a unique finger-picking style. This, along with the sub-cultural subject matter of the rebetiko, reflects somewhat of a cross-continental echo of the American blues - captured in the USA following a wave of immigration from Greece and Asia Minor, just as the new demand for regional and ethnographic music in the recording industry was beginning.

Various Artists - (2020) The Sun Is Setting On The World

 

Death Is Not The End – 33

Apocalyptic rebetika recordings from the 1930s through to late '50s. Songs of sorrow, poverty, loss and the general end of this god forsaken planet.