** Edition of 200 copies in silk-screened sleeve. ** With Sido Not Dead, CJA (Clayton Noone) delivers a singular statement from the heart of New Zealand’s experimental scene. Known for his prolific output and fearless approach to sound, CJA crafts an album that is as spontaneous as it is enigmatic. The record is a wild ride through tape hiss, unfiltered improvisation, and song fragments that seem to emerge and dissolve in real time.
The music is unapologetically rough-edged, recorded on basic equipment that captures every creak, hiss, and accidental sound. Yet within this apparent chaos lies a deep sense of play and invention. CJA’s voice, guitar, and electronics intertwine in unpredictable ways, creating moments of startling beauty amid the noise. This album is a testament to the DIY ethos that has long defined the New Zealand underground. Rather than smoothing out the rough edges, CJA embraces them, resulting in a record that feels alive and immediate. For listeners attuned to the joys of lo-fi experimentation and outsider art, Sido Not Dead is a must-hear, capturing the spirit of a scene that thrives on risk and reinvention.
I narrowly avoided an English-second-language tete-a-tete in Belgium once when I refused to believe in the face of all evidence that Sunn O)))'s newly released Flight Of The Behemoth (2012) was not CJA. I was wrong, but whatever... I was already ascending Lucifer's path to the stars not garbed in chic grim-robes but a pilling homespun jersey that stunk of wet dog. I confess and repent... for me, all 'this kinda music' was an exercise in deftly crafted slovenliness and anonymous surface texture, but in spending time with a tape simply labeled Sido Not Dead I was struck dumb with the burning religious fervor of real people who had truly forgotten to give a fuck and at that very moment unto me was bestowed a mighty vision of two-bar heaters, worn cream carpet, mooching about in slippers with cups of budget herbal tea. A long winter weekend that passed too close to a tape recorder and whose glacial momentum had accidentally combed the little magnetic thingies on the cassette into recognizable geometric shapes. This was my (unwashed) fork in the road: facile, nihilistic, too lazy to make it to the letterbox, yet enlightened, enlivened, ascended, eternal... blangblangblang... GRONGGRONG... blangblangblang... GRONGGRONG... Fellow pilgrims and travellers to furthest inner outposts... herein lies your scripture". Campbell Kneale (Birchville Cat Motel)
