Unknowns
CD version. Some bands struggle to transcend their initial mythos, those stories that introduce them to the public eye. But The Dead C is a notable exception. They appeared in 1986 under a cloud of mystery, their unconventional location (South Island, New Zealand) helping to fuel their erratic sound. Name-dropped through the nineties by groups like Sonic Youth and Yo La Tengo, they gained influence and acclaim but never strayed from their original mainlined performing technique, which can sound …
Missväxt
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 albums since 2014, all mercurial in nature, exploring various facets of Dicksson’s preoccupations. The melodies borro…
Speaker Crackle In The Garden
**Edition of 300 copies** Next-level DIY print publication from Gothenburg’s IDDB label head and Discreet Music co-owner Matthias Andersson who’s thankfully taken it upon himself to document the tricky to navigate but dripping with intrigue New Zealand lathe cut scene. Speaker Crackle In The Garden originally ran for a short series in fanzine Fördämning, but here it’s been expanded to cover no less than 83 individual micro-releases from the likes of Armpit, The Drugs, Entlang, Little Skull, The…
Winter Songs
8mm Records’ latest - Gate’s "Winter Songs" - gathers three long form works of hazy fuzzed out guitar drones from the The Dead C’s Michael Morley, that amount to engrossing meditative expanses at the borders of ambient music, minimalism, and stoner rock. Inward looking and delicate, while bubbling with fury and life, it stands among our absolute favorite releases from one of the most interesting artists working today, and rides high among the best albums of the year so far.
Island of Lost Souls
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 forefron…
Cut A Crooked Track
* Edition of 200 copies. Stamped white labels, postcard attached to the cover, insert * Six new tracks from Mark Anderson and Mark Sadgrove, New Zealanders now based in Japan. Obtuse duo skronk starting out on a fairly reasonable note with 'Scantling' but then slowly deconstructing the song format track by track. The Quemada description of their very underrated 2015 12" makes perfect sense on at least the A-side, "image a Back from the Grave band that was weened on Operation of Sonne and fronted…
Seconds Mark III
'Seconds Mark III' is the third iteration of a unique work within the 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 throu…
This World Just Eats Me Up Alive
* Edition of 300 * This album has been a slow build over the past eight years, and it is Brian’s first solo release in close to twenty years. The years in between have included a move to the other side of the world (Christchurch to Joshua Tree), and the loss of his brother, who was close in age. This World Just Eats Me Up Alive confronts these topics within Brian’s maelstroms of noise, with his scratchy vocals conveying stories of protagonists living in the gutters of society. It’s a shockingly …
How We Used To Laugh - Haunted and Defiant
**Housed in a beautiful handmade diorama sleeve and box. Limited to 100 copies.** Just a few months after fortuitously meeting Dean Brown in London’s Low Company I am delighted to be releasing this Little Skull 7”. For a few years I was listening to Little Skull LP’s unaware that Dean’s own brand of NZ underground music was in fact being recorded a short distance from my London home. Furthermore, Dean’s intricate homemade sleeves were crafted in London, shipped to Italy, then back to London wher…
Atuan
**200 copies** Deemed to happen IDDB EP from the long running Dunedin, NZ act The Futurians. Full throttle avantgarde punk/sci-fi synth chaos, the two-suite Atuan follows up the massive, monotonous blown-out blasts of the recent Programmed LP (Planam, 2018) and their short cut on the Porcelain Summer compilation 7". Much has been said about The Futurians, some of our favorite quotes are "the sound of gay robots disco dancing and crushing everything underfoot", "the remnants of space debris raini…
I Could Destroy You with a Single Thought
**100 copies** Kraus (also known as Pat Kraus, formerly known as Prince Kraus) is a New Zealand experimental musician and composer. The New Zealand Listener called him "a national treasure" and "one of the most quietly important and interesting people making music in New Zealand". His music crosses the boundaries of electronic music, post-rock, no wave, space folk, noise pop, punk rock and martian stomp. I Could Destroy You With a Single Thought was previously self-released on CDr, 2004 - and on…
Say No To Hate
Bruce Russell and Noel Meek return with their second harsh noise collaboration. Their first, Classical Music (2018) was an all-electronics wrestling bout that simulated engine testing on a long-haul passenger jet. Their new album combines guitar, violin and electronics and was recorded in a wood workshop. You can hear the power tools, even though none were actually used. Extreme noise can sometimes be associated with offensive, racist or extreme-right views. The New Zealand duo have chosen to sp…
Radio Silence
With This Kind Of Punishment, Graeme Jefferies and Peter Jefferies produced some of most adept DIY sounds to emerge from New Zealand's 1980s post-punk scene. After their phenomenal self-titled debut and classic A Beard Of Bees, the brothers would make one last album together, In The Same Room. Originally released in 1987 on Flying Nun, In The Same Room is perhaps the straightest rock offering in TKP's esteemed catalogue. Opening track "Immigration Song" expertly pairs jagged guitars with wrathf…
Scenes From the South Island
Expanded reissue of New Zealand guitar pioneer Roy Montgomery's rare and revered full-length debut, Scenes From The South Island, originally released in 1995 by West Coast experimental / space rock label Drunken Fish. Recorded on both coasts on a pair of Tascam 4-tracks, the album is alternately wistful, windswept, skeletal, shredded, and strange. Solo guitar figures flow and fray through echo and empty space, evoking loss, long roads, and low-lit landscapes.Montgomery's own memories of this era…
Morse
A central figure of the New Zealand underground since his days in The Rip over three decades ago, Alastair Galbraith has worked alongside scores of Kiwi legends as a multi-instrumentalist and solo artist. Morse appeared in 1992, a Siltbreeze/Xpressway co-release, and despite Galbraith's centrality to the magical NZ mix, the record is an 'outsider' classic, a peerless piece of Antipodean collage, diverted folk, and minimal psychedelia.Galbraith plays almost everything on Morse, with periodic assi…
After Nietzsche
**500 copies** New album by New Zealand composer and guitarist Roy Montgomery in close collaboration with Emma Johnston. 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 and experimentations.Swimming through the four tracks of the album, it’s surprising to no…
Last Ticket Home
Peter Jefferies, a living legend of New Zealand underground music, from his seminal bands Nocturnal Projections and This Kind Of Punishment, to his collaborative efforts in bands such as Plagal Grind and Two Foot Flame, is perhaps best known for his solo work on masterpieces such as The Last Great Challenge in a Dull World (1990) and Electricity (1994), as well as numerous other albums of his singular songcraft. Grapefruit is releasing Jefferies’ latest, Last Ticket Home, which leaves the statio…
A Light In The Window Will Guide Us Safely Home
** Special cover with hand-made 'paper-cut forests' pop out diorama. Handmade edition of 200.** A light in the window will guide us safely home”, the new and unique LP by Little Skull, is an album defined by places, journeys between them, and the traces we leave. Insignificant instrumentation congregates on insignificant locations, leaving behind ghosts in a place of their own. Warbly guitars and a town hall in rural Waikato.Wheezing melodicas and a train through Tongariro. Tinny autoharps and …
Some Songs
Edition limited to 200 copies, red vinyl, includes extra tracks taken from "Decap" (1995) and "The Trees" (1996) 7” lathe editions. "The first time I heard anything about Donald McPherson was when my friend David Muir told me excitedly about this guitarist from Ravensbourne who could play really beautifully properly but also just as wonderfully wrongly. I first heard him playing a rare live performance in Dunedin in about 1997. It remains one of the most heavily self-deprecating sets Iive ever s…
A Lowtides Rising... (Explorations of NZ Acoustic Music)
**250 copies** An epic who's who of New Zealand underground music circa 2000, featuring Pumice, Peter Wright, Kunst / Veet (Witcyst), CJA & Anamarie, Sleep, Donald McPherson, GFrenzy, Kieran Monaghan, Swagger Jack, Birchville Cat Motel, Richard Francis, 1/3 Octave Band, Tim Cornelius, Seht, Antony Milton and James Kirk, a total of 16 tracks. Originally released as a CD-R on Antony Milton's PseudoArcana in 2003, reissued as a 2xLP in a heavyweight deluxe deluxe gatefold sleeve and insert with lin…