Grey Orders, Distant Trails
**250 copies** Improvised soundtrack to a non-existent Western, recorded in the late '90s by James Kirk, Nathan Thompson and Tim Cornelius. "Deep South kitchen-sink explorers have been circling the drain in counterclockwise fashion for at least half my life and yet I am still reduced to shameless gobsmackery in the presence of this sterling new collection of historic treasures. Committed live-to-tape in the comfy climes of a living room / recording studio / temple affectionately known as 'Canong…
The Eightness of Adam Qadmon
**300 copies** Originally released on cassette by Corpus Hermeticum in 1994. All sounds by Alastair Galbraith and Bruce Russell. "New Zealand is on summer holidays all through the month of January. For some reason I had the house to myself, the wife and kids were elsewhere. Alastair Galbraith brought over some instruments and we plugged in a cassette recorder. We spent the sunny afternoon setting up combinations of instruments and seeing what happened. We had recorded the Concord LP the year bef…
Visceral Realists
Debut LP by the New Zealand duo of Bruce Russell (Dead C, Handful of Dust, etc) and Luke Wood. Visceral Realists is a high-concept commentary on the state of vinyl, analogue recording, music culture, art, etc. A 45-rpm bullet of short bursts of free electric sound, the music here is tactile and rough but not “noise music.” Russell and Wood play over loops of scratchy records, with their guitars and electronics surging to get over the wall. Russell’s guitar sound from his vintage transistor amp a…
The Quality Of Mercy Is Not Strnen
In process of stocking. After two singles for Fast Product, Leeds art-punk collective The Mekons signed with Virgin Records in 1979. The band would have to borrow gear from their mates Gang Of Four to record their major label debut. In classic Mekons style, the album’s back cover featured a photo of Gang Of Four instead of themselves. As Simon Reynolds writes, “The Quality Of Mercy Is Not Strnen got a mixed reception at the time. Listening to it now, though, the first LP sounds more of a piece w…
In the Same Room
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…
Wood/Metal/Plastic/Pattern/Rhythm/Rock
Cassette version. 75 Dollar Bill, a project by Che Chen and Rick Brown present Wood/Metal/Plastic/Pattern/Rhythm/Rock. "Che's interest in the Arabic modes of Mauritanian music has marked our sound quite a bit but I have brought some things, too. The plywood crate I play is a big factor, defining, by its positive qualities (a nice warm 'boom' sound) as well as by its simplicity, what we're likely to do in the percussion realm. Wood/Metal/Plastic/Pattern/Rhythm/Rock, this new record, differs quite…
Dragging Her Wings of Rusty Knives: Selected Recordings 1994-201
A Handful of Dust was founded over three decades ago by two giants of the New Zealand underground, Bruce Russell (The Dead C) and Alastair Galbraith. Declaring their raison d'être in the now infamous Free Noise Manifesto the group has advanced a radical aesthetic; rejecting any notion of structure or comfort they've ground music to its sub-elemental parts. A scraping and howling electricity, spontaneous, unrestrained, physical. Contains expanded and unreleased works spanning the group's history …
Heaven's Idleness Awaits
Michael Morley has long been acclaimed for his electric guitar and electronic forays in New Zealand's legendary The Dead C and Gate. On Heavens Idleness Awaits, he strips his music to its most elemental state. Recorded at home and using only a single-tracked acoustic guitar, Morley creates an intimate and intensely meditative work. Over four, side-long tracks, he weaves hypnotic melodic figures that slowly unfurl to reveal a minimalist masterwork and one of his most powerful statements to date. …
Classical Music
Edition of 250. You know that old phrase, 'Teach a penguin to cuss, and you'll never have to buy another comedy record' I'm sure you do. But what about its codicil? 'Teach a guitarist to play synth, and you'll never have to buy a new age record?' If you know that one, you might well be put off by the fact this album features one of New Zealand's most wickedly post-tongue guitar players fiddling about with oscillators and analog synths (in concert with a guy who does this stuff all the time). But…
Sido Not Dead
** Edition of 200 copies in silk-screened sleeve. ** As reported by Campbell Kneale (Birchville Cat Motel, Our Love Will Destroy The World, C-Psi-P): "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 …
Ahead Of Two Thoughts
Melbourne's ExEk began as a studio project with frontman Albert Wolski before the 2014 formation of the four-piece line up with Andrew Brocchi (synthesizer), Henry Wilson (bass) and Sam Dixon (drums). With the addition of Nell Grant on saxophone, the group's sound entered another dimension that reveals EXEK to be conjuring the ghosts of PiL, This Heat and Swell Maps. Ahead Of Two Thoughts, EXEK's sophomore release, pushes headlong into haunted, post-punk territories. Opening track "U Mop"…
A Beard Of Bees
Originally self-released in 1984, A Beard Of Bees has been out of print for almost 25 years. Among This Kind Of Punishment's myriad recordings, A Beard Of Bees best outlines the collective vision of the Jefferies brothers. Their classic second album feels more meticulous than its predecessor, proffering a grey, near-Mancunian influence that serves as both touchstone and springboard for the proceedings. The unique maneuvering on "Trepidation" is a marvel: guitar sweetness shifting toward melancho…
This Kind Of Punishment
In the fertile terrain of New Zealand's 1980s post-punk scene, few figures loom as large as the Jefferies brothers. Graeme Jefferies and Peter Jefferies – the primary forces behind This Kind of Punishment – wrote some of the best music to come out on Flying Nun, Xpressway or elsewhere. A dizzying mix of pastoral ballads and DIY experimentation, TKP's songwriting was at once classic and acutely raw. On their self-titled debut, the Jefferies brothers and Chris Matthews eschew the punk-informed mod…
Enclosures 2011–2016
Since his first self-released cassettes in the early 1990s, New Zealand’s Clinton Williams aka Omit has been on a singular and personal musical journey. Described as one of the greatest outsider artists currently working in the field, OMIT employs homebuilt instruments constructed from modified electric motors and salvaged sound sources to create a startlingly original soundworld. It is a world he inhabits alone, isolated in the small town of Blenheim in southern New Zealand, but it invo…
Metallic Ok
Bruce Russell is a New Zealand experimental musician and writer. He is a founding member and guitarist of the seminal noise rock trio The Dead C and the free noise combo A Handful of Dust (with Alastair Galbraith). He has released solo albums featuring guitar and tape manipulation. "In summer of 2013, Bruce Russell's daughter Olive Russell uploaded a documentary of her father that she shot and edited herself called "27 Minutes with Mr. Noisy: A Documentary about Bruce Russell" to Vimeo.c…
Real Folk - Lathe Cut Singles 1993-1997
A bone-fide underground legend, Witcyst has been creating completely unique noise music from the isolation of smalltown New Zealand since the late eighties. For three decades Witcyst has been an infamous prol yet mysterious force of the deep noise underground, sharing handmade cassettes, lathe cut singles, CDRs and art objects via the post, but never touring or appearing live. Witcyst’s mysterious career is marked by a complete absence of live performances and a massive prolificness in rec…
Soibiast Anti-Culler
** Edition of 300 copies in silk-screened sleeve. ** Soibiast Anti-Culler was recorded in 1995 by the winterless north of New Zealand's Witcyst. Another monolithic skid mark serving of crackers plucked from the man's vast lifetime archive of sound making and beard. Witcyst makes his music with oceans of constant daily mutation. Machines get used upside down and back to front and inside out. Layers of string, tin foil and expired medicine are saved up to dazzle the eye. Parcels in the post come a…
Spirits Dogroll
** Edition of 300 copies ** A dogroll is a cheap giant sausage of bad meat to feed your pets. Teen-X-Ray came from Hamilton, New Zealand, which is known for agricultural innovation, frosts, fog and Taniwha in the Waikato river. Live cows with windows permanently inserted into their bodies for research live on the edge of town.
As Stefan "Smetal" Neville recalls: "Glen Frenzy asked me to join his new 'rock n roll' band Teen-X-Ray at a ska concert at the Hillcrest Tavern in Hamilton in 1993. He ha…
Leisure & The Elderly
** Edition of 300 copies in a silk-screened sleeve. ** As reported by Stefan Neville: "Clayton 'CJA' Noone and Jon 'Sugar Jon' Arcus are some of my oldest and dearest friends. I've been listening to their band Armpit pouring out infinite sweat and toe jams for 20+ years and I still can't work out what Armpit even is. They are the wrongest band I've ever heard. We were all part of the same gang in early 1990s Hamilton, New Zealand. Armpit would always happen in rooms next door. They would keep me…
Poise Etc
** Edition of 300 copies in silkscreened sleeve. ** A collection of Pumice recordings from 1993-99 when teenagers Sugar Jon Arcus and Stefan Neville learned about music by doing it. The album covers the earliest days of the band recording on ghetto blasters with untuneable guitars at home in Whatawhata and Hamilton, NZ. There are a couple of recordings from their first public performance with drummer Ugly Dog Davies where their friends yelled at them relentlessly. There is material from the year…