A Casual Assembly
Temporary Super Offer! Right on the heels of their Ahead Of Two Thoughts LP released earlier this year, A Casual Assembly is the latest offering from Melbourne's EXEK. The EP coalesces around a stirring theme for synthesizer, trumpet and bass, bringing together reference points to Laurie Spiegel, Jah Wobble and The Velvet Underground's "The Gift."Frontman Albert Wolski's disembodied narration – at times reminiscent of Samuel Beckett or Robert Ashley – unfolds over a series of dark vignettes set …
InSec
Mega Tip! Omit’s ‘inSec’ is “new,” but not new. Recorded in 2013, the masters lost in the label’s murky somewheresville that always shows up when moving. For those who don’t know, Omit is an experimental electronics artist from New Zealand’s south island who, since 1990, has released thirty-some xerographed cassettes and CDrs in the Dead C orbit for those who do. It’s not enough to say that ‘inSec’ is an ambient masterpiece bringing to mind a John Carpenter soundtrack performed by the Hub becaus…
A Wayside Shrine
*300 copies limited release* "In early 2000s New Zealand, Little Skull started as a small project. Smallness was perhaps the defining characteristic. Lathe cut 7”s in vanishingly small editions, the intricate, fiddly covers hand- crafted with what one would have to assume were very small hands. Or just with the aid of tweezers perhaps. The labels of these records provided no information beyond an illustration of a small – little even – skull. The music was also mysterious and miniaturized but al…
Closed Circuit
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 “Elevator Madness” (1996). All of these albums came out on vinyl but one of the best was the singular “Closed Circuit” (2001) whi…
Don't Drown
A meeting of two mavericks - Greg Malcolm, a guitarist from New Zealand who has played with Rosy Parlane, Toshimaru Nakamura, Tetuzi Akiyama and Bruce Russell, as well as solo releases on his own label Corpus Hermeticum, and Stefan Neville aka Pumice - a long-running, endlessly inventive project whose shambolic music is equally reminiscent of Kiwi pop groups such as The Clean and Tall Dwarfs as well as the country's experimental noise-rock bands like the Dead C. "Who would attempt to combine cun…
Dress
* Edition of 500 + 16-page booklet *By the mid-1990s, there was a quietly thriving underground in Wellington, New Zealand, made up of a number of loosely aligned operatives - Surface of The Earth and their World Resources imprint; Fever Hospital and 8 Dec, and the music made by the members of The Garbage & the Flowers after that group temporarily dissolved in 1992..." One of those rather short-lived groups was Dress, who on record consisted of Yuri Frusin and Helen Johnstone from The Garbage & t…
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.
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 …
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 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…
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 …
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…