So October Pulls to a Close

 

We're a couple of days away from Halloween.
I'd thought about cranking out a special post for the day, but didn't get the single I wanted for it.

It's out there, but was never in good enough condition with a decent price whenever I looked.
So there's that. 

Maybe next year.

Long Night (1996)

This time out it's a double 7" on Siltbreeze. Of note is that for the second record Roy Montgomery is joined with the ever elusive and fabulous artist Bill Direen (who Chris Knox told me one time is crazy. Chris Knox said someone was a bit nuts. Let that sink in for a minute...) and on the flip by the Barbara Manning who deserves reconsideration, but that's me.

Just Melancholy (1996)

So Roy Montgomery went on to record and release a whole lot more stuff as the decade went on, but my focus shifted and this seems to be the last thing I picked up at the time. Seems apt.

Go and have a pumpkin spice something and gaze absently out the window into the gathering dusk and consider the fleeting impermanence of life and happiness.

At Odds with the Room

 So I've had a coffee. I'm full of meatloaf.
And most importantly I've decided that tomorrow is going to be the day when I get off my ass and start the long and tedious process of scanning, converting and tagging the 12G of .wavs I've got sitting around in the Vinyl folder.
It's going to be a solid eight or nine hour grind.
Not my favorite activity, but a necessary one.

But in the meantime, I'm throwing a few more into the fire as it were with some more 40s Big Band stuff picked up recently for dirt fucking cheap. The price was good, but the dude who owned them must have been a heavy smoker with greasy fingers judging by the shape of the vinyl. But I can't really complain too much, I suppose, for a couple of bucks or less apiece. Not a great market for 40s radio transcriptions these days, so this is the only way I'll get to experience some of this.

It's just a bit at odds with these few posts, it being decidedly happy upbeat numbers.

Life's like that sometimes.

Submerged and Colourful (1994)

So Roy Montgomery. Veteran of quite a few of the more talked about than heard of New Zealand bands. Dadamah got a good airing out here a while back. The Pin Group records are wonderful if you can find the reissues or have deeper pockets than I do to hunt down original issues.

When not crafting atmospheric ambient soundscapes on a 4-track cassette recorder the ever busy Roy would also craft moody dark songs sung with a sonorous baritone.

Something Else Again (1995)

And he was certainly a busy and sought after artist in the early/middle 90s churning out two full lengths and a handful of singles in a very short time on a variety of labels in a very short amount of time.

Zabriskie Point (parts 1 & 2) (1996)

Here's a few of them now.
Let them sink in and wash slowly over your mind like absinthe over a sugarcube.

Now if you'll excuse me, the processing software has cleaned up the first side of Brick Fleagle and Rex Stewart "Previously Unissued" and I have to chop it up into individual songs before flipping it. Good stuff.

Just in Time

 Phew!

I've been a bit lazy this week and we were very nearly facing an expected day without a post here on the Swinging Singles Club. So just in the nick of time I'm going to vomit out a few to get us through until another time I have time off be it a week from now or a month or something.

It's also rapidly approaching the cut off point before I start deleting things to free up space. There's like a Gig left to go. I'll probably do a couple of months at a time and free up 3 or 4Gs of space then rinse and repeat as necessary.

Scenes from the South Island (1995)

It seems kind of fitting as the Northern Hemisphere slowly sinks into the darkness with the shortening of days to throw some Roy Montgomery into the mix here.

This is a moody atmospheric instrumental album done on a home 4-track if memory serves. (The Porta-One was a fucking game changer, kids.)

Great music for brooding in a darkening room watching a gray day slowly sink into darkness without being all Goth about it. It's a lot more actual existential dread than "existential dread" but with black nail polish.

But Christchurch really does seem to pump out the melancholy.