Hell is Other Records.

 

Blah BLah bLAh

 

 

Bleeding Star (1993)

I said it the last time I posted stuff by the Jean-Paul Sartre Experience but these dudes deserve a reconsideration in the kind of passed over second generation of Flying Nun bands.

This is their third and final album release.

Savor it slowly while contemplating your own existential crisis.
Mine involves some leftover Korean in the other room.
Yours may vary.

Silence is Golden

But these singles are money.

I'm just going to throw together a month's worth of posts with minimal typing.

Enjoy the respite from my babbling starting off with a bunch by Peter Jefferies and collaborators/co-conspirators. He's kind of fallen off my radar for a long while. Even the person who ran his unofficial page lost interest in 2016.

Nevertheless this is some really fucking good stuff.

He was always great live and shared a table with me while we watched Alastair Galbraith play at the Uptown Bar and Grill. I bought my copy of the Plagal Grind Ep directly from him at that same show.

(and no, I don't currently have a physical copy of "Randolph's Coming Home" I wish I did. It's a great single)

Fate of the Human Carbine (1989)

Knocked Out or Therabouts (1992)

This should tide you over

I  have to go to grocery store so I have something to cook to bring for lunch at work for this week.
Content yourselves with this brief compilation until I get back.

I Hear the Devil Calling Me (1991)

With this mere seven inches of black vinyl Drag City introduced a larger swath of the American listening audience to the lo-fi goodness that was the New Zealand label Xpressway.

Twelve songs by twelve artists. All around a minute in length.

This was a big fucking deal at the time. Still is as good a time capsule of that moment, that scene, as you're going to get at this juncture and from this distance. We ate it up. We used it as a guide to what we needed to listen to next. We followed things to their logical or sometimes not logical conclusion.

You do the same. It's good for you.

Bob Denver

Another short and sweet one.

Brother Love & his Far Out Space Nuts (1994)

As per the previous post. From New Zealand. A single sided slab of psychedelic nonsense that is thoroughly unrelated to the 1975 Sid & Marty Krofft tv show that featured the triumphant (?) return of Bob Denver to your television.

Don't confuse them. Bob Denver didn't play guitar this well.

From B to B in short distances

Short and to the point. 

Both from New Zealand

Apparatus of Love (1990)

The Axel Grinders.

King Acid (1994)

Brother Love

Better Than You Might Imagine

Hits and Myths '83 (1983)

A fine collection of various of the New Wave bands of New Zealand near the beginning of that dark time known as the 80's. You can almost smell the cigarettes and Aquanet in every track. The Exponents track is the standout, but you can't have enough Swingers tracks hanging around.

• A1 Hello Sailor - The Boys in Brazil (Live)
• A2 DD Smash - The Devil You Know
• A3 Pop Mechanix - Jumping Out a Window
• A4 Citizen Band - Rust in My Car
• A5 The Crocodiles - Tears
• A6 Blam Blam Blam - Learning to Like Ourselves Again
• A7 Hip Singles - After the Party
• B1 The Exponents - Victoria
• B2 Dave Dobbyn - Lipstick Power
• B3 Zoo - Texas
• B4 Screaming Meemees - Days of Heaven
• B5 I Am Joe's Music - The Way You Get Your Way
• B6 Swingers - Punch'n'Judy
• B7 The Narcs - No Turning Back

Temporarily Posthumous

I don't know. I lost track of things

Eyes Rind as if Beggars (1997)

So somewhere in 1997 there came about on the Now Sound label a double lp release of the Garbage and the Flowers comprised of various bits and bobs rehearsals and live tracks as well as one side of their sole seven inch release on Twisted Village (see: previous post) of the then defunct entity formerly known as the Garbage and the Flowers.
It was apparently originally released in a hand painted & numbered edition of 300, but they must have had a few extra copies left over or something because I got one like the picture above that has "2nd Edition of 30" written on the back right when it came out, so there's those too.

Fire Records rescued it from obscurity of collector circles with a reissue in 2013 which is still available in Cd or Lp form if you need the source material for your own collection.

It's lo-fi. It can only get better.

Gas and Garbage

Still way down under in New Zealand for this one

Compressed Gas (2009)

Released on Siltbreeze in 2009, but the recordings themselves date from between 1996 & 1998. Another in a long line of bands involving some of the folks who populated a hundred other bands I really like such as Scorched Earth Policy & the Terminals. 

I swear, these guys are like the Taco Bell of musicians. Constantly forming new bands out of different combinations of the same small pool of ingredients. (and every one something I particularly gravitate to) and to top it off they named themselves Gas which makes them according to Discogs the twelfth band to use the moniker.

the Garbage and the Flowers (1992)

Meanwhile the first the Western Hemisphere was aware of the Garbage and the Flowers was this release on Twisted Village. The obvious cues for them are, of course, the Velvet Underground but who gives a shit. They didn't. They barely rehearsed or performed. They broke up and then moved to Australia and reformed. This was the only release while they existed the first time. They were quiet and they were noisy in that Jesus and Mary Chain either/or kind of song by song basis.

They were influential in those circles where people like to namedrop really obscure shit to seem smarter than they really are.

Here's your opportunity to call those assholes on their bluff.

Collaborative efforts

Sort of running out of creative ways to describe Mr. Galbraith's oeuvre.

What say we stick with "Good Stuff" for now

or at least until I'm awake or had enough coffee to expand my vocabulary enough to do justice to what it is.

Or just listen and come up with your own idea.

Here's a pair of collaborative seven inches.

Tae Keening (1995)

With Demarnia Lloyd.

Orange Raja, Blood Royal (1995)

It's probably around this time that I got to see Alastair live and in person at the Uptown Bar & Grill (r.i.p.) with Peter Jefferies and I think, Trash. (Sandra Bell may have been involved as well. But there were a lot of NZ folks touring though town at that time and it was a long time ago. Details may be a bit jumbled in my fading memory)

I bought one of the few remaining copies of the Plagal Grind ep from Mr. Jefferies and one of the 30 or so copies of Mr. Galbraith's "Seconds" cassette (which I'll digitize some day when I'm not quite so afraid of my cassette deck eating it.) which he'd made exclusively for the tour and sorely underestimated demand for. (they were gone in two stops)

Peter Jefferies sat in my booth while we watched Alastair's set.
(It went something like this but younger.)

But this single is our hero adding his bits in a trans-world tape exchange collaboration with John Darnielle (aka Mountain Goats). It's more Mountain Goats than Galbraith, but this is where I'd originally filed it so I'm sticking it here anyway. I'll probably put it away differently now.

It's code

Morse (1993)

It's been reissued a couple of times on CD. But here's my beloved copy of the original Siltbreeze vinyl release by Alastair Galbraith. Still a favorite around the confines of this room.

"Stone", the closer, is the one that seals the deal.

Play delicately and exquisitely late in the night.

The small and the intimate

I'm starting to think if I keep queuing stuff up at the pace I'm going, I'll soon be a full year ahead of myself. At the time I am starting this one, it's just past Thanksgiving of 2016 and Fidel Castro, in one last act of defiance against the CIA that plotted his assassination for many years, has died of old age.

Hopefully 2017 has been an improvement on the previous shit show that 2016 was.

I suspect that my future self is not hold my breath.

Gaudylight (1991)

My introduction to the small and magical lo-fi world of Alastair Galbraith.

I've always had a sort of contention that people write music to fill up the area that they play it in. It stands to reason that as a band's venue grows, so does the music change to reach those elusive nosebleed seats and the size and scope of the sound grows with it.
In other cases, there is a kind of personal music that one does on one's own that exists primarily within the confines of a small room and the headphones attached to recording device.

Alastair Galbraith makes the latter.

It isn't very big. Not as much time is spent on getting every detail perfect as capturing the moment, warts and all as it happens when the little red recording light is a steady red. Small fragile things and snippets of songs cut off suddenly when they seem on the verge of going awry.

Ideal for headphones and long walks.

 

Intro Version (1994)

 Go to his bandcamp page. Give him some love and some money.

You know you can.

Do it.

Way Ahead of Myself

Derry Legend (1989)


So...


So as I queue this post up for today it's months in the past.

The 2016 World Series is still going on.

Game 7 is tomorrow, my present time.

The Cubs will either have won for the first time since 1908 or not and make Bill Murray happy or sad depending on the outcome.

Don't tell me how it ends.

Bill Murray already knows.

Here's the Axemen

As long as I'm posting Antipodes

I could do much worse than post this 1986 12" ep by the Alpaca Brothers

Legless (1986)


I have nothing much to add about it. You're on the internet. If you have questions, you can google up that shit on your own like an independent person. Just know that "the Lie" is a favorite Flying Nun track around these parts and that Bruce Blucher of the Alpaca Brothers was in the twin guitar/drum assault of a band called Trash in the 90's that made for one memorable night at the Uptown Bar & Grill. I have worn that t-shirt to shreds.

2017.... Here's something for your hangover

2017 has begun.

12 Inches of Hard Flesh! (1983)

It's a punk rock band from New Zealand. They're called Flesh D-Vice.

Ever the masters of wry subtlety they named their 12" Ep "12 Inches of Hard Flesh!" and it has songs on it named "Fuck Off Embarassment" and "Dead Girls"

That should be plenty to go on.

Play loud and pound that New Year's Hangover into submission.

April Fools

Meh. I got nothing.

Have a couple from the great state of New Zealand

 1991 - Bill Direen & the Builders

Bill Direen is hard to describe. He's been making interesting music since the dawn of time along with theater and writing and god knows what else. He's one stop art shopping. And he seems like the kind of guy who just does it all and doesn't give a fuck if anybody pays attention or not. He's just going to do it anyway.
On this one he does a redux of "Alien" from his "Six Impossible Things" 7" (of which 100 were pressed I have been told) with Chris Knox and Mike Dooley who were together in the seminal NZ bands Toy Love & the Enemy. The band trees of all three participants are long and complicated and I'm hungry. You can investigate that shit on your own dime. It's worth it.

On the other side the song is "Skulls" and he's joined by Alan Meek who was in a few incarnations of the Bilders/Builders as well as the Victor Dimisich Band and the Vacuum. (You have some googling to do, my friend.)

 

1995 - Dimmer

This is Shayne Carter post-Straitjacket Fits and in his youth a member of the Doublehappys. It's instrumental. It's on SubPop. Let that be your guide.

Not Dreaming

A couple weeks back or something. I put up the Dadamah singles. Here's the Lp

This is Not a Dream (1992)

More lo-fi dreamy darkness swirling around in a long playing format.
Now you have all that Dadamah released in the brief time they existed.
You're welcome.

Dadamah

New Zealand. It's a small country with a small pool of  musicians who all end up in multiple bands with multiple other musicians and in then end everybody in the entire country is only three degrees of separation from having been in the Chills at one time or another.

Nicotine (1991)

Kim Pieters, Peter Stapleton, Roy Montgomery, Janine Stagg. 

Kim Pieters has been in : Cobweb Iris, Dadamah, Doramaar, Flies Inside The Sun, Rain, Sleep

Peter Stapleton has been in: Cobweb Iris, Dadamah, Eye, Flies Inside The Sun, PSN Electronic, Rain , Scorched Earth Policy, Sleep, The Pin Group, The Terminals, Vacuum, Victor Dimisich Band

Roy Montgomery (besides his solo releases) has been in :  Dadamah, Dissolve, Hash Jar Tempo, The Blanking Machine, The Pin Group, The Shallows, The Somerville Players, Torlesse Super Group

Janine Stagg was in Dadamah

  

 

Scratch Sun (1992) 

So these folks apparently liked to make music together. Were in several different bands in various combos over the years before bringing Dadamah into existence. We're just glad they did and managed to make some recordings of it.

 

An Endless Tuesday

February.

It's the month where winter is nearing the end but it's still really fucking winter for quite a while longer. I've always thought of February as the endless Tuesday of months. The week has already started. You've gotten over the Monday part of it but there's nothing to do but to continue to slog along with your head down.

Here's some more Crude.

Bionica (1997)

Refute a Myth (1997)

Winter: Sounds for the Season

Inner City Guitar Perspectives (1996)

I live in Minnesota. It's cold here. Winters can suck. And by that, they can suck in ways that you'd have to be from Canada to truly understand. (We get most of our winter weather second hand from our neighbors up north) As the days continue to shorten and as somebody who primarily works nights I do not see much by way of daylight for quite a long ass fucking time. When I do experience daylight it's mostly as an annoyance separating me from my beauty rest or shining cheerlessly on snow and traffic on my way home from work.

It's times like these that call for sounds that match ones mood. That's where Crude's Inner City Guitar Perspectives comes in. It's a bit more easier on the ears than some of Matt Middleton's other Crude recordings, but then it's on Flying Nun and they have a business to run and overhead and shit like that. But it does fill that bleak void in the skull as you putter around in a world of eternal darkness.

Bruce

I used to have a roommate. His name was Bruce. We worked the same shitty restaurant job together and drank a lot. We were in our 20's. I'm pretty sure it's what kids still do. I sometimes wonder whatever became of him. We lost touch decades ago and he apparently doesn't have a Facebook account, so I may as yet never know. That's too bad. I'd like to say hello sometime.

 We're Not So Smart (1986)

That little anecdote naturally is our segue into this post featuring Couch Flambeau from Wisconsin, the Dairy State. We probably heard this played on the morning show on WMBR some bleary eyed weekday morning prepping case after case of fucking avocados for the lunch rush. It amused us. I bought it. I'd put it on mix tapes for work and we thought it was hilarious. I still think it's kind of funny. The b-side is a piss take on the Mountain classic rock tune and #1 cowbell song. It's also still pretty amusing.

So I post this now. It's dedicated to Bruce wherever his 6' 4" soulless ginger badass self is these days.

 Constant Pain (1996)

A decade later Constant Pain from New Zealand released another in our series of why it's poor design to print your sleeves with metallic paints on dark paper. They are almost always completely unreadable and any artwork is completely lost. At least there's the music to enjoy.