Rumour has it I sold some work, though.

The opening of the Final Product show was the other night (good god it was last thursday night a week ago already) and it was a pretty good night. The worst thing was the trio of midget David Gray impersonators I caught the clap off of in the parking lot. (well i don't mind the gonorrhea so much that can be put paid to with a short course of antibiotics it's more that the music is so abominably dire eh) (oh alright i'm lying jus' tryin' to make it sound more inneresting than it was it was just another gallery opening orright) (Rumour has it I sold some work, though.)

CJA's Ironclad

CJA (Clayton No-one, of Armpit, The Futurians, The Ideal Gus and so on) has released an utterly wonderful CD, gorgeous, possibly his finest and most realised solo work to date - Ironclad - on US label Digitalis.

I'm not going to try to better the great liner notes, written by Campbell Kneale; I'm going to let them say it all for me by reproducing them here, without permission.

"A blather of fuzz and strum, tapedeck meltdown, edits seemingly performed by snapping the tape in his teeth... I defy you to find anybody that gives less of a flying fuck than CJA. Or more for that matter. These sounds don't demand attention so much as they demand to be lived through. This is real. I'm talking REAL in all its mundane, apoplectic, divinity. The pain, the love, the wonder, the near-religious might. Sometimes wrathful, sometimes somnambulent, sometimes talkative, other times saturated in a well of its own disinterest.

These songs have a life of their own and they plead to be allowed to live it. These little magnetic mountains and polycarbonate stylus-files retain their totemic status round here and, over the years, have contaminated the cassettes next to it [sic] in my drawer with a spreading bile that seems to lessen anything placed in its presence. They are CJA's black-eyed offspring: hungry, runny-nosed, and whining for attention. Just love them."

CJA - 2:50 (right-click and Save As to download)

Available all over the place, including Surefire Distribution.

Final product show

There's a new exhibition opening in Upper Hutt at Expressions (the main public art gallery there). It's called Final Product: Drawing as the final product and it's got work (drawings) from a bunch of groovy cats ("Aus" denotes the exhibitor is from Australia):

John Abbate (Aus), Katie Breckon (Aus), Dan Campion, Matt Couper, Jenny Gilliam, Richard Lewer (Aus), Pat Macan, Angela Meyer, Karin van Roosmalen, Vin Ryan (Aus), Stewart Shephard

.. and me. My contribution features work executed on a Hewlett-Packard iPAQ pocket "palm" computer and printed using a high-quality laser-printing process onto heavy water-colour stock.

The show opens on Thursday night, the 23rd of June, at 6.30 pm, and runs until the 7th of August.

It's an easy (and scenic) train ride from Wellington to Upper Hutt. The Gallery is very close to Upper Hutt train station. - Ross P. Kettle

Here's a sample of my drawings - this one's called fleet.

Reviews

Ahhh... reviews. The pathetic agony of scouring the known universe for reviews of one's work (read: googling the various titles of your albums), time and time again. It's all rather sad, really.

Found some today, though. Foxy digitalis has some great reviews of Application antarctica download form and the V/A The tone of the universe.. compilation, as well as one of an older 3" CD called Communion, that I released a couple of years ago on PseudoArcana. And a Polish e-zine called Gaz-eta has one of The Voice of the Taniwha.

Stone the crowes, thass bin e mrud-ah

So speaking, as we were, about murder (well, we weren't really, I'm far too 'fraid of being made to jump off the pier wearing a pair of concrete slippers to write about the reasons behind Murder Shed being known as it is), here's the theme song from the Scottish television series Taggart (and here).

Mike Moran (feat. Maggie Bell) -- No Mean City (Taggart theme) (right-click and Save As to download; play using the handy little embedded player below)

Mike Moran -- No Mean City instrumental (Taggart theme)

There's two versions - the incidental instrumental version, and the title music with lyric sung by Maggie Bell, formerly of rock band Stone the Crows. The theme is called No Mean City and was composed by Mike Moran.

'Mrud-ah' is how the Glaswegian Taggart pronounces "murder". My Scots roots are also in the fair city o' Glasgow, and he reminds me of my grandmother.

UPDATE

Leave a note if you find this; there's so many people coming here for the Taggart theme music tracks it's becoming legendary, and it'd be cool to know who y'all are.

Out now: At Murder Shed

The new The Stumps vs. Ohm CDR At Murder Shed is now out, released on the French label Paha Porvari. If you want a copy, try emailing them, or check at your local folk / noise / electronics / psyche / free / minimalism / concrete / drone / improv record emporium. You might be able to get one from PseudoArcana, or even from me.

I've never been able to figure out the link between Paha Porvari and Naninani, but there is one; either way, however, their website seems a little on the side of underdone.

Back

Yeah, the site went down for a few days there. Sorry about that.

did 'e 'eck[a]

Here's another Heka track. Damn this is a good album...

Heka - Cachet (5.04 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download)

Meanwhile, fans of either can head on over to KittenWar.com to check out the progress of and latest stats on The Sneak (an old friend) and Charlie Brown. WARNING: it's addictive!

Welcome to the temple of ruin, I am drunk and you're insane...

Heka is the magick of ancient Egypt - magick practised while still alive.

Heka - exhuberant noise chime, landscape-y topographical hallelujah music -- nzmusic.com.

It's been too long a time since I last heard the magic, but those days and weeks and months are wiped off with the peal of the first notes. It's taken four years for this moment, but finally I have my hands on the CD. Heka is the name of the band - Dunedin duo of Stephen Kilroy and Heath Te Au - and Last spiritual gas station before the end of civilisation is the name of their new album.

Both have spent time in legendary bands - Kilroy is an alumnus of the band Stephen (feat. David Kilgour), released a solo track on the seminal Xpressway Pile=up compilation, and was a founding member of Chug; Heath has done time in The Puddle, Suka, Mink, and Cloudboy to name but a few. Both are enthusiasts and horders of classic old equipment - huge Gunn valve amps and vintage tape echo boxes and shiny electric guitars and analogue effects units. For both it was time to re-enter the music scene after something of a hiatus.

Put Stephen Kilroy and Heath Te Au together and what you have is a self-described "sonic tour-de-force based around furious krautrock beats and a 12-string Rickenbacker guitar soaked in delay". So - take the extended jams of The Clean, the dense overtures of Spacemen 3 or H.D.U. or My Bloody Valentine or Bailter Space or even The Jesus And Mary Chain, and the transfixing propulsive motorik of Neu!'s Klaus Dinger - and you might have some idea what they're about. Or, what they at least sound like. But these two illuminati conjure up something entirely more mystical altogether.

For this pair, Heka is about coming together to make beautiful, ritual music. Together they summon magical spirits to which they offer themselves up and they enter another world where they become one with the ceremony and can lose the now and forget about the trudging from one day to the next.

Heka - Temple of ruin (3.74 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download)

It's glorious stuff. This is the sort of music you can live your life without hearing, but one listen and then you wonder how you ever got by. And of course, to see them live is a special treat.

Good Heka magic indeed.


Please visit the arclife records site if you want to buy the CD, which I naturally urge you to do. The CD is not actually listed on this page, but I trust the ordering information and other avenues of purchase are still valid.

Mystery bird

What the hell kinda bird is this I just saw sitting on my back fence? Well, Charlie (the cat) saw it first and she was having a complete spaz all over the kitchen about it, so I knew it must be pretty special and I came and checked it out.

Despite living where we do, we actually have an amazing array of bird-life - plenty of pigeons and sparrows and thrush and blackbirds of course - but even better, tui and bellbirds, with their distinctive calls, fantails, waxeyes, and incredibly, at least two keruru (morepork) complaining every night in the bush across the road. I could swear I heard one of those fat-ass native wood-pigeons one day, too.

But I've never seen one of these before.

The Stumps are live

The Stumps will be appearing live this Saturday night, 21 May, at Enjoy gallery. With any luck we will be promoting our new CDR (At Murder Shed, on French label Paha Porvari) and our new CD (Lost Weekends, on US label Digitalis) but that will depend on such vagaries as the international postal system. We will play at 6pm in order to accomodate such entertainment synchronicity as Super12 semi-finals and A Low Hum omnibus-gigs at Indigo. A superlative film will also be presented.

Also appearing later in the evening will be THE JUDGE, New Zealand and Golden Axe, one and all decent bands and true.

The event is Enjoy's final celebratory bash at 174 Cuba Street. They're throwing a party to help raise funds for the move to their new space down the road and they ask that you please give generously at the door.

God bless.
----------
Who are The Stumps? The Stumps are a bit of a free-psychedelic-noise-rock supergroup from the rugged confines of New Zealand. Featuring Antony Milton (PseudoArcana, A.M., etc), Stephen Clover (seht), and James Kirk (Sandoz Lab Technicians, Gate, The Dead C, King Loser etc.), these are sonic musicians putting their best foot forward. On "Lost Weekends," the trio unleashes a sonic, droning landscape of epic proportions. If there ever was a masterwork, this is it.
--- brad e rose, digitalis industries

Resurrecting Bailter Space

They were the best band you'd ever want to see in a dark smokey dive where the sweat drips off the wall and the high notes ricochet off the pillars directly into your synapses. They blew our minds with their pummel and fuzz and then they upped digs and off to New York, USA. And after a few years and a couple of barely-noticed releases, pretty much disappeared below the radar.

I've just undergone a personal Bailter Space renaissance and it's taken a recent evangelical turn - from getting their CDs and LPs out after a long, long while, to regularly featuring tracks on my radio show, to uploading Bailter Space mp3s to friends in Scandinavia and North America.

Bailter Space - Shine (4.55 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download)

Bailter Space - Robot World (6.05 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download)

So here we go with the proselytizing. Well, actually I'm going to keep it pretty low-key. Shine is from Bailter Space's US breakthrough EP The Aim, released 1991 on Matador, and Robot World the title track from from their 1993 follow-up LP. They are the more melodic highpoints of the band's repertoire and as such feature little of the aural bludgeoning that underpinned other tracks; be asured that live, however, they stood toe-to-toe with the rest.

These tracks... this band... was just gorgeous. We always reckoned they were better than My Bloody Valentine, the nearest comparison you could ever hope to make. Now fifteen years later, we were right, and Bailter Space needs to be heard again.

We still reminisce about this gig and that gig, this album and that. Perhaps their time is yet to come.

[Note: After a couple of false starts in the mid-80s Bailter Space settled on a line-up which was basically a reformation of The Gordons, notorious sonic terrorists from half-a-decade earlier and reputedly the loudest band in New Zealand. Stay tuned for a Gordons post soon.]

Application antarctica download form

Blow blow trumpet trumpet etc. I've got another new CD out, Application antarctica download form. This time it's on New Zealand label Celebrate/Psi/Phenomenon. This is what Campbell the label-boss sed about it:

Brrrrr, it's gettin cold in here... don't fall asleep 'cause you may never wake up. Like its namesake, "Antarctica..." comes on like a vast cathedral of suspended ice-prongs dripping out action at a pace roughly comparable to the formation of a glacier. Nature's fractured architecture pixelated and amplified through the green luminescence of night vision goggles... almost TOO beautiful to be real? My esteemed friends, this falls well inside the parameters of 'effortless' and, not to make too fine a point of it, makes even the most vogue-ish dronesters look pretty silly indeed. A zenith of sensual, hypothermic dream-states. File under 'Near Death'.

I don't really know what I can add to such praise.

There's a compilation which has just hit the shelves (well, not really, it's not actually officially released yet, wait a week ok?). It's a double-CD comp on PseudoArcana called The tone of the universe (= the tone of the earth). Antony Milton (PseudoArcana man):

This compilation arose out of a Routes for War and Travel discussion about the news that astromoners have discovered a galaxy - far far away - that is resonating in a steady B flat drone. Due to this drone's inaudibility (not only is it remote but it is also something like 50 octaves below an audible pitch...) it was decided that a compilation of 'cover versions' was in order. That is not to however imply that the tone b flat is neccesarily present in all of these trks...

Featuring:
'white cd'
1 Blithe Sons- 'Map of Dusk'.
2 Peter Wright- 'Haboob'.
3 Keijo- 'Stellar Wind'.
4 Eugene Carhesio & Leighton Craig- 'Untitled #14' (from the Hunter Constellation Series).
5 CJA- 'Misty'
6 Anla Courtis- 'Several Galaxies of Bb Sound-lave Playfully Roaming About'.
7 Vibracathedral Orchestra- '3 Bb Moods'.
8 Hands of Satisfaction- 'Version 1'.
9 A.M/Uton- 'Ground has Curve'.

'black cd'
1 The Moglass- '05:05'.
2 Neil Campbell- 'Bbreeeze'.
3 Birchville Cat Motel- 'I Am But Dust'.
4 The Skaters- 'Between Land and Cloud Galloping Through Her'.
5 seht- 'Antarctica Download (edit)'.
6 Of- 'The Blank Room'.
7 1/3 Octave Band- 'Dominion'.
8 The Nether Dawn- 'Amber Eyed'.
9 My Cat is an Alien- 'Hear the Voice of the Cosmos'.

YES IT IS AS GOOD AS IT SOUNDS! (<- me) Clayton No-one (Armpit, CJA, Futurians, Root Don Lonie...) says: im listening to "the tone of the universe (= the tone of the earth)" & it is truly blowing me away, super thanks to antony for making this double cd compilation happen, i can feel the coldness of space & the lonliness, it is really 'out there'...pseudo arcana rulz!

This is the best compilation I can think I've ever heard... it functions so much better than many, it really is greater than the sum of its parts. Some of the music is so so wonderful and beautiful and essential that I felt a bit stink, embarrassed like, out of my league.

Oh, and did you think I was finished? Celebrate/Psi/Phenomenon also released a companion CDR to my Application antarctica download form album. It's called Communion longplayer. Campbell Kneale again:

Application antarctica...'s sister release, performing a function akin to an exclamation mark at the end of Stephen Clover's brilliance. The routine transfer of electrons from wire to amplifier (resulting in tiny pulses of air that can only be detected by your eardrums and the hairs on the back of your neck). Golly, it never seemed quite so IMPORTANT before. Further proof of my theory that states "if you leave a tap on for long enough, you can carve your own Grand Canyon".

Contrary to all appearances, I don't actually pay the guy to write nice things about my shit.

Quince (well, some)

For my international readers - many of whom appear to know not what is a quince, and have phoned and emailed me to ask "whassaquince, then?" - here's a picture of some quinces.

Ugly, ain't they?

On a histo-musicological note, I rather imagine the band-name Quincy Conserve is a somewhat assinine pun on quince jam, and the man's name Quinc(e)y.

Quincy Conserve were one of the most talented and professional groups to appear on the New Zealand music scene in the late sixties. They were (Drinks-After-Work's hometown) Wellington's first 'supergroup'. Incredibly, none of the members of the band were ever called Quinc(e)y, at least not in public. They were active from 1967 'til they broke up in 1971, possibly due to the pressure of keeping on having to tell people what their stupid name was/meant.

At this moment I am unable to ascertain the correct collective noun for quinces. I'm tempted to suggest that "a quattrain of quince" may suffice for this situation, and many others, when one has four quince to hand.

Please make any other helpful suggestions in the comments box.

Also spare a thought for Karl Kippenberger, bass-player in Shihad, another one of the most professional groups to appear on the New Zealand music scene. Karl's father Peter died on the weekend in a weird fire in Paekakariki.

Made jam

Quince are a strange, rare fruit; ugly, hard and inedibly tart in the raw state, and available only for a short season of three or so weeks every autumn. They have a uniquely delicious flavour when cooked, however, and hue of their flesh turns from a standard pear-like colour to an attractive ruby-red. What better thing to do, then, on a freezing Sunday morning, than make a kilo or so of them into jam.

Some of the *ahem* fruits of my labour pictured right. The jam is not unusual, nor is the making of it. You use 1 kg quince, 1 kg castor suger, and the juice of two lemons. There is no added pectin; the quince is naturally already quite high in said setting agent and the acid in the lemon juice is all it needs to coax it to do its thing and, well, get the jam to set.

The lemon juice gives the jam a lovely fresh citrus nose, and rather pleasingly, in its delightfully-lingering finish hints of Seville orange marmalade.

It took almost more then I had within me to wait for the smallest jar I filled to set before spooning obscenely hedonistic amounts onto a toasted muffin, laying over curls of a strong cheddar (parmesan would also do charmingly well) and consuming.

WTF

Just seen on a t-shirt: "I eat more pussy than cervical cancer"

Listen closely now, here he comes...

On paper it has all the likely-hood of a collaboration between Graham Capill, leader of the Christian Heritage political party in New Zealand and self-appointed "one-man megaphone for Christian indignation" for more than a decade, and an eight year-old girl. That is to say, not very likely at all.

But you don't, as they say, win matches on predictions or paper and so here we have David Sylvian, former pin-up boy satin-tonsilled vocalist and front-man for Japan, and maker since of a number of literate, lush, seriously odd solo records (highligts: Brilliant Trees, Secrets of the Beehive, Dead Bees on a Cake); heavyweight Austrian electronica artist Christian Fennesz; and Derek Bailey, irrascibly iconoclastic guitarist and foremost proponent of free-improvisation for nigh-on 40 years. Making a record together.

David Sylvian and Derek Bailey - the Good Son

It's a mash-up of sorts, it's called Blemish, and as allmusic.com says, it's the "sort of record that makes many long-time followers throw up their arms in aggravation - it's very much a 'final straw' record".

Not this listener.

Accompanied in turns by Bailey, Fennesz, or his own laconic guitar, Sylvian croons and whispers his way through eight tracks. By its very nature it is a barren, broke-down affair and it's utterly beautiful; enveloping in its bristly lilting swagger, like a well-read drunken sailer yet to find his land-legs and rolling all over town bellowing out his stark shanties to any who'll listen.

Blemish was released in 2003; there's also a new album out called The Good Son vs. The Only Daughter which is a collection of remixes of Blemish material.

Drug Music for an Unreal World Wide WebCast

It's nice to make contact with my fellow drug-addled. I've just noticed that a track from The Voice of the Taniwha has been included in the latest webcast from Drug-Music web radio. This is the full set-list:

Loop - Eternal - Thief of Fire/Thief (Motherfucker) [00:00]
Space Debris - Krautrock Session 1994-2001 - Nuff & Nunner [09:03]
New Order - Waiting for the Sirens' Call - I Told You So [12:11]
The Charlatans UK - Some Friendly - Opportunity [18:06]
Seht - The Voice of the Taniwha - Make the Baby Jesus Cry Some More [24:37]
Ultrasonics - s/t - Sweat Leaf [31:15]
Louis XIV - Illegal Tender EP - Finding Out True Love Is Blind [36:03]
Savoy Brown - Looking from The Outside (Live 69-70) - Leavin' Again [40:16]
Out Hud - Let Us Never Speak of It Again - It's for You [51:20]
The Flaming Lips - Hear It Is - With You [56:09]

Unfortunately the DJ mispronounces "Seht" as well as "Taniwha" but I'm just excited to have ended up on the same set as two personal heroes, Loop and The Flaming Lips; apart from an awful new New Order track it's actually a really good set, too. Worth a listen.

Tarot

Ever since Rose told me about the MP3-Blogs Aggregator, I've been obsessed with it, and the bunch of MP3-Blogs I've found [more about them later].

So because sooner or later I have to try my hand at everything, I'm going to do the occasional MP3-bloggin' here. Of course, the songs will be posted for evaluation purposes only. I love and support well-made music and make every effort to support the artists I love by purchasing their work; to that end it is my policy only to post what I own, and at that probably out-of-print stuff. To download the songs, right-click on the bold orange link and then select "Save Target As..." or "Save Link As..." to save the MP3 files to your computer. I won't be keeping an archive of the songs, so if it's gone, it's gone. Also, if you own the copyright to one of these songs and would like it removed, please let me know.

Walter Wegmueller And The Cosmic Couriers - Der Weise (The Wise Man)

Walter Wegmueller recorded this album with the Cosmic Couriers - a supergroup of German rock ('krautrock' as it is affectionately known): Klaus Schulze, Manuel Goettsching, Walter Westrup and others - in December 1972 and it was released October the following year on Ohr Kosmische Musik. Wegmueller was an itinerant gypsy mystic and painter and to accompany the album he painted an entire Tarot set of 78 cards; they are repoduced in the CD boxed-set reissue on Spalax that I have.

The album is 22 themed tracks, one for each of the Major Arcana, or trump cards: The Fool, The Wheel of Fortune, the Devil, Death, and so on. Mostly it's rocking funk/cosmic sounds like you'd expect, quite silly but pretty good and really fun to listen through. This track, Der Weise (The Wise Man), is one of the more sedate numbers, and features Klaus "Quaddro" Schulze, one of the pioneers of electronic music, as the narrator/vocalist. It's a piece of pure beauty, and you'll dissolve in bubbling syrup as, at the conclusion and with an apparent complete lack of self-consciousness, Schulze begins to hum along with the melody.

I'd probably write something a bit more coherent about the track if I was in a slightly better condition; The Jarman, Dave, and myself have just spent an enjoyable evening getting toasted, listening to Tarot and performing tarot readings - using Wegmueller's deck - in between bouts of trans-lingual etymological nerdery. You can also listen to snippets of the entire album at TIGERSUSHI.

Oh, and Julian Cope spazzed magnificantly about the album in his Krautrocksampler book.

Happy birfday to me, innit

I got a bunch of great presents last night. From Dave and Rose a huge skeleton-guy cushion/pillow; from Campbell a beautiful, tragic, beat-up accordion; from Marnie a drawing; from Jo and Matt a drawing and a photo; from Shana a pair of signed 7" records by The Stabs; a bottle of wine and a wee painting from Simon and Anya; and Antony gave me a copy of his new cd.

Big ups my mates, then. No really, thank you. I love yous all.