Autumnal Jumbo Fun-Pak: The Unmatchable Robert Cardy (1987-88)

Continuing our Christchurch cassette excavations: home-tapes from the bountiful Bob Cardy (Axemen, Shaft, etc.).

Traditional EnZed bedroom studio stuff in the orthodoxy of Chris Knox or Kraus, Alastair Galbraith or Darcy Clay or Stefan Neville -- like The Residents recording The Basement Tapes or Jonathan Richman's Thinking Fellers tribute act solo-recorded on the dole, all dolloped in Strapping Fieldhands' sloshed slapdashery.

81 songs on six tapes over two short years! Cheesy preset synths and sound effects, home organ, drum machine and double-tracked vocals, guitar and bass and banjo. Riffs and raffs, Velvet earworms, effortless songcraft out the metaphorical wazoo, plus jokes 'n' puns & drones 'n' gems a-poppin'.

Down- and overload on this underlooked ol' wunderkind! Unreservedly recommended.


Fat Spring Coal & Diamonds In The Lava (1987)

The Untouchable Farmhand Blarney

Lallapaloosa (1987)

Hindsight Scrambler

Public Address (1987)

Young, Gifted & Broke

18 Milky Bar Odes (1987)

Return Of The Horse That Bit Me

A Thousand And One Stag Nights (1988)

Tape Angels

Gloss (1988)

Grindstone Noseboy

You Were Dancing With My Mind - 24 Silicon Hits of the 1980s (c. 1989?)

This one's been a long time coming (obviously, as this blog's not been updated in 16 months or something). Very excited to post this.

While enshrining the eighties in EnZed music, many serious musos scoff at the synthesizer, though other keys are all over underground records and pop charts; countless Flying Nun bands are built around that sound of a garagey organ.

This recently rediscovered collection is a celebration of the synthetic aesthetic, from The Body Electric's use of frequency shifters to sing like cybermen, to Simon Raby aping arpeggiators on the Korg. Included are some of the biggest New Zealand synth-pop hits of that decade -- 'Computer Games' and 'Sierra Leone', The Mockers and Split Enz -- with a couple of genuine obscurities and shoulda-been contenders.

You can hate yourself for loving these tracks, but you know they're the songs you want to dance to when that cheap speed kicks in at the flat party at 3am. If, y'know, you're not actually way too old to do that sort of thing anymore.


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