Autumn Jumbo Fun-Pak: Onset/Offset Cassette Comps (1983-87)

Digging back into the fertile fields of the 1980s Christchurch underground. Many of these songs were comped on the Krypton Ten 2xLP, but now you can listen to them in all of their 35-year-old, 'tape-saturated', hissy and disintegrating glory! Read all about Onset/Offset in Andrew Schmidt's article here. 



20 Krypton Hits Volume One (1983)

Comeback Neurosis

Krypton Green (1984)

The Square's a Square Inch Up Here

Krypton Red (1984)

The Scariest Thing Is Your Mind

Krypton Amber (1984)

They Were Still Dazed By Long Celebrations

KVEETWO (1987)

Little Red Radio

Nux Vomica (1985-88)

More obscure Chch! Nux Vomica were an early project of Lawrence Kennett and Lisa Preston, later of The Portage.  Kennett's first band, The Droogs, released one single around 1981 on cassette, 'Fuck Your Brain', which was re-pressed on vinyl in 2005 (under the name The Pitts).  Kennett stepped back from music for a bit but has recently begun playing again with other Garden City refugees now resident in Dunedin: Bob Cardy and Mick Elborado. Preston continues to perform, with bands such as Snort and Loliners. Bassist Phillip Hubbard disappeared from the scene in the early 90s, and drummer Chris Small died last year.

Nux Vomica - My Life To Live/T.V. Producer (1985)

This 7-inch is quite crackly but so what -- it's p*nk as f*ck. 'My Life To Live' sounds like one take, live in the studio, with some telephone-mic vocal overdubs -- slurred'n'shouty, organ'n'bass, grotty staccato garage. 'TV Producer' might be brutally tape-spliced from several takes, with different EQs and mic placements, giving the whole thing a nicotine-stained short-of-breath live-reptile-show caveman-minimalism drive.

Recorded and co-produced by The Axemen's Steve McCabe.


I Know What'll Sell


Nux Vomica - Live '85 - '87 (1988)

Recorded at the Gladstone, in Motueka and Takaka, and in rehearsal.

Heaps more guitar on this (if there was any on the single, it was totally inaudible) -- smoky, speed-thrilling, raw cuts from the Gladstone:  'Adoption', 'My Life To Live', and the Very Metal 'Gnome'.

Two songs from this -- 'Sin' and 'Swamp Dream' -- were re-recorded with The Portage on the Thirteen; Thirteen twelve-inch. 'Sin' and seven-inch A-side 'TV Producer' get roisterous in Takaka with Alan Wright on sax skronkings. The 'Swamp Dream' live rehearsal is murky-as motorik, like Sister Ray gets stripped-down and sweaty. Acoustic duet 'Good Things' could be a Kiwi Animal outtake. A couple tracks are just simple snippets of the best parts: 'Keeps on Coming' --which feels snotty and primitive like The Stones [NZ] -- starts suddenly, cuts abruptly.

Their originals are the best bits, but the tape finishes with a couple of covers of Lou Reed and The [Rolling] Stones.

[Note: There is a noisy tape glitch toward the end of the heavy, heavy, psych-groove 'Iron Pineapple'. I've done my best to splice the sound together. Not sure if the original tape was recorded that way (à la The Puddle's live records) or due to deterioration from earthquake liquefaction residue.]

Rough as guts, fucked up and sweet, familiar and a bit of strange. Highly recommended.


If I Kill You In My Passion

Vague Secrets - Vague Secrets (1985)

Sole album from Christchurch's Vague Secrets, and the first album to feature filmmaker John Chrisstoffels of The Terminals, The Renderers, et al. The same line-up backed Bill Direen as The Builders on 'Lovers' from C0NCH3.

Taut and rangy, with a tight rhythm section and a number of hip influences, they're sharp and smart but just faintly unfledged. Album opener 'Don't Come To Me' is post-punk-via-the-pub-circuit, but from the second track onward it's mostly earnest, slightly astringent, fairly elaborate pop along the lines of Blam Blam Blam, Thin Red Line, The World and The Orange. Perhaps it's piqued by the 'Vague' from the name, but amidst otherwise self-assurance there's a seeming hesitancy, a non-commital to form: wavering between Talking Heads-ish Caribbesque rhythms of 'Africa', straight-up drawling folk-pop with 'An Ending', and various other McGlashanisms before closing with a charming instrumental acoustic psych-pop miniature, chiming and peppy, the appropriately appointed 'Dunedin'.  All up, it's like a rich, evocative -- but somewhat frustrating -- early chapter from an unfinished story.

The pressing is on the edge of lo-fi. My copy is near pristine, but it's sometimes weedy, distorts easily, and some tracks sound practically mono.


Here come the vultures

Don't Make Noise (1988-89)

Seemingly forgotten South Island free improv, ex three staunch avant-gardists in late 80s Christchurch.


Don't Make Noise - Don't Make Noise (1988)

The trio's debut s/t cassette, with Greg Malcolm on guitar and cello, Paul Sutherland on electronics, radio, tapes, shenai etc., and John Kennedy on drums and percussion. Side A opens with an Eastern European impression -- Malcolm on cello and Sutherland on shenai -- before moving into timeless non-jazz/non-jamband Western free improv: feedback, drones, toy piano, radio and electronics, alternating with playful, artful, instrumental flourishes. By the B side, there's no dismissing their seriousness -- reductionist, lockstepped, insistent, clamorous clangour -- before revisiting Radical-Yiddish strings and rusty-hinges, shimmering cymbals and wheezing seabirds on the last piece.


pūtangitangi



Don't Make Noise - This Is The Place (1989)

Second (final?) cassette from DMN, featuring Malcolm's future Breathing Cage bandmate Michael Kime on double bass on the A-sides. Fragile and considered gauzy bits alternate with trashy rockist shuffles, Sandoz Lab-esque & Art Ensemblish 'little instruments', samples, wailing amps and hissy-crackling Moondog minimalism. Thirty minute B-side live at the Robert McDougall is astonishingly accomplished, complex and riveting -- the type of improvisation which gets audiences asking if it's a composed piece.

Aside from their short lifespan and limited small-run releases, I can only guess at why Don't Make Noise never made it into the NZ Free Noise canon. Kennedy and Malcolm both have avant-pop backgrounds or foregrounds (Thin Red Line and Breathing Cage, respectively), and there are moments which are aesthetically perhaps too Downtown jazz-ish for the Le Jazz Non compilation (let alone a few years too early). Regardless of their obscurity, the strength of material on these two tapes -- off-centre, exciting, droll and elegant, and both more serious and farther out than contemporaneous recordings by The Dead C -- merits their re-listening and reappraisal.


They called it, 'The Sound Barrier'

Paul Sutherland - Sea and Sun (1985)

A mid-solo-period C30 EP release by Christchurch-based Paul Sutherland of Into The Void, Don't Make Noise, and Les Baxters. 

Two sidelong improvisations of radio noise, electronic toys, tapes and layered tape loops and tape hiss and turntables and tape speed tricks, mechanical squeaks and percussive blasts -- all hard-panned, delayed and ping-ponging. At times a one-man-AMM felicitously iterating Reich's 'Piano Phase' and Riley's 'Music for the Gift'.

Slow and low-key, connoting robo-throat singing, ambient garage rock with an 808, hydrophone gamelan wind chimes, martial marches with cowboy bass lines and chirruping rewinds; with chance guest vocals from white noise-modulated Mockers and a chopped-up Maxwell H Brock from A Bucket of Blood. Gorgeously singular and highly recommended.

A sound is a sound... or is music

The Jessels - Bobzilla b/w The Worst Noël (1982)

Belated xmas wishes from Switched Out (a week later) and from Flying Nun (30 years later)!

According to what my pal Google tells me, this joint is Chris Knox joined by his partner Barbara, David and Hamish Kilgour, Doug Hood and others around the flat. The a-sider is a fantasy about Doug's cat Bob becoming ten stories high and destroying Christchurch, and the b-side is a bunch of xmas-themed nonsense.

Extremely rare, this goes for heaps on eBay and TradeMe. I was lucky enough to get this from my mate Mac, who had two copies and was downsizing his collection.

All the Trendies Wore Bobzilla Hair

Teenagers From Outer Space: Thirteen Christchurch Nuggets 1980 - 1983

Today is my birthday, so here is yr prezzie: the debut of this comp, TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE! I'm very excited about this; having been sitting on it for far too long, it's time to share.

Very, very tasty tracks here, blended and rolled up for you by a true connoisseur, the inimitable Mr Andrew Schmidt. Here's his words:

Teenagers From Outer Space – Thirteen Christchurch Odds ‘n Sods – 1980 – 1983

Ballon D'Essai – False Projections – 1983
Three D covers, vividly coloured screenprints, insert comic books - Ballon D'Essai records were an arty treat. And while the music didn't always live up to the packaging both of their EPs threw up some worthy sounds. The most interesting of which is False Projections. Written by Stephen MacIntyre, you can hear early hints of his work with All Fall Down in the slow prowling beat and VU-like serpentine lead that evokes Mainly Spaniards, and predates Flex era JPSE. The Christchurch sound anyone? Simon Says from the same EP is also worth checking out giving the best example of their later funky post-punk sound.

The Builders – Alien / Bedrock Bay – 1982
Bill bounced these two from EST’s Songs From The Lowland after the first run which we had. Two rocked up versions of Alien and bedrock Bay that showed Bill coulda been a (left field) mainstream rocker if he wanted.

The Gordons – Quality Control / Mengus Fugit - 1984
This is The Gordons that dare not speak its name. The second Gordons - John Halverson (guitar), Vince Pinker (bass) and Brent McLaughlin (drums) – that emerged out of Sheep Effect to record The Gordons’ Second Album. Unavailable still its tracks are a fairly pale version of the Parker-era Gordons bar Quality Control, a wired must-hear Gordons rocker and Mengus Fugit, which is equally relentless but less linear twin. Two of their best.


The Great Unwashed - Bad News For Jesus – 1983
The Great Unwashed with Peter Gutteridge on board in Christchurch with an E chord strummer full of the same infectious swing he'd bring to his masterful contributions to Singles in 1984. Taken from The Clean/ The Great Unwashed - Oddities 2 – 1987. Check the lyric. "Bad news for Jesus today, God got married, and had another son. "Zombies at the door, zombies at the door, all dressed up, in Sunday chains, there's Zombies at the door."

The McGoohans – Psychedelic Texas - 1983
Christchurch pean to Pebbles heartland, Texas, that few would have recognised back then. Only available on 20 Krypton Hits (Onset Offset Records tape) - 1984

The Newtones – Christchurch Part 2 - 1981
The Newtones EP debuted on the NZ pop charts at number 19, sold out its first pressing quickly then dropped out the next week. This popular Christchurch trio, who featured ex-Vauxhall/Streets Of Flowers guitarist Mark Brooks on bass and vocals, and Vandals/Aliens/Streets of Flowers singer Tony Peake on guitar and vocals, needed no gimmicks on the fuzz propelled rocker, China, a Tony Peake song echoing the aggression of the punk years and hinting at Peake’s love of sixties psych. The flanged pop/ rock of Christchurch part 2 is a deliberate and effortless Christchurch anthem.

The Newtones – My World – 1982
More flat street pop from the prolific Newtones. My World is a Mark Brooks song taken for a long stroll by Brooks’ bass, Martin Archbold’s drums and Tony Peake’s guitar. Second Top 50 single from early 1982.

The Pedestrians – Looking Out My Window – 1982
The Pedestrians – Kevin Stone, Stuart McLachlan and Peter Wood - were a Napier power pop trio who moved to Christchurch in 1981 then hit their stride in 1982 after picking up drummer Lloyd Morgan. This lineup played regularly at new club PJs, the Gladstone, and the Star and Garter, and released the only Pedestrians single. Guitarist McLachlan’s spry pop stroll down a cracked Napier street, Looking Out My Window, backed with bassist Stone’s Jam-ish The Boys and The Girls. Lisa Bouillir sang in a late version of the group.

The Terraces – A Place Like This - 1982
The spooked sound and feel of a chill bright morning rapping over the Canterbury Plains. Roland de Beer (vocals/ drums), Brendan Cheyne (vocals/ guitar), and Peter Brennan (bass) were The Terraces, a post-punk trio who later added sax. Flipside on The Terraces’ only single from 1982.

The Vauxhalls - Teenager From Outer Space - 1980
Thank god The Vauxhalls managed to get into Christchurch’s Orley Studios in late 1980. That the recordings included a song this good is a bonus and real meat to the myth. Unfortunately by the time they got to record The Vauxhalls were minus Scott Brooks, the bass player so Mark Brooks plays bass and guitar. Martin Archbold drums. On the best track Teenager From Outer Space Mark Brooks lets rip ‘bout a quarter of the way through a wild chunk of garage R&B lead that burns the carpet. Unreleased.

The World – Mystery - 1983
You don’t hear much about Christchurch’s The World (Charles Heyward/ Allen Meek/ Malcolm Grant/ Andrea Cocks/ Bridgit Mulcahy) these days but it seems John Campbell in his haste to big up the Scottish originals has overlooked a Kiwi Orange Juice. Wrap those ears around the first track here, John, Mystery, it’s an upbeat funky joy with scratchy VU guitaring. The World released a tape in their own right in 1983 from which this track was sourced.

When the Night Gets Long

Bill Direen - Live at the Gladstone, Christchurch (1984)

Our man Bill Direen was recently selected as University of Auckland/Creative New Zealand writer-in-residence at the Michael King Writers’ Centre in Devonport from July this year. In honour of this award, here is a tasty little bootleg live recording of the man alone, from a 1984 solo performance in Christchurch. It's approx. one half Builders/Bilders/Bilderine/Soluble Fish songs, with a Doors(!) song, a couple of blues classics (Leadbelly's 'Red Cross Sto' and Ma Rainey's 'See See Rider [Easy Rider]'), and 'Mack the Knife' as murder ballad.

This intimate recording is taken from an old audience cassette, and as such is filled with stops and starts, crowd noises, pops and clicks (tho' it still sounds great, no worries).


I Drink