Gate - Golden

A compilation of some early Gate (aka Michael Morley of The Dead C., Tanaka-Nixon Meeting, and Wreck Small Speakers on Expensive Stereos) singles. Includes the "Julian Dashper Gate Experience" double lathe-cut 7" (released on Precious Metal in 1993), "Prophet/Rebel" 7" (Siltbreeze, 1992), "Sunshine/Ives" 7" (Twisted Village, 1992) and more. This CD came out on the New Zealand label IMD in 1996.

Gate - Golden

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Gate - Amerika

Gate is the work of Michael Morley when he was taking time out from The Dead C. Although Gate goes down as a solo project, there were surely other people on at least some of the early releases. The further away you get, the hazier the details are ...

LP released on Majora in 1993.

Amerika

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Gate - Lounge

 

Gate's 1993 album, released on CD by Twisted Village. 

i believe in swordfish

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Gate To Gate ‎- I Turn Black Keys

Blackened noise from Mike Connelly and Greh, authors of the Gods Of Tundra and Chondritic Sound labels respectively. Do you need any more convincing?

This brings together the Bane and House With The Clock In Its Walls tapes from 2004 and 2005 with a 40 minute unreleased introduction. Delivered unto the world by PACrec / Troniks in 2005.

I Turn Black Keys

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v/a - Le Jazz Non: A Compilation of Nineties NZ Noise

Sometimes, a compilation is the perfect way to reign in a wide, disparate group of artists whose individual releases are scarce and/or obscure. When it works, a great compilation brings its participants out from the shadows and frames them as a "scene" of some sort with sympathetic reverberations across its tracks. Listeners can then refer to it as a benchmark for all related music. "Le Jazz Non" is such a compilation. Put together by Bruce Russell on his remarkable Corpus Hermeticum label in 1996, it's hard to imagine a more fitting object to introduce the New Zealand free noise and drone micro-scene to the world. 

"Le Jazz Non" gathered previously little-known acts such as Thela (aka Rosy Parlane, Dion Workman, and Dean Roberts, all of whom now have productive solo careers), Gate (the extra-Dead C. "band" of Michael Morley), Rain and Doramaar (both featuring members of Flies Inside the Sun), Omit (whose hermetic nightmarescapes we've posted here on Bleak Bliss recently), Surface of the Earth (makers of a self-titled CD that remains the definitive New Zealand drone album, and is still available from Utech. Stop whatever you're doing and buy it now), RST (drone guitarist who would go on to make lovely shimmer for Ecstatic Peace, Last Visible Dog, and Utech), Witcyst (utterly baffling mail-art trash noise), A Handful of Dust (aka Mr. Russell making feedback-laced anti-music with Alastair Galbraith), Lame & Sorry (aka Galbraith with Shayne Carter of Straitjacket Fits), improv/rock heroes (and sometime Gate backing band) Sandoz Lab Technicians, and the still-obscure Empirical, of whom this track is one of the only extant documents. 

Don't rush through this album and form an opinion right away. Spin it a few times. Let its molecules disperse through the air in your home. Live with it for awhile. Let the atmosphere sink in and steadily rewire all of your synapses.

v/a - Le Jazz Non: A Compilation of Nineties NZ Noise

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Gate - Live in Boston, NYC 1994

 

Gate is usually the name that the Dead C's Michael Morley uses for some of his solo endeavors. For these live performances from Boston and New York City, he was joined by Lee Ranaldo (of Text of Light) and harpist Zeena Parkins. Released by Poon Village in 1994 as a CD in a very cool silk screened sleeve.

This is Boston, not NYC

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Trash - Not Gate

Bruce Blucher and Paul Cahill on guitars and one if not both on vocals with the lovely Robbie Yeats (yeah, drummer with the Dead C ...) on drums. Brilliant awkward rock that is only possible if you are from New Zealand.

CD released on New World Of Sound in 1994.

Not Gate

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Gate - Golden

A 1996 CD that reissues several of Gate's (mostly lathe-cut, very small-run) singles from the early 1990s. 

precious metal

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Gate - My Dear Sweet Reluctant Sweetheart

 

Recorded in 1997 and 1998, around the same time that the Dead C. were recording Tusk and their self-titled double CD epic. Released as a double CD by Hell's Half Halo in 2000.

deer

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va - Meme

Another artifact for the brief craze for fetishistic near-silence, the Meme label produced albums of minimal music with entirely-white covers and tiny grey text hidden beneath the all-white disc. The label leapt out of the gate with some winning CDs by John Hudak, Kevin Drumm & Taku Sugimoto (whose work, of course, would become so minimal over subsequent years that his albums of almost-total-silence trod dangerously close to self-parody), Nerve Net Noise (about whose Meme album the Forced Exposure website once dared listeners: "Go on, test your will to live."), Richard Youngs, and Shifts. This compilation from 1997 was the label's debut release, and worked as a sort of Meme mission statement. It contains tracks by the wonderful Sukora, Ryoji Ikeda, Stillupstepya, CM von Hauswolff, Loren MazzaCane Connors, Marc Behrens, Jim O'Rourke, Ultrasound, Rehberg & Bauer, Tamaru (an underrated bassist whose albums of stately woofer-taxing fog are absolutely worth seeking out), *0, Climax Golden Twins and more.

va - Meme

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Gate - Metric

This is perhaps a more traditional take on "rock music" but only one that could be imagined into existence in New Zealand.

This was originally released as a tape on Precious Metal in 1991. Luckily, it was also released on vinyl on Majora in 1992.

Metric

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Gate - The Lavender Head v3

 

Self-released CD from 2001. Bleary drones and no-fi ambience from New Zealand.

dirty knobby

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Armpit - Reaches Out

Armpit, the duo of CJA and Sugar Jon, have been banging their heads against the extremes of New Zealand underground for many, many years, and have not yet made the cover of any glossy magazines. It shouldn't be a surprise that the same people who cherish the scuzz of the The Dead C. get scared off by these lunatics, but it is a shame, because Armpit make a thrilling (if frequently frustrating) howl that takes the Xpressway DIY aesthetic down several clarity pegs but still scorches and drifts in its own stubborn way. There are folk/rock song-like moves buried beneath a fog of hiss, poor microphone placement and inebriated (or otherwise chemically affected) sloppiness. There are also passages of searing free improvisation, harsh feedback noise abandon, and jarringly gorgeous drone epiphanies. If wading through what-the-fug taxes your patience, though, then you're better off sticking with something friendlier, like Birchville Cat Motel or Gate. Armpit is not for beginners, and this 5xCDr set is for an even smaller subset of the already-converted. Tracks end abruptly. Edits are made seemingly at random. Recording quality shifts with the drunken violence of a band that truly doesn't give one hoot about pleasing anybody, a trait that I find endlessly, perversely, pleasing.

disc 1
disc 2
disc 3
disc 4
disc 5

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Wreck Small Speakers On Expensive Stereos - A Child's Guide To ...

"Wreck..." were Michael Morley (The Dead C, Gate, etc) and Richard Ram and delivered superior twisted lo-fi rock offerings during the early Eightites. This retrospective is compiled by Bruce Russell (who is also in The Dead C) from live and studio material and comes in the form of a C60, released on Bruce's hugely influential Xpressway in 1988.

A Child's Guide To ...

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Gate - The Lavender Head v3

Michael Morley on a CD, recorded live and released on Precious Metal in 2001.

The Lavender Head v3

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Gate - The Dew Line

 

Michael Morley's "The Dew Line" from 1994 is, in my opinion, the best music he's made outside of The Dead C. A huge gray downer of an album, sounding so broken and hopeless that it hardly has the energy to stand upright or keep its eyes open. Released as a CD by Table of the Elements.

dewdew-ettes

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Gate - Fear Of Music

One of the earliest releases on Precious Metal. C60 released in 1989.

I really need to hear the Hate tape on Precious Metal from 1990 if anybody out there is willing to share!

Fear Of Music

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Gate - The Lavender Head 1.1.1.2-2.1.2.2

Originally, this was an impossible to find lathe cut double LP released on Precious Metal in 1998 in a tiny edition of 30. Luckily for the rest of the world, this was re-released as a vinyl double album on Hell's Half Halo the same year in more accessible quantities.

The Lavender Head 1.1.1.2-2.1.2.2

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va - Insane Music for Insane Music Vol. 10

From 1986, with music by Tara Cross, Muteual Mortuary, Urovisions, Vanishing Family, Human Flesh, Vita Noctis, Thalassa Kollektif, Instead Of, Poets of the Signature, Amor Fati, Jean-Louis Descloux, Armando Velasco Torres, Los Paranos, The Gate, Ernest Hembersin and Dvoleta Fama.

va - Insane Music for Insane Music Vol. 10

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Sshe Retina Stimulants - Heaven 39

This is three sides of vinyl released on Kyle Wright's Diophantine Discs in 2006. It takes it's theme as the Heaven's Gate cult. In 1997, 39 of these deluded humans committed suicide in some bizarre preperation to join the space aliens as they passed by. Each of the bodies were found covered with a purple shroud. You can still find the cult leader's (murderer's) utterly psychotic proclamations on line but I'm not going to link him. Shame the fucker is dead ... he should be rotting in jail. The real shame is that there were people who followed him when they could have been receiving treatment and living happy lives.

Heaven 39

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