The Cakekitchen - The Devil & The Deep Blue Sea


Recorded by the same duo lineup from Stompin' and again with Galbraith putting in a guest appearance on violin on the closing noise-then-peace instrumental "Escape From Fire Island," Devil can be understandably seen as almost the second half of a double album -- all tracks from both appear to have been recorded during the same series of sessions over the course of two years. Here, though, the Cakekitchen create probably their best overall effort yet, heralded in large part by the opening track "Old Grey Coast," over 11 minutes in length and covering both the straightforward rock and the avant-garde impulses of the band in equal measure, with a scraggly opening, a solid chugging midsection, and a majestic, lovely closing coda -- one of Jefferies' finest moments no matter which bands he's been in. "Bald Old Bear," originally a single preceding the album's release, follows up that with another mix of electric power and relaxed projection that's often been a Cakekitchen element, interspersed with breaks of gentle guitar chiming. Jefferies again pulls no punches lyrically, even while he almost serenely sings through his trademark reverb semi-fog; "Baby I Luv You" has "You're so bloody shallow" serving as a chorus, while "Prophet of the Underground" rips into the titular figure -- whoever it may be -- with a vengeance, matched nicely by a very strong, droney riff. "Make a God of Money" is another definite career highlight -- one of Jefferies' most spare, skeletal songs; dark acoustic guitar picking and subliminal bass support a vicious (but again, very softly sung) lyric about the impact of love and monetary, before revving up into a snarling thrash at the close. Fellow musical maverick Hamish Kilgour helps on "Ballad of Oxford Circus" and "Take It Easy With Me," providing both a soothing and aggressive closing song-with-lyric performance. Devil definitely makes its case with skill and style.

Skeptics - Ponds (vinyl rip)


After an EP and a few compilation appearances, this is the first Skeptics album which was issued in 1985. The signature Skeptics sound was clearly already in place from the start on this album. If you dig Amalgam & III, you will definitely have a lot to enjoy on this one. This is a great warm sounding vinyl rip with a bit of surface noise and some cracks and pops, but it doesn't detract much from the listening experience.

Submission Deadline!

As you all may know, this blog will no longer be updated after the end of this month. To keep my head from exploding when it gets close to the end, I am setting a submission deadline of September 25th. Anything received after that date will not be added to the blog. I have already accumulated an insane backlog of stuff... so expect a shitload of stuff (much of it very rare) before the end!

P.S. Do any of you who have blogs on Blogger hate this word verification thing as much as I do?

The Dead C - The Dead C Vs. Sebadoh


Note: Sebadoh has nothing to do with this release, it's just the title.

Toy Love - Two Live Sets


Here is a pretty damn rare item. These are two sets that Toy Love played right after returning to New Zealand after their very unsuccessful stay in Australia where they recorded their first LP. Pretty excellent sound for a cassette that is over 20 years old. Some songs on here don't appear anywhere else. I wonder if Chris Knox has heard this, if he hasn't someone should send it to him!

Bike - Take In The Sun

Wish List Update

The wish list has once again been updated with new entires. Please note that all re-up requests are still going to be recognized before this blog meets it's death.

If you read my soulseek rant yesterday, do your best to disregard it, it turns out all of the persistent banning may have been a connection / software error. I'm on there today and everything is running smooth as silk. I am getting quite a bit of rare NZ stuff that you can definitely expect to see posted here! Sorry to those who I offended.

The Fall - In A Hole Bootleg


The Fall are not an NZ band as you may know, but this record is an important piece of NZ history for a few reasons. For one it was recorded by Chris Knox, who used (I believe) the same 4-track he used to record bands such as The Clean & The Stones to record this show. Secondly, this record was released on Flying Nun and it eventually put them into a lot of financial trouble when Mark E. Smith (a notoriously huge bastard) demanded a large sum of money for the profits of this record. A great band and a great show!

Various Artists - Runner (Alaistair Galbraith Compilation)

Pterodactyls - We've Done It Now

The Dead C - 43 sketch for a poster

sorry... no cover :(

The Dead C / Hi God People Split

The Dead C - S/T

New Zealand Soul Seek Room

Micheal (who you all can thank for the big splurge of new uploads) wanted me to pass this along to you guys:

We've got a NZ room going on the Soulseek network, which gets between 20 and 35 people sharing NZ music. If we can get more people, that'd be awesome, so if you could let people know about it on your site, I'd really appreciate it. To get there, you've got to www.slsknet.org

1) Download and install Soulseek (which is free, and doesn't have spyware)
2) Right click on the room list on the right side of the programme.
3) Select "Create Room"
4) Type "New Zealand", being careful to put a capital "N" and "Z"
5) Once you're in, to join permanently, right click in the dialogue window and select "Toggle Room Autojoin"

The Playthings - Live 81