The Vinyl Files Part 2 … The Gordons – The Gordons (1981/1988)

An interesting one this. I have a vinyl reissue of the classic 1981 Gordons debut album released in 1988. Not to be confused with The Gordons compilation album also released in 1988 – which included additional material from the band’s Future Shock EP of 1980 – or the second self-titled Gordons album of 1984 (aka Volume 2). This 1988 reissue was released on Flying Nun (FN099) after the first version of the debut was self-released by the Christchurch-based band (GORDON2). Same album, different release, different catalogue number. Clear as mud, then ...

Whatever version of the album you listen to, it’s guaranteed your ears will be ringing. It’s likely your eyes will start watering. And there’s a fair chance paint will start peeling from the walls. Even if you don’t have paint on your walls. It is, put simply, a cacophony of guitar-led noise; seven blistering tracks featuring fuzz, feedback, full tilt grinding guitar, with pulsating and frequently chaotic rhythms underpinning everything. All topped off with punky vocals of varying degrees of clarity and adequacy. Don’t ask me what the songs are about. I probably won’t be able to hear you. And who even knew a three-piece could create this much of a racket? 

There was nothing else quite like this album when it was first unleashed upon an unsuspecting local record-buying public back in 1981. Other than perhaps the band’s three-track EP released a year prior. Sure, there was punk and post-punk, both local stuff and releases from overseas, but this album defied all attempts at labelling, and it somehow managed to create a genre all of its own. It was territory nobody else occupied, although the similarly inspired Skeptics would give things a fair old crack later in the decade. 

The Gordons – Alister Parker, Brent McLachlan, and John Halvorsen – would eventually morph into Bailter Space (aka Bailterspace), a band with a much wider commercial flavour and appeal, even if the trio’s basic modus operandi didn’t really change all that dramatically. 

The album was belatedly but deservedly honoured with the inaugural Taite Music Prize ‘Independent Music NZ Classic Record’ award in 2013. 

(The Vinyl Files is a short series of posts covering the best items in your blogger’s not very extensive vinyl collection)

Ruane EP (2013) … and the Skeptics

One of the best things I’ve had on my pod over the past few weeks has been a great little EP offering from Ruane.

“Ruane” is Nick Roughan, ace sound engineer and producer, once of Palmerston North’s very own Skeptics.

 

According to the download’s blurb, the Ruane EP was conceived and created during archiving sessions for a documentary on the Skeptics over the course of 2011 and 2012.

 

The EP is a well produced set of five quite melancholic instrumental/electronic tracks. The mood feels a bit dark and challenging at times, but there’s a nice ebb and flow about these compositions, and it’s a pretty rewarding listen overall.

I’m not really sure if Ruane will amount to anything more than this intriguing one-off project, but Roughan has always been worth keeping a beady eye on, and this is a quality name-yer-price download experience.

Get the Ruane EP download HERE

http://nickroughan.bandcamp.com/

*

I actually went to high school with (the then “Nicky”) Roughan, and although we barely knew each other, my first encounter with the Skeptics, or an early incarnation of the band, was a lunch hour gig, circa 1980, in the otherwise tranquil surrounds of Palmerston North’s Awatapu College Library. I recall it because never before had I encountered music quite so loud, raw, and experimental. The concept of ‘industrial strength noise as intelligent art’ was not something I was overly familiar with at the time.

I saw the band a few more times over the next couple of years, at least once in that hub of Palmy creativity otherwise known as Square Edge, it may have even been within the confines of the band’s very own Snailclamps venue at the rear of that building (it’s all a bit hazy), and possibly once or twice more in Wellington during later years.

 

The band’s wider local influence speaks for itself, and while cult status was secured as a bewildering live act in the Eighties, the Skeptics’ longer term legacy is best appreciated in the form of a number of highly coveted recordings, not the least of which is the fine Amalgam album.

Vocalist David D’Ath’s tragic death – due to that bastard we know and despise as leukaemia – brought things to a sad close in 1990, but not before the Skeptics had written their own special chapter in Kiwi underground rock music’s rich and colourful history.

I’ll leave you with this ‘Rocked The Nation’ clip which profiles the Skeptics’ most controversial moment, the banned ‘AFFCO’ video. It features D’Ath on vocals, and in the starring role, plus Roughan speaking near the end (despite being incorrectly tagged in the clip as someone called Nick “Roughman”).