Howard, Rowland S.

Howard, Rowland S.

Teenage Snuff Film

Fat Possum

***BACK IN STOCK!!! Teenage Snuff Film was the long awaited first solo album recorded and released by ROWLAND S. HOWARD in 1999. Rowland recorded the album at the Birdland & Sing Sing recording studios in Melbourne with longtime colleague and collaborator MICK HARVEY contributing drums, organ and guitar and BRIAN HOOPER on bass. The album was produced by LINDSAY GRAVINA and engineered by JAMES MASON & JADE MARTIN, and released to critical acclaim both here in Australia and internationally. Teenage Snuff Film featured eight original songs; ‘Dead Radio,’ ‘Breakdown (and then...),’ ‘I Burnt Your Clothes,’ ‘Exit Everything,’ ‘Silver Chain,’ ‘Undone,’ ‘Autoluminescent,’ ‘Sleep Alone’ and two cover versions; ‘White Wedding’ (Billy Idol) and ‘She Cried’ (The Shangri-Las). Limited edition double vinyl with a D-side etching of a Howard illustration. (STREET DATE - 3/06/2020)

Howard, Rowland S.

Pop Crimes

Fat Possum

***BACK IN STOCK!!! ROWLAND S. HOWARD started playing in teenage bands in late ‘70s Melbourne. Whilst still a callow youth he wrote “Shivers,” an undisputed classic. The song was recorded by his band THE BOYS NEXT DOOR who mutated into the BIRTHDAY PARTY and then relocated to Europe to wage a guerrilla campaign against the trivialities of the ‘80s, until they turned their fire upon themselves and disintegrated mid-decade. Whilst his former associates have moved on to weekend color supplement acceptability, Rowland has commonly been perceived as the banished wastrel prince... exiled to a squalid garret on the colder edges of the kingdom, accompanied only by his dreams and inclinations. His demeanour (pale, gaunt, stick thin, sickly, dark humorred, fatalistic) has perhaps inadvertently added far too much credence to this interpretation of events. The shadow of this myth has seemingly obscured the sheer volume of his creativity and the singularity of his musical vision. Always respected by his peers, a scan through Rowland’s catalog of work sees him allied with the likes of Lydia Lunch, Thurston Moore, Wim Wenders, Barry Adamson, The Gun Club, Nikki Sudden, the Beasts Of Bourbon, the Hungry Ghosts and HTRK. Rowland’s own ensemble THESE IMMORTAL SOULS gun their engines in the ill-lit background and the legacy of his work with The Birthday Party scores the skin of successive generations of musicians and fans. But it’s a history Rowland would gleefully put a match to. With or without it Rowland S. Howard would make tense, beautiful...