Montgomery, Roy

Montgomery, Roy

Camera Melancholia

Grapefruit

Camera Melancholia is a double album of instrumental music inspired by and dedicated to Kerry McCarthy (1967-2021) who was Montgomery's partner for twenty years and the mother of two children they had together. She died from cancer in early 2021 after first being diagnosed in 2014. McCarthy was a professional curator in the area of pictorial collections, particularly around photographic material, and her PhD used the work of Roland Barthes to theorize about the legacies of images associated with Antarctic exploration in the early 20th Century. The cover art for Camera Melancholia was provided by Ronnie van Hout, an Aotearoa New Zealand artist associated with the earliest graphic design work for Flying Nun Records. Van Hout was also a very close and long standing friend of McCarthy. The gatefold album includes the text for ten poems written for and about McCarthy.

Montgomery, Roy

Audiotherapy

Grapefruit

Roy Montgomery, a pioneer of the NZ underground, believes there is always new sonic terrain to investigate. His latest series of albums for Grapefruit marks forty years of rigorous exploration in which he has managed to navigate disparate genres, scenes, and atmospheres, always at the forefront of experimental independent music. To commemorate, Grapefruit will be releasing four new Montgomery albums in 2021, which can be purchased individually or via subscription.  For his fourth album, appropriately named Audiotherapy, Montgomery builds his compositions from the subconscious, breaking down form and inviting in new techniques. “Audioramble” features call-and-response singing between him, Emma Johnston and Arnie Van Bussel, both of whom act as a Greek chorus to Montgomery’s reflections. “Occlusione” sets a sturdy musical bed under Maria Eleanora C Mollard’s whispered spoken word, like a voice in one’s head that risks getting drowned out in the noise. For the sublime “Audiotransport,” guitars shimmer up the sides and weave through one another, reconciling the inner voices of doubt and worry into a meditation on the beauty of existence. The last track, “Imperfect Intense”, builds on disbalance as Johnston’s vocals meet Montgomery’s in broken harmony; both singers move at their own pace despite the other, embodying how uncertainty lies at the heart of how we live. Audiotherapy is the most intuitive and experimental entry of Roy Montgomery’s 2021 (and—cough—2022) releases, closing out the series with introspection and transcendence.

Montgomery, Roy

Rhymes Of Chance

Grapefruit

Roy Montgomery, a pioneer of the NZ underground, believes there is always new sonic terrain to investigate. His latest series of albums for Grapefruit marks forty years of rigorous exploration in which he’s managed to navigate disparate genres, scenes, and atmospheres, always at the forefront of experimental independent music. To commemorate, Grapefruit will be releasing four new Montgomery albums in 2021, which can be purchased individually or via subscription.  The third release of the series, Rhymes Of Chance, is the darkest entry of the four. Songs sound particularly spacious and minimal, with two tracks centering forlorn melodies around trusty collaborator Emma Johnston’s singing and two others sung by Montgomery himself. While Side A presents the six-part “Rhymes Of Chance” suite, Side B’s “Aspiratory” holds a clue to Montgomery’s approach on this record; a floating dirge stretches time, much in the manner Mark Hollis (to whom the song is dedicated) approached music.

Montgomery, Roy

That Best Forgotten Work

Grapefruit

Roy Montgomery, a pioneer of the NZ underground, believes there is always new sonic terrain to investigate. His latest series of albums for Grapefruit marks forty years of rigorous exploration in which he’s managed to navigate disparate genres, scenes, and atmospheres, always at the forefront of experimental independent music. To commemorate, Grapefruit will be releasing four new Montgomery albums in 2021. The first installment, Island Of Lost Souls, arrived to great acclaim in January. The second and latest album, His Best Forgotten Work, features Montgomery’s rare, brooding vocals across nine gorgeous tracks recorded from his home in Christchurch, New Zealand. His Best Forgotten Work follows the intense, all-instrumental Island Of Lost Souls. It departs in spirit with darkly buoyant variations on popular songs, including two highly anticipated covers of legendary songs by The Carpenters (“Superstar”) and Tim Buckley (“Song To The Siren”). Montgomery shows the listener that these influences aren’t such strange bedfellows after all; one need only listen closely. Where some might be inclined to relax and lean into their legacy at this stage in a sprawling career, Montgomery’s new music continues to seek and challenge. His compositions are beautiful as well as disconcerting, and often speak to precarity and dread. His Best Forgotten Work is a title with tongue planted firmly in cheek, alluding to the artist’s position of enjoying a peculiar bit of fame in relative obscurity. But listening to his dry wit and rich voice, one will find it isn’t easily forgotten.

Montgomery, Roy

Island Of Lost Souls

Grapefruit

Island Of Lost Souls is the first of four new albums by Roy Montgomery coming out in 2021 to commemorate Montgomery’s forty years in music. His debut release was also Flying Nun’s first, the Pin Group 7-inch from 1981. Roy Montgomery, a pioneer of the NZ underground, believes there is always new sonic terrain to investigate. His latest album for Grapefruit marks forty years of rigorous exploration in which he’s managed to navigate disparate genres, scenes, and atmospheres, always at the forefront of experimental independent music.  Island Of Lost Souls follows his acclaimed 2018 LP Suffuse—a novel departure in which he consigned all vocal duties to ambient / experimental peers Liz Harris (of Grouper), Julianna Barwick, Purple Pilgrims, Haley Fohr (of Circuit des Yeux), Katie von Schleicher, and She Keeps Bees. But the veteran evolves again. On this release Montgomery creates resounding, aerial compositions for guitar. Where some might be inclined to relax and lean into their legacy at this stage in a sprawling career, Montgomery’s new music continues to seek and challenge, moving like the eye of a storm. This latest album cries out like a chorus, though there are no vocals on the record. Its tracklist instead builds upon the lonesome and polyphonic dimensions of guitar in order to express universal feelings of communion and isolation, resisting conclusion but never resorting to fatalism. Life is all about navigating these contradictions and everyone is with Montgomery on this island whether they’d like to admit it or not. Here,...

Montgomery, Roy

Scenes From The South Island

Yellow Electric

Expanded reissue of New Zealand guitar pioneer Roy Montgomery’s rare and revered full-length debut, Scenes From The South Island, originally released in 1995 by West Coast experimental / space rock label Drunken Fish. Recorded on both coasts on a pair of Tascam 4-tracks, the album is alternately wistful, windswept, skeletal, shredded, and strange. Solo guitar figures flow and fray through echo and empty space, evoking loss, long roads, and low-lit landscapes.  Montgomery’s own memories of this era conjure it vividly: “Several elements converged or aligned for the making of Scenes From The South Island in late 1994, early 1995. Landing in San Francisco where things felt different but the same. The play of light, the odd ornamental pohutakawa or ti kouka sprouted from tiny front yards and waving silently at me in this neighborhood or that. The wind. A room with basic recording equipment up on Sunset, the kind of which I had seen before many times in flats or houses in my city. Patches of the American landscape viewed from the road or trodden lightly upon that still seemed as unpeopled as home and rightly so. Time off to remember. Time off to try to forget. A cheap electric guitar waiting for me in a pawn shop in Chicago. Thoughts about good places to die both here and there. The land talking to me. The dead talking to me. Spirit guides. Pathways in the brain. Luck. Another room on the other side of the continent on the Lower...

Montgomery, Roy

Suffuse

Grapefruit

***BACK IN STOCK!!!  Received a 7.6 rating from Pitchfork. Despite praise and acclaim throughout his career, Roy Montgomery hates his singing. From his point of view, it’s done out of necessity, when he doesn’t have anyone else around to substitute. Roughly one quarter of Montgomery’s epic multi-album 2016 release R M H Q had his singing, and those are his least favorite tracks.  Grapefruit has done the best they can to argue that his basso undertones are the center of his appeal throughout his entire body of work, from the first The Pin Group single on Flying Nun in 1981, through his work in Dadamah, Dissolve and on to his legendary ’90s solo releases. However, is it a surprise he jumped at the idea of composing an album for other vocalists? This began as a series of alternate takes of the material on Tropic Of Anodyne, the tracks with vocals off his last release. That concept morphed into assembling vocalists to sing on new songs, and he conceived instrumental material that would fit each singer. Half of the songs came together, resulting in Suffuse. The album charts a slow progression from those who share similarities with Montgomery’s rumbling vocal technique to those who come at singing differently, with minute contrasts throughout. Haley Fohr (Circuit des Yeux) and Jessica Larrabee (She Keeps Bees) bring the first two tracks, with Katie Von Schleicher following with a raw expression of emotional loss, and the sisters Clementine and Valentine Nixon (Purple Pilgrims)...

Montgomery, Roy

R M H Q: Headquarters

Grapefruit

It’s been over a decade since Roy Montgomery’s last album, and R M H Q is a hell of a return. This release contains four distinct records of new material. Listening to any of his work is a visceral experience—repeating phrases swell and decay, immersing the listener in the cyclical narrative of his compositions.Montgomery was in his rock band period in the eighties, when the dark, minimalist post-punk of The Pin Group lead into the gloriously open-ended freedoms of Dadamah. After a quiet spell, he returned in the late nineties, producing towering spires of guitar lines that exposed fragility between the strums. With his solo releases and in collaboration with Flying Saucer Attack, Bardo Pond (Hash Jar Tempo), and Chris Heaphy (Dissolve), his focus shifted from the truth-mining of rock music to epic celestialism. His ambitious yet humble tracks outstrip their origins, and Montgomery toured the world sitting cross-legged on the floor, playing twenty-plus-minute compositions.A long period of silence followed, marked only with a split album with Grouper (who lists Montgomery as a primary influence), involvement in Torlesse Super Group, and a couple thematic variations serving as soundtracks for films. Instead, he focused on his personal and professional commitments. Unfortunately, two horrific events preceded his return: the Christchurch earthquakes of 2011 condemned Montgomery’s entire neighborhood save for his home, stripping his street of a community; and, as a volunteer firefighter, he saw first-hand the destruction and loss of life in the city center. Additionally, since 2014, illness in the family...

Montgomery, Roy

H: Bender

Grapefruit

It’s been over a decade since Roy Montgomery’s last album, and R M H Q is a hell of a return. H: Bender harkens back to his nineties work, where guitar riffs ensconced themselves in dynamism. Montgomery’s trademark reverb-laden guitar offers a fluidity like pulsing blood, coloring in each motif’s corners and rewarding every deeper listen with heightened profundity. Montgomery was in his rock band period in the eighties, when the dark, minimalist post-punk of The Pin Group lead into the gloriously open-ended freedoms of Dadamah. After a quiet spell, he returned in the late nineties, producing towering spires of guitar lines that exposed fragility between the strums. With his solo releases and in collaboration with Flying Saucer Attack, Bardo Pond (Hash Jar Tempo), and Chris Heaphy (Dissolve), his focus shifted from the truth-mining of rock music to epic celestialism. His ambitious yet humble tracks outstrip their origins, and Montgomery toured the world sitting cross-legged on the floor, playing twenty-plus-minute compositions. A long period of silence followed, marked only with a split album with Grouper (who lists Montgomery as a primary influence), involvement in Torlesse Super Group, and a couple thematic variations serving as soundtracks for films. Instead, he focused on his personal and professional commitments. Unfortunately, two horrific events preceded his return: the Christchurch earthquakes of 2011 condemned Montgomery’s entire neighborhood save for his home, stripping his street of a community; and, as a volunteer firefighter, he saw first-hand the destruction and loss of life in the city center....

Montgomery, Roy

M: Darkmotif Dancehall

Grapefruit

It’s been over a decade since Roy Montgomery’s last album, and R M H Q is a hell of a return. M: Darkmotif Dancehall is the most experimental of the four albums. Montgomery explores new guitar tones and song construction, allowing thick distorted murk and overdriven sharpness to guide the melodies’ paths. It’s a playful montage of differing masks with discovered sounds laying the groundwork for each track to develop a mind of its own. “Six Guitar Salute For Peter Gutteridge,” is a standout upbeat number providing a personalized roadmap to the beyond, honoring the innovative original member of The Clean who could cook up melodies from the most bizarre ingredients, and who passed away last year. Montgomery was in his rock band period in the eighties, when the dark, minimalist post-punk of The Pin Group lead into the gloriously open-ended freedoms of Dadamah. After a quiet spell, he returned in the late nineties, producing towering spires of guitar lines that exposed fragility between the strums. With his solo releases and in collaboration with Flying Saucer Attack, Bardo Pond (Hash Jar Tempo), and Chris Heaphy (Dissolve), his focus shifted from the truth-mining of rock music to epic celestialism. His ambitious yet humble tracks outstrip their origins, and Montgomery toured the world sitting crosslegged on the floor, playing twenty-plus-minute compositions. A long period of silence followed, marked only with a split album with Grouper (who lists Montgomery as a primary influence), involvement in Torlesse Super Group, and a couple thematic variations...

Montgomery, Roy

Q: Transient Global Amnesia

Grapefruit

It’s been over a decade since Roy Montgomery’s last album, and R M H Q is a hell of a return. Q: Transient Global Amnesia concentrates on hope and despair, sinking singular guitar lines into dark passages. It dissects the personal politics of sadness, reveling in the honesty of depression while seeking to fully explore its facets. Compositions trade between heartworn declines and spirited rises, collapsing upon themselves in unmoored confusion before achieving signs of relief. It culminates with the twenty-minute transfigurative finale “Weathering Mortality,” where all previous questions intersect toward an uneasy, churning acceptance. Montgomery was in his rock band period in the eighties, when the dark, minimalist post-punk of The Pin Group lead into the gloriously open-ended freedoms of Dadamah. After a quiet spell, he returned in the late nineties, producing towering spires of guitar lines that exposed fragility between the strums. With his solo releases and in collaboration with Flying Saucer Attack, Bardo Pond (Hash Jar Tempo), and Chris Heaphy (Dissolve), his focus shifted from the truth-mining of rock music to epic celestialism. His ambitious yet humble tracks outstrip their origins, and Montgomery toured the world sitting cross-legged on the floor, playing twenty-plus-minute compositions. A long period of silence followed, marked only with a split album with Grouper (who lists Montgomery as a primary influence), involvement in Torlesse Super Group, and a couple thematic variations serving as soundtracks for films. Instead, he focused on his personal and professional commitments. Unfortunately, two horrific events preceded his return: the...

Montgomery, Roy

R: Tropic Of Anodyne

Grapefruit

It’s been over a decade since Roy Montgomery’s last album, and R M H Q is a hell of a return. R: Tropic of Anodyne highlights Montgomery’s baritone lamentations on every track. It sets the blueprint for all of R M H Q while displaying Montgomery’s talent for brevity. His self-reflective lyrics remain personal, even answering the Rolling Stones’ classic “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” with the sobering “You Always Get What You Deserve.” Montgomery was in his rock band period in the eighties, when the dark, minimalist post-punk of The Pin Group lead into the gloriously open-ended freedoms of Dadamah. After a quiet spell, he returned in the late nineties, producing towering spires of guitar lines that exposed fragility between the strums. With his solo releases and in collaboration with Flying Saucer Attack, Bardo Pond (Hash Jar Tempo), and Chris Heaphy (Dissolve), his focus shifted from the truth-mining of rock music to epic celestialism. His ambitious yet humble tracks outstrip their origins, and Montgomery toured the world sitting cross-legged on the floor, playing twenty-plus-minute compositions. A long period of silence followed, marked only with a split album with Grouper (who lists Montgomery as a primary influence), involvement in Torlesse Super Group, and a couple thematic variations serving as soundtracks for films. Instead, he focused on his personal and professional commitments. Unfortunately, two horrific events preceded his return: the Christchurch earthquakes of 2011 condemned Montgomery’s entire neighborhood save for his home, stripping his street of a community; and,...

Montgomery, Roy

Silver Wheel Of Prayer

Vhf

***With so much outward-bound free action these days, it's oddly comforting to hear someone's—well, Roy Montgomery's—version of the journey to the heart of the inner cosmos. A sister record to Montgomery's Drunken Fish CD The Allegory of Hearing, Silver Wheel has seven complementary instrumental tracks, played mostly on Tiesco six-string and recorded mostly on four-track. A couple of tracks are dominated by a new Farfisa organ, which provides a gliding drone and waver on which to hang titles like "for the disoriented" and "for the mortified." The longest track here is "for a small blue orb," a simple strum that builds into a hypnotic pattern over 16 minutes. "The album," says Roy, "is dedicated to Geoff Davies and Annie Leadbetter and their son Jess, who, without seeming to worry about what they were in for, welcomed me into their house and their lives at 12 Buckingham Ave, Liverpool in 1982. The longest track on this recording was first sketched out in their front room on a black Korean acoustic guitar which I christened "Rosebud." It has taken way too long to finish the sketch and to say thanks, but they really did feed my soul and I am grateful for it."    

Montgomery, Roy

324 E. 13th Street #7

Drunken Fish

***New Zealand native and world class guitar tunesmith ROY MONTGOMERY returns to center stage with a beautiful collection of sixteen tracks taken from now out-of-print singles released by the Drunken Fish, Siltbreeze, Roofbolt, Ajax and Varispeed labels. Laid down primarily in two separate bursts of recording on either side of the United States, these songs are a testament to Montgomery's elegant and somber use of guitar and voice, usually dreamy and always beautifully heartfelt. Features guest musicians BILL DIREEN, BARBARA MANNING, M.S. ARGO and MARK HENEY, and includes four additional previously unreleased songs.

Montgomery, Roy

Allegory Of Hearing

Drunken Fish

***After the success of last year's Roy Montgomery album on Drunken Fish And Now The Rain..., and the first installment of Roy's singles compilation 324 E. 13th St. #7, The Allegory Of Hearing is set to bring even more adoration upon New Zealand's true "guitar hero." Recorded in Montgomery's harbor cottage in Lyttelton, NZ, during October 1998 on his trusty Tascam Porta One and mixed in January 2000, Allegory is a return to an instrumental palette first witnessed on his debut DFR CD Scenes From The South Island and Temple IV CD (Kranky). Armed with newly acquired Rickenbacker 12-string and vintage Farfisa electric organ, plus his usual Teisco, e-bow, and Quadraverb arsenal, RM has created eight short soundtracks of a particularly meditative nature. All, save one, clock in at under six minutes, making this a slightly more digestable dish for those with smaller appetites, but fans of Montgomery's high-profile contribution to Harmony of the Spheres collection will be pleased with the exception, "Resolution Island Suite," which clocks in at over 17 minutes, premiered at Terrastock II in San Francisco 1998, and appears here reworked in an instrumental form. Glorious.

Montgomery, Roy

And Now The Rain Sounds Like Life Is Falling Through It

Drunken Fish

The highly anticpated third solo album from New Zealand guitar coaxer Montgomery continues his alluring numbnal drone and float-away soulful quasi-folk songwriting. A stunning amalgam of soft-spoken isolation and soul-searing higher mindedness - Fichelscher/Fricke (Popul Vuh) arrangements filtered through a post-Velvets third-eye mind. E-Bowed guitar, piano and the unmistakable Montgomery strum. Elegantly serene and worthy..

Montgomery, Roy

End

Drunken Fish

***Three gorgeous new songs from our dream hero. The a-side unloads most beautifully with "Elegy For Nick Drake" released to coincide with the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death. The b-side delivers some stellar super-effected guitar shimmer along with Montgomery's rich vocals on one cut, and a shimmering strummer with guest bass and vocals by Lisa Siegel. Recorded last January in New York. Some copies are on blue vinyl intermixed with the black ones.

Montgomery, Roy

Temple IV

Kranky

This is the first vinyl issue of Temple IV, arguably Roy Montgomery’s finest solo album, originally released in 1996 on CD. The original album has been enhanced with two newer tracks that constitute side four of the album. Montgomery states: “The two new tracks recorded in 2018 were about asking the question “Can you step into the same river twice?” Heraclitus said you cannot. I say you can…” From the original press release: Few recording artists have aligned the quantity and quality of their releases as well as New Zealand singer /guitarist Roy Montgomery has in 1995. Beginning with kranky’s release of the soundtrack for an imaginary film That That Is...Is(Not) by Montgomery’s duo Dissolve early in the year, a series of superb albums and singles have been issued by a variety of labels across the world. Each one of them is a must have. Most recently, the Drunken Fish label released a collection of pastoral drones entitled Scenes From The South Island, singles have appeared on the Roof Bolt and gyttja labels, and further singles are scheduled with Ajax, Siltbreeze and others. Temple IV is the first solo recording by Roy Montgomery on kranky. The album was recorded by Montgomery on a four-track tape deck and then thickened up with monophonic moog. The tracks on the album are thick with interwoven guitar lines and moog drone, inspired by the Guatemalan rain forests and the mysterious ruins of the temple and ruins Montgomery visited there. Roy Montgomery spent the past...