An influence on everyone from Grouper to Rat Heart, the perennially rated Kiwi guitarist Roy Montgomery is at his most lyrically instrumental, evocative best on early solo side ’Temple IV’, which is newly expanded and now finally pressed on vinyl for the first time.
In 1995, guitarist Roy Montgomery broke solo from his roles in pivotal ‘80s New Zealand bands, Dadamah, Dissolve, Hash Jar Tempo, and The Pin Group, with a pair of sublime self-portraits, ‘Scenes from the South Island’, and this, ‘Temple IV’, which was only ever available on CD, nestled on a then nascent Kranky. It returns on vinyl for the first time with a couple of bonus cuts recorded in 2018 that are about asking, in Roy’s own words, the question; “Can you step into the same river twice?” Heraclitus said you cannot. I say you can…”. Recorded in NYC, 1995, the original album is a gorgeous testament to Montgomery’s effortless distillation of styles that could variously be named post-rock, kosmiche, shoegaze, or folk-blooz noise, and is thoroughly characteristic of his music’s mix of slow burn, melancholic anguish and ravishing romantic urge, and sure to become an evergreen on many record shelves.
Using a six-string guitar, monophonic Moog, and multiplex of pedals, layered on a 4-track cassette recorder, Montgomery renders a series of odes to his formative experience of visiting the ruins of the Tikal, an ancient Mayan citadel in the Guatemalan rainforests. The music follows with an understandably nostalgic, keening air that can be heard as emblematic of themes of longing and transcendence that have become central to his work. As we’re sure many will agree, although entirely instrumental and abstract in nature, Montgomery’s work has the uncanniest ability to feel familiar and express sensations of déjà entendu, and that appeal is surely palpable here. On his passage from the expansive, floating top lines of ‘She Waits on Temple IV’ to the purring vignette ‘Jaguar Unseen’, his music lives up to the emotive track titles with the breathtaking, OOBE-y noise bliss of ‘Departing the Body’, and relative serenity of ‘The Soul Quietens’, while it all comes together in nine minutes of scalp-tinging tintinnabulation to ‘The Passage of Forms’, his distorted dervish ‘Jaguar Meets Snake’, and the heart-in-mouth lift of ‘Above the Canopy.’
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An influence on everyone from Grouper to Rat Heart, the perennially rated Kiwi guitarist Roy Montgomery is at his most lyrically instrumental, evocative best on early solo side ’Temple IV’, which is newly expanded and now finally pressed on vinyl for the first time.
In 1995, guitarist Roy Montgomery broke solo from his roles in pivotal ‘80s New Zealand bands, Dadamah, Dissolve, Hash Jar Tempo, and The Pin Group, with a pair of sublime self-portraits, ‘Scenes from the South Island’, and this, ‘Temple IV’, which was only ever available on CD, nestled on a then nascent Kranky. It returns on vinyl for the first time with a couple of bonus cuts recorded in 2018 that are about asking, in Roy’s own words, the question; “Can you step into the same river twice?” Heraclitus said you cannot. I say you can…”. Recorded in NYC, 1995, the original album is a gorgeous testament to Montgomery’s effortless distillation of styles that could variously be named post-rock, kosmiche, shoegaze, or folk-blooz noise, and is thoroughly characteristic of his music’s mix of slow burn, melancholic anguish and ravishing romantic urge, and sure to become an evergreen on many record shelves.
Using a six-string guitar, monophonic Moog, and multiplex of pedals, layered on a 4-track cassette recorder, Montgomery renders a series of odes to his formative experience of visiting the ruins of the Tikal, an ancient Mayan citadel in the Guatemalan rainforests. The music follows with an understandably nostalgic, keening air that can be heard as emblematic of themes of longing and transcendence that have become central to his work. As we’re sure many will agree, although entirely instrumental and abstract in nature, Montgomery’s work has the uncanniest ability to feel familiar and express sensations of déjà entendu, and that appeal is surely palpable here. On his passage from the expansive, floating top lines of ‘She Waits on Temple IV’ to the purring vignette ‘Jaguar Unseen’, his music lives up to the emotive track titles with the breathtaking, OOBE-y noise bliss of ‘Departing the Body’, and relative serenity of ‘The Soul Quietens’, while it all comes together in nine minutes of scalp-tinging tintinnabulation to ‘The Passage of Forms’, his distorted dervish ‘Jaguar Meets Snake’, and the heart-in-mouth lift of ‘Above the Canopy.’
An influence on everyone from Grouper to Rat Heart, the perennially rated Kiwi guitarist Roy Montgomery is at his most lyrically instrumental, evocative best on early solo side ’Temple IV’, which is newly expanded and now finally pressed on vinyl for the first time.
In 1995, guitarist Roy Montgomery broke solo from his roles in pivotal ‘80s New Zealand bands, Dadamah, Dissolve, Hash Jar Tempo, and The Pin Group, with a pair of sublime self-portraits, ‘Scenes from the South Island’, and this, ‘Temple IV’, which was only ever available on CD, nestled on a then nascent Kranky. It returns on vinyl for the first time with a couple of bonus cuts recorded in 2018 that are about asking, in Roy’s own words, the question; “Can you step into the same river twice?” Heraclitus said you cannot. I say you can…”. Recorded in NYC, 1995, the original album is a gorgeous testament to Montgomery’s effortless distillation of styles that could variously be named post-rock, kosmiche, shoegaze, or folk-blooz noise, and is thoroughly characteristic of his music’s mix of slow burn, melancholic anguish and ravishing romantic urge, and sure to become an evergreen on many record shelves.
Using a six-string guitar, monophonic Moog, and multiplex of pedals, layered on a 4-track cassette recorder, Montgomery renders a series of odes to his formative experience of visiting the ruins of the Tikal, an ancient Mayan citadel in the Guatemalan rainforests. The music follows with an understandably nostalgic, keening air that can be heard as emblematic of themes of longing and transcendence that have become central to his work. As we’re sure many will agree, although entirely instrumental and abstract in nature, Montgomery’s work has the uncanniest ability to feel familiar and express sensations of déjà entendu, and that appeal is surely palpable here. On his passage from the expansive, floating top lines of ‘She Waits on Temple IV’ to the purring vignette ‘Jaguar Unseen’, his music lives up to the emotive track titles with the breathtaking, OOBE-y noise bliss of ‘Departing the Body’, and relative serenity of ‘The Soul Quietens’, while it all comes together in nine minutes of scalp-tinging tintinnabulation to ‘The Passage of Forms’, his distorted dervish ‘Jaguar Meets Snake’, and the heart-in-mouth lift of ‘Above the Canopy.’
First vinyl edition. Black 2LP with 2 bonus tracks - "The Light is Heavy the Rain is Soft" and "I Will See You There".
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An influence on everyone from Grouper to Rat Heart, the perennially rated Kiwi guitarist Roy Montgomery is at his most lyrically instrumental, evocative best on early solo side ’Temple IV’, which is newly expanded and now finally pressed on vinyl for the first time.
In 1995, guitarist Roy Montgomery broke solo from his roles in pivotal ‘80s New Zealand bands, Dadamah, Dissolve, Hash Jar Tempo, and The Pin Group, with a pair of sublime self-portraits, ‘Scenes from the South Island’, and this, ‘Temple IV’, which was only ever available on CD, nestled on a then nascent Kranky. It returns on vinyl for the first time with a couple of bonus cuts recorded in 2018 that are about asking, in Roy’s own words, the question; “Can you step into the same river twice?” Heraclitus said you cannot. I say you can…”. Recorded in NYC, 1995, the original album is a gorgeous testament to Montgomery’s effortless distillation of styles that could variously be named post-rock, kosmiche, shoegaze, or folk-blooz noise, and is thoroughly characteristic of his music’s mix of slow burn, melancholic anguish and ravishing romantic urge, and sure to become an evergreen on many record shelves.
Using a six-string guitar, monophonic Moog, and multiplex of pedals, layered on a 4-track cassette recorder, Montgomery renders a series of odes to his formative experience of visiting the ruins of the Tikal, an ancient Mayan citadel in the Guatemalan rainforests. The music follows with an understandably nostalgic, keening air that can be heard as emblematic of themes of longing and transcendence that have become central to his work. As we’re sure many will agree, although entirely instrumental and abstract in nature, Montgomery’s work has the uncanniest ability to feel familiar and express sensations of déjà entendu, and that appeal is surely palpable here. On his passage from the expansive, floating top lines of ‘She Waits on Temple IV’ to the purring vignette ‘Jaguar Unseen’, his music lives up to the emotive track titles with the breathtaking, OOBE-y noise bliss of ‘Departing the Body’, and relative serenity of ‘The Soul Quietens’, while it all comes together in nine minutes of scalp-tinging tintinnabulation to ‘The Passage of Forms’, his distorted dervish ‘Jaguar Meets Snake’, and the heart-in-mouth lift of ‘Above the Canopy.’