Wednesday, December 27, 2017

T.M.A-1...... Screech! on vinyl.


T.M.A-1 (or,Tycho Magnetic Anomaly One if you want the full name) were an early 90's band from Christchurch New Zealand from which spawned a prolific recording label named kRkRkRk cassettes.
A label worth exploring on it's own, lets just stick with TMA-1 for a minute because their Classic 1993 cassette tape 'Screech!' has just been released on vinyl in a limited run of 150 copies. The story goes: my friend Lynton Von Denhoven comes over for dinner, we start talking about releasing something from the kRkRkRk back-catalogue on vinyl, Lynton suggests 'Screech!' which also happened to be on the stereo at the time. I agreed, a good decision (and probably the maddest decision we could possibly make).
So that said, this has now been released on Lynton's own new record label 'RTR' (Ready to Rock) and pressed by Zenith here in Melbourne. A box of these are currently in a canoe in the middle of the Tasman sea (keep rowing slaves!) but hopefully it won't be too far offshore. Slaves always row faster at Christmas in my experience, they want to get home for New Years.
If I was you, I'd keep an eye out for one of these in Galaxy records in the next month or so. You can also find them for sale on Discogs.
Here's a link to their Bandcamp page so you can have a peek at what you're reading about and a video Peter Wright made recently when he recreated the artwork for this fine beast.



Monday, December 18, 2017

More Ether!















Oh yes people, you demanded it so here it is....! 

Ok, that's not entirely true, nobody demanded anything..... Zilch in fact. So without further untruths, here's some early practise room jams plus our last ever concert for anyone who might actually give a fuck.

I've been listening to these early recordings a lot lately and really enjoying them. The recording is top notch. I think it's one of John's early Zoom recordings? Not sure but everything sits nicely in the mix. These date back to when we were first finding our feet & before we had any confirmed 'songs' to go with. Some concepts expressed here see the light of day in our set list much later on but most of it is pretty unrecognisable to the untrained ear. 


There's also a download here for our last ever concert out in Whittlesea which I recorded on my Sony DV Handycam. This was us in our most 'developed' state and the recording is quite listenable too so there you go, you now have both ends of the Ether scale.... undeveloped musings & the tightly woven structured songs.


Both worthy of a listen. 


In two downloads:


Early practise room jams

Live at Whittlesea


Saturday, February 11, 2017

Onaweta - Dance Little Children 7"




















Wow, this last year I've had some great success in adding to my NZ 7" singles collection and a week or so ago I finally bagged this little baby which I've been after since the late 80's.
I remember seeing the video they made for the single on the 'Radio with Pictures' music show (which was so informative for us back in them days) and I think the 'Dance little children' riff has been stuck in my head ever since. How catchy is it? Really, it should have gone to No.1 in the charts on our wayward South Pacific island paradise but when you're talking about a self released single by a rag tag Wellington trio of a few hundred copies, it probly ain't gonna hit the headlines anytime soon (or back then.... however much it deserved the accolade).
The song 'Dance little children' also appeared on the 'Killing Capitalism with Kindness' compilation put out by Turbulence records (Belgium) which I thought was kinda odd as it seemed like an anomaly amongst the predominant cast of Expressway label misfits. Anyhoo, great to see it there anyway, I'm not complaining.
There was one other song of theirs on the compilation 'Celebrate the Sonic arts' entitled 'Persecutor baby' which is also a very worthy groove and hence it shall be present in this download. I'd love to know if they recorded anything else. If they did, it should be in the public domain god damn it!
For those of us that need these kind of off funk, off punk, post poetic blasts of groovedom, we need more do you hear?

Here's the download to wet your whistle.

Onaweta