Last Ticket Home
Peter Jefferies, a living legend of New Zealand underground music, from his seminal bands Nocturnal Projections and This Kind Of Punishment, to his collaborative efforts in bands such as Plagal Grind and Two Foot Flame, is perhaps best known for his solo work on masterpieces such as The Last Great Challenge in a Dull World (1990) and Electricity (1994), as well as numerous other albums of his singular songcraft. Grapefruit is releasing Jefferies’ latest, Last Ticket Home, which leaves the statio…
A Light In The Window Will Guide Us Safely Home
** Special cover with hand-made 'paper-cut forests' pop out diorama. Handmade edition of 200.** A light in the window will guide us safely home”, the new and unique LP by Little Skull, is an album defined by places, journeys between them, and the traces we leave. Insignificant instrumentation congregates on insignificant locations, leaving behind ghosts in a place of their own. Warbly guitars and a town hall in rural Waikato.Wheezing melodicas and a train through Tongariro. Tinny autoharps and …
Some Songs
Edition limited to 200 copies, red vinyl, includes extra tracks taken from "Decap" (1995) and "The Trees" (1996) 7” lathe editions. "The first time I heard anything about Donald McPherson was when my friend David Muir told me excitedly about this guitarist from Ravensbourne who could play really beautifully properly but also just as wonderfully wrongly. I first heard him playing a rare live performance in Dunedin in about 1997. It remains one of the most heavily self-deprecating sets Iive ever s…
A Lowtides Rising... (Explorations of NZ Acoustic Music)
**250 copies** An epic who's who of New Zealand underground music circa 2000, featuring Pumice, Peter Wright, Kunst / Veet (Witcyst), CJA & Anamarie, Sleep, Donald McPherson, GFrenzy, Kieran Monaghan, Swagger Jack, Birchville Cat Motel, Richard Francis, 1/3 Octave Band, Tim Cornelius, Seht, Antony Milton and James Kirk, a total of 16 tracks. Originally released as a CD-R on Antony Milton's PseudoArcana in 2003, reissued as a 2xLP in a heavyweight deluxe deluxe gatefold sleeve and insert with lin…
Grey Orders, Distant Trails
**250 copies** Improvised soundtrack to a non-existent Western, recorded in the late '90s by James Kirk, Nathan Thompson and Tim Cornelius. "Deep South kitchen-sink explorers have been circling the drain in counterclockwise fashion for at least half my life and yet I am still reduced to shameless gobsmackery in the presence of this sterling new collection of historic treasures. Committed live-to-tape in the comfy climes of a living room / recording studio / temple affectionately known as 'Canong…
The Eightness of Adam Qadmon
**300 copies** Originally released on cassette by Corpus Hermeticum in 1994. All sounds by Alastair Galbraith and Bruce Russell. "New Zealand is on summer holidays all through the month of January. For some reason I had the house to myself, the wife and kids were elsewhere. Alastair Galbraith brought over some instruments and we plugged in a cassette recorder. We spent the sunny afternoon setting up combinations of instruments and seeing what happened. We had recorded the Concord LP the year bef…
Visceral Realists
Debut LP by the New Zealand duo of Bruce Russell (Dead C, Handful of Dust, etc) and Luke Wood. Visceral Realists is a high-concept commentary on the state of vinyl, analogue recording, music culture, art, etc. A 45-rpm bullet of short bursts of free electric sound, the music here is tactile and rough but not “noise music.” Russell and Wood play over loops of scratchy records, with their guitars and electronics surging to get over the wall. Russell’s guitar sound from his vintage transistor amp a…
The Quality Of Mercy Is Not Strnen
In process of stocking. After two singles for Fast Product, Leeds art-punk collective The Mekons signed with Virgin Records in 1979. The band would have to borrow gear from their mates Gang Of Four to record their major label debut. In classic Mekons style, the album’s back cover featured a photo of Gang Of Four instead of themselves. As Simon Reynolds writes, “The Quality Of Mercy Is Not Strnen got a mixed reception at the time. Listening to it now, though, the first LP sounds more of a piece w…
In the Same Room
With This Kind Of Punishment, Graeme Jefferies and Peter Jefferies produced some of most adept DIY sounds to emerge from New Zealand's 1980s post-punk scene. After their phenomenal self-titled debut and classic A Beard Of Bees, the brothers would make one last album together, In The Same Room. Originally released in 1987 on Flying Nun, In The Same Room is perhaps the straightest rock offering in TKP's esteemed catalogue. Opening track "Immigration Song" expertly pairs jagged guitars with wrathf…
Wood/Metal/Plastic/Pattern/Rhythm/Rock
Cassette version. 75 Dollar Bill, a project by Che Chen and Rick Brown present Wood/Metal/Plastic/Pattern/Rhythm/Rock. "Che's interest in the Arabic modes of Mauritanian music has marked our sound quite a bit but I have brought some things, too. The plywood crate I play is a big factor, defining, by its positive qualities (a nice warm 'boom' sound) as well as by its simplicity, what we're likely to do in the percussion realm. Wood/Metal/Plastic/Pattern/Rhythm/Rock, this new record, differs quite…
Dragging Her Wings of Rusty Knives: Selected Recordings 1994-201
A Handful of Dust was founded over three decades ago by two giants of the New Zealand underground, Bruce Russell (The Dead C) and Alastair Galbraith. Declaring their raison d'être in the now infamous Free Noise Manifesto the group has advanced a radical aesthetic; rejecting any notion of structure or comfort they've ground music to its sub-elemental parts. A scraping and howling electricity, spontaneous, unrestrained, physical. Contains expanded and unreleased works spanning the group's history …
Classical Music
Edition of 250. You know that old phrase, 'Teach a penguin to cuss, and you'll never have to buy another comedy record' I'm sure you do. But what about its codicil? 'Teach a guitarist to play synth, and you'll never have to buy a new age record?' If you know that one, you might well be put off by the fact this album features one of New Zealand's most wickedly post-tongue guitar players fiddling about with oscillators and analog synths (in concert with a guy who does this stuff all the time). But…
Sido Not Dead
** Edition of 200 copies in silk-screened sleeve. ** As reported by Campbell Kneale (Birchville Cat Motel, Our Love Will Destroy The World, C-Psi-P): "I narrowly avoided an English-second-language tete-a-tete in Belgium once when I refused to believe in the face of all evidence that Sunn O)))'s newly released Flight Of The Behemoth (2012) was not CJA. I was wrong, but whatever... I was already ascending Lucifer's path to the stars not garbed in chic grim-robes but a pilling homespun jersey that …
Ahead Of Two Thoughts
Melbourne's ExEk began as a studio project with frontman Albert Wolski before the 2014 formation of the four-piece line up with Andrew Brocchi (synthesizer), Henry Wilson (bass) and Sam Dixon (drums). With the addition of Nell Grant on saxophone, the group's sound entered another dimension that reveals EXEK to be conjuring the ghosts of PiL, This Heat and Swell Maps. Ahead Of Two Thoughts, EXEK's sophomore release, pushes headlong into haunted, post-punk territories. Opening track "U Mop"…
A Beard Of Bees
Originally self-released in 1984, A Beard Of Bees has been out of print for almost 25 years. Among This Kind Of Punishment's myriad recordings, A Beard Of Bees best outlines the collective vision of the Jefferies brothers. Their classic second album feels more meticulous than its predecessor, proffering a grey, near-Mancunian influence that serves as both touchstone and springboard for the proceedings. The unique maneuvering on "Trepidation" is a marvel: guitar sweetness shifting toward melancho…
This Kind Of Punishment
In the fertile terrain of New Zealand's 1980s post-punk scene, few figures loom as large as the Jefferies brothers. Graeme Jefferies and Peter Jefferies – the primary forces behind This Kind of Punishment – wrote some of the best music to come out on Flying Nun, Xpressway or elsewhere. A dizzying mix of pastoral ballads and DIY experimentation, TKP's songwriting was at once classic and acutely raw. On their self-titled debut, the Jefferies brothers and Chris Matthews eschew the punk-informed mod…
Enclosures 2011–2016
In a stunning effort, Pica Disk takes a deep dive into the depths of the New Zealand underground with a much needed repress of the towering 5CD box set, “Enclosures 2011-2016”, dedicated to the incredible output of Omit. Described as one of the greatest outsider artists currently working in the field of experimental electronic music, this immersive collection gathers 30 strikingly abstract gestures; sprawling ambient pieces; the broodingly musical, flirting with the melodic and rhythmic; and com…
Metallic Ok
Bruce Russell is a New Zealand experimental musician and writer. He is a founding member and guitarist of the seminal noise rock trio The Dead C and the free noise combo A Handful of Dust (with Alastair Galbraith). He has released solo albums featuring guitar and tape manipulation. "In summer of 2013, Bruce Russell's daughter Olive Russell uploaded a documentary of her father that she shot and edited herself called "27 Minutes with Mr. Noisy: A Documentary about Bruce Russell" to Vimeo.c…
Real Folk - Lathe Cut Singles 1993-1997
A bone-fide underground legend, Witcyst has been creating completely unique noise music from the isolation of smalltown New Zealand since the late eighties. For three decades Witcyst has been an infamous prol yet mysterious force of the deep noise underground, sharing handmade cassettes, lathe cut singles, CDRs and art objects via the post, but never touring or appearing live. Witcyst’s mysterious career is marked by a complete absence of live performances and a massive prolificness in rec…
Soibiast Anti-Culler
** Edition of 300 copies in silk-screened sleeve. ** Soibiast Anti-Culler was recorded in 1995 by the winterless north of New Zealand's Witcyst. Another monolithic skid mark serving of crackers plucked from the man's vast lifetime archive of sound making and beard. Witcyst makes his music with oceans of constant daily mutation. Machines get used upside down and back to front and inside out. Layers of string, tin foil and expired medicine are saved up to dazzle the eye. Parcels in the post come a…