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ROSE 003LP
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Rose Hobart announce the reissue of Jay Clarkson's 1999 masterpiece Kindle, available on vinyl for the first time. Clarkson is one of Aotearoa/New Zealand's most singular songwriters, with a history that includes membership of The Playthings and The Expendables, both groups who released records with the legendary New Zealand label Flying Nun, as well as subsequent solo albums, along with her bands Breathing Cage and (now) The Containers. Clarkson wrote and recorded Kindle after relocating from Christchurch to Dunedin in the mid '90s, settling into a new mode of music making and embracing the possibilities of home recording. Supported with funding from Creative NZ, Clarkson bought a four-track recorder -- the tried-and-trusted Tascam 424 Mark II, the cornerstone of any good, self-respecting home studio -- and set about to make perhaps her most hushed, gorgeous set of songs yet. For the songs on Kindle, Clarkson approached lyric writing differently -- for a number of songs, she used what she has called the "open a book at random and point your finger" method to get her creativity flowing, borrowing (with adjustments) from Graham Greene and Thomas Merton, amongst others, locating evocative potential in found language and then expanding outwards. Elsewhere, Clarkson's songs are sparked by people and events that coincide with her everyday life, or they become more philosophically reflective, as in the hypnotic "Wheeling", where a repeating, intricate web of guitar underscores a song reflecting life's dualities and circularity. The album's sound world is deep and dappled, with clacking drum machines (loaned to Jay by Robert Scott of The Clean and The Bats), richly wound guitars, and humming keyboards all providing a perfect setting for Clarkson's astonishing voice, which is at once generous and wry. Clarkson has previously reflected upon the "transitional head-space" she was in while writing and recording Kindle, and that certainly seems to have informed the emotional complexity of these songs and performances -- it's an album of grace and wisdom. Clarkson would go on to make more music, such as her lovely 2007 album, Over The Mountain, recorded with Johannes Contag, and a recent solo set, Spur, released on Austrian label Zelle in 2015. She continues to perform live when circumstances allow, with her group The Containers, and in 2016 was invited to perform at the Celtic Connections Festival in Glasgow. But Kindle stands as singular in her catalogue and her career -- a moment of inwards reflection, things pared back to basics, Jay alone in the home studio, writing for the intimacies of the moment. Includes download code; edition of 250.
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ROSE 001LP
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New Zealand's intimist pop quartet Entlang weren't here for very long -- a few years during the 1990s, and then they were done. In that time, the group, an offshoot of now-féted noise-pop group The Garbage & The Flowers, produced one self-released lathe-cut 10", one self-released lathe-cut 7", and one song on Windswept Trees & Houses, a CD-R compilation on San Francisco label Jewelled Antler. It's a small, elegant body of released material, most of which now appears on The Four Sisters, a compilation featuring four songs from their back catalog, and just maybe, the Entlang album that never was. Entlang's music trades in opposites: on first listen, one senses fragility, emptiness, a kind of slow consideration. The deeper you go, though, the more you realize this is music made of great strength and resolve, of fierce intelligence. "Airport" picks out a hypnotic guitar riff and a simple rhythm before spiraling into an interweaving, all-cogs-interlocking moment of black-and-white psychedelia. "Lisa" see-saws on Helen Johnstone's gorgeous vocals and viola, the two threading together beautifully, riding into the sun on the simplest of Velvets melodies. Ghostly backing vocals of "Walking Into Bars" hymn a song of tender melancholy, Yuri Frusin's plain-singing voice perfect for its hushed intimacy. "Nameless One" descends into plaintive chaos, from a core of quiescent beauty. In many ways, Entlang are a return to a more traditional approach to song writing, after Helen Johnstone and Kristen Wineera had formed and spent time in the improvisational group, Dress. Their legend has slowly accrued, helped by the reissue of The Garbage & The Flowers' Eyes Rind As If Beggars on Bo'Weavil/Fire in 2013 (BONFIRE 001CD/LP). Now, Rose Hobart presents The Four Sisters, a selection of Entlang recordings -- some rare New Zealand beauty magicked up from history's byways.
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ROSE 002LP
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Rose Hobart present a reissue of Thuja's 2002 album, Hills. The album emerged out of a particularly productive phase for the loose assemblage of musicians known as the Jewelled Antler Collective. Glenn Donaldson and Loren Chasse, who had recently formed Thuja alongside Steven R. Smith and Rob Reger, were dialing down the volume, moving away from the instrumental rock interludes of previous groups like Mirza, and exploring more rugged terrain -- laminal improvisation, wistful wide-eyed folk songs, field recordings, and home-recorded electro-acoustics. By 2002, Jewelled Antler had developed a certain notoriety for unstintingly releasing excellent, small-run CD-R releases. Thuja's albums had been picked up by Craig Stewart's visionary Emperor Jones imprint, but Hills was released on a small-scale American CD-R label, Last Visible Dog, run by Chris Moon. Of the four albums (and two more mini-CDs) Thuja released that year, Hills is a startling document, a collection of eviscerated dream tones and cavernous psychoacoustics. The unforced, luxuriant development of Thuja's music -- a misty fold of keyboard drones, tinkling piano, clusters of percussion, shuttling and scrabbling strings and other things -- often asks for metaphor from the natural world. But this is also distinctly city-based music, as Donaldson described it: "insular warehouse music from a still affordable city, before the internet dominated everything. No intention of getting noticed or 'streamed', just making sounds for the sake of it. A rejection of rock things: clubs, structure, volume." The music on Hills and other, loosely contemporaneous releases often played on broken instruments and non-instruments, with small, sensual details captured by contact mics, was "all improvised," Donaldson recalls, "but no 'jamming' or soloing [was] allowed, just a slow evolution towards a mood." In that respect, Thuja can lay claim to a heritage of all-in-one, group-mind improvisation that arcs back to AMM and Musica Elettronica Viva, but also connects with other, less immediately recognizable precursors -- there are shades here of groups like Biota, or composer Sofia Gubaidulina's improvisatory outfit Astreja. There's a relaxed yet questing folksiness too.
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