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viewing 1 To 17 of 17 items
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2LP
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GY10 001LP
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"This Is Not a Dream is a double album collection of every song released by the legendary Dunedin, New Zealand quartet Dadamah, including the This Is Not A Dream LP, and their three 7-inch singles and one unique compilation track. Grapefruit's release is a thirteen-song collection with the full album on one LP and all the 7-inch and compilation tracks on the other. Inspired by the Kranky label's CD compilation of Dadamah's existing catalog in 1994, this vinyl version includes two additional songs from a posthumously released 7-inch and it's been sequenced and designed by the band. Before Dadamah, Peter Stapleton played in The Terminals, Vacuum and The Victor Dimisich Band as well as The Pin Group with guitarist Roy Montgomery. Singer Kim Pieters and organ / synth player Janine Stagg had never been in a band before Dadamah. Dadamah only played live three times, devoting their efforts to four-track recording. Nevertheless, word managed to get out about the band and they were asked to contribute to the 1991 Drag City single 'I Hear the Devil Calling Me' which featured twelve songs hovering around one minute each by a who's who of the then current New Zealand underground music scene. They released their only album in 1992. Jay Hinman (currently of Dynamite Hemorrhage) noted Dadamah's solitary place in the NZ underground in his Superdope fanzine: 'Dead C. might blare and scrape, the Terminals might twist and wind, but Dadamah positively shimmer with beautifully earthy lo-fi Velvets / Ubu sound.' Limited edition singles on the Seattle-based Majora label followed the LP, earning Dadamah praise as 'one of the most overwhelmingly great exponents of layer-shifting drone-on master-rock' in the Forced Exposure catalog. Roy Montgomery's soaring droning guitars were offset by Janine Stagg's stabbing organ and gurgling moog synths, and Kim Pieter's vocals ebbed and flowed, somehow evoking Patti Smith, Ian Curtis, and David Thomas simultaneously. After Dadamah, Roy Montgomery went on to form Dissolve and Hash Jar Tempo as well as maintaining his eclectic solo career which continues to feature intense collaborations like those found in Dadamah (find other Roy Montgomery titles on Grapefruit). Peter Stapleton and Kim Pieters formed Flies Inside The Sun and Stapleton continued his work with The Terminals and his independent label Metonymic which released tons of experimental and underground New Zealand music through 2009."
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LP
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GY9 005LP
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"Enhet För Fri Musik is a free-folk and experimental music collective formed in 2015 in Gothenburg, Sweden. The band features assorted members of the current Swedish underground from bands like Neutral, Makthaverskan, Arv & Miljö, and Blod. A local scene supergroup, the band also runs the labels Förlag För Fri Musik and the Omlott imprint to document their own releases as well as the fertile underground scene surrounding them (much like the Xpressway label founded by artists Bruce Russell, Peter Jefferies, and Alastair Galbraith showcased the early experimental music scene in Dunedin, New Zealand in the late '80s and early '90s). Enhet För Fri Musik is the natural extension of a rich lineage going back to legendary Swedish bands from the '70s, such as Pärson Sound, Trad Gras Och Stenar, International Harvester, and Arbete Och Fritid, whose music pushed boundaries and chose artistic innovation over any commercial concerns. Det Finns Ett Hjärta Som För Dig is the band's fifth release and it's a unique masterpiece. The mysteriously hypnotic album, released in July of 2017 in an extremely limited pressing of 300, sold out quickly without receiving distribution to greater Europe or the United States. The atmospheric record features atonal guitar, organ, tape effects, saxophone, and field recordings, in experimental song constructions that defy genre, moving like a river might through different environments, taking and leaving things as it moves, and coalescing around Sofie Herner's haunting vocals. Grapefruit is extremely proud to be reissuing this rare thing of beauty in a deluxe gatefold jacket and original artwork provided by the band."
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CD
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GY9 004CD
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"'Singer-songwriter' is a frustratingly confining term; to truly understand exactly just how confining, look no further than the recorded works of Simon Joyner, an artist whose work consistently transcends the narrow parameters of genre classifications and record shop bin cards. Though his music has always honored, reckoned with -- wrestled with -- the tradition set forth by his songwriting forebears (Cohen, Van Zandt, Ochs, Dylan, Reed to name a few), Joyner can always be counted on to defy expectations; as a lyricist, melodicist, and arranger, Joyner likes to keep us on our toes. For his new album Pocket Moon, Joyner opted to engage in a risky artistic challenge. Instead of leaning on his fertile pool of Omaha musicians (the amorphous Ghosts band), he asked friend and frequent collaborator Michael Krassner to assemble unknown players on his behalf specifically for this recording. He then traveled from his home base to Krassner's '7-Track Shack' studio in Phoenix to record the album, abandoning the literal and figurative comfort zone of old habits and home field advantage. Simultaneously sparser and more immediate than 2017's obliquely topical Step Into The Earthquake, Pocket Moon is instantly one of Joyner's finest albums since his redoubtable 2012 double album masterpiece, Ghosts, or to some ears the excellent, sonic 180 he managed with his follow-up, Grass, Branch & Bone. Krassner's wrecking crew is sturdy, versatile, and complementary. Utilizing a wide range of instruments and textures, the band contributes additional nuance to each of the ragged, sublime songs here. The result is another song cycle stylistically unified, dynamic and rich." --James Jackson Toth
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LP
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GY9 004LP
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LP version. "'Singer-songwriter' is a frustratingly confining term; to truly understand exactly just how confining, look no further than the recorded works of Simon Joyner, an artist whose work consistently transcends the narrow parameters of genre classifications and record shop bin cards. Though his music has always honored, reckoned with -- wrestled with -- the tradition set forth by his songwriting forebears (Cohen, Van Zandt, Ochs, Dylan, Reed to name a few), Joyner can always be counted on to defy expectations; as a lyricist, melodicist, and arranger, Joyner likes to keep us on our toes. For his new album Pocket Moon, Joyner opted to engage in a risky artistic challenge. Instead of leaning on his fertile pool of Omaha musicians (the amorphous Ghosts band), he asked friend and frequent collaborator Michael Krassner to assemble unknown players on his behalf specifically for this recording. He then traveled from his home base to Krassner's '7-Track Shack' studio in Phoenix to record the album, abandoning the literal and figurative comfort zone of old habits and home field advantage. Simultaneously sparser and more immediate than 2017's obliquely topical Step Into The Earthquake, Pocket Moon is instantly one of Joyner's finest albums since his redoubtable 2012 double album masterpiece, Ghosts, or to some ears the excellent, sonic 180 he managed with his follow-up, Grass, Branch & Bone. Krassner's wrecking crew is sturdy, versatile, and complementary. Utilizing a wide range of instruments and textures, the band contributes additional nuance to each of the ragged, sublime songs here. The result is another song cycle stylistically unified, dynamic and rich.' --James Jackson Toth"
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LP
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GY9 001LP
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"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 proud to be releasing Jefferies' latest, Last Ticket Home, which leaves the station early in his career when The Last Great Challenge In A Dull World left off and takes us on a guided tour of a fascinating side street via rare singles, both released and unreleased, radical live interpretations, and a wealth of never released material dating from 1991-2019. Last Ticket Home redefines Jefferies' artistic journey, giving us a song cycle narrative which scorches, blisters and eventually heals on its relentless, ragged way home."
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CD
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GY8 001CD
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"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) expressing emptiness by stripping away words, weaving their voices together through Montgomery's elastic webbing. Julianna Barwick adds drive and nuance to the foamy sonic waves of 'Sigma Octantis,' as 'Landfall' crashes in slow motion chaos over Liz Harris's (Grouper) multi-tracked layers. These compositions generously embrace their guest leaders, and for the first time in his career, Roy Montgomery has made a cogent artistic argument as to why he shouldn't be singing these songs himself."
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LP
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GY8 001LP
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LP version. "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) expressing emptiness by stripping away words, weaving their voices together through Montgomery's elastic webbing. Julianna Barwick adds drive and nuance to the foamy sonic waves of 'Sigma Octantis,' as 'Landfall' crashes in slow motion chaos over Liz Harris's (Grouper) multi-tracked layers. These compositions generously embrace their guest leaders, and for the first time in his career, Roy Montgomery has made a cogent artistic argument as to why he shouldn't be singing these songs himself."
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LP+CD
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GY7 003LP
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"In 1971, at the age of 25, Pat Ament self-released his debut album, Songs By Pat Ament, in a very limited run for friends and local shops. The album is sparse and moody, conjuring a space not unlike the one that Songs Of Leonard Cohen occupies, featuring Ament on Wurlitzer with a jazz drummer and a guitarist alternating between acoustic and electric. It's dark and at times forlorn, with meditations on yearning and loss and love. It's ideal long-night-of-the-soul music. The lyricism evokes Dylan, Cohen, Tim Hardin and Bill Fay. When he released Songs, Ament was already a world renowned mountain climber, and he became famous for pioneering '60s and '70s ascents in Colorado and Yosemite. He wrote poetic books and essays on climbing, including biographies of legendary climbers Royal Robbins and John Gill. Through the years he's balanced multiple simultaneous careers as artist, photographer, filmmaker, chess master, karate black belt, lecturer, teacher, and, yes, singer-songwriter. Pat Ament's musical mastery was clear right out of the gate but it was only one of his many interests. Perhaps if he hadn't been moved to pursue life's other tempting summits and focused solely on music, he'd be as well known for his songs as for his climbing. Grapefruit is extremely proud to reissue this rare and virtually unknown singer-songwriter masterpiece, sourced from original sources and under Ament's supervision, with original artwork and deluxe Stoughton tip-on jacket. The record also comes with a bonus career retrospective CD entitled Time Moved On of additional songs hand-picked by the artist."
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CD
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GY7 004CD
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"Pat Ament is best known to record collectors for his 1971 debut Songs, a self-released masterpiece. This CD (which also comes free in the LP reissue of Songs) collects the best of his musical output since, all chosen by Ament himself. In addition to music, Ament is a world renowned mountain climber. He became famous for pioneering '60s and '70s ascents in Colorado and Yosemite. Additionally, he wrote poetic books and essays on climbing, including biographies of legendary climbers Royal Robbins and John Gill. Through the years he's balanced multiple simultaneous careers as artist, photographer, filmmaker, chess master, karate black belt, lecturer, teacher, and, yes, singer-songwriter. The beauty of his songwriting remains clear-eyed throughout Time Moved On, a worthy retrospective highlighting the breadth of his artistry."
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LP
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GY6 005LP
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"Third platter in four album collection harkens back to nineties work."
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LP
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GY6 004LP
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"Second platter in four album collection is most experimental."
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LP
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GY6 006LP
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"Last platter in four album collection concentrates on hope and despair, culminating in twenty-minute finale."
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LP
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GY6 003LP
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"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's 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, 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 has dominated his life. Self-expression once again demanded an outlet. R M H Q is four albums conceived and recorded over a very short period, each of them carrying a distinct focus and mood."
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4CD
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GY6 008CD
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"It's been over a decade since Roy Montgomery's last album, and RMHQ 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 has dominated his life. Self-expression once again demanded an outlet. RMHQ is four albums conceived and recorded over a very short period, each of them carrying a distinct focus and mood."
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LP
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GY6 001LP
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"Bill Direen is a legend of the New Zealand underground. He has written and produced poetry, novels and a slew of recorded material. Weaned on garage bands in the late '60s, Direen started producing seven-inch records in the early '80s, all of them stunners. These releases - Six Impossible Things, Die Bilder, Soloman's Ball and High Thirties Piano - were self-financed and distributed though Flying Nun (and recently reissued by the benevolent Unwucht label). Beatin Hearts is Direen's ultimate, unforgettable debut album, not to mention Flying Nun's first full-length album release. All seventeen tracks are brilliant short pieces of energy, harmony and spite. Anyone with an appreciation for Flying Nun's early recordings can find its genesis here, the dawning of one of the greatest music scenes to ever exist."
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CD
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GY6 002CD
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"If you were a certain type of music fan in the mid-'90s, you may have heard tell of an incredible, incredibly hard-to-find double-album by The Garbage & The Flowers, Eyes Rind As If Beggars. Each jacket was hand-painted, and all 300 copies sold out in a flash. Thankfully, the great Bo'Weavil label reissued it in 2013. If you haven't heard it, please do listen? OK, you heard it now? You're welcome! The group was Helen Johnstone, Yuri Frusin and Paul Yates - an inspired trio who emphasized lyrical collaboration and sound manipulation as part and parcel to their melodies. They didn't last long as a group, but luckily, they got a lot of their songs recorded. The Deep Niche is music they made before Eyes Rind and it is every bit as revelatory. Johnstone sings over raucous and raw instrumentation. It's real rock, the real real thing. Torben Tilly joined just in time to contribute some keyboard to the track "29 Years," although he mostly was their guitarist. Just in time, too, because The Deep Niche presents a band fresh to playing with some massive tools - The Tools Of Rock, natch. These songs are every bit as powerful as what you hear on Eyes Rind As If Beggars. Believe it."
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LP
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GY6 002LP
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LP version. "If you were a certain type of music fan in the mid-'90s, you may have heard tell of an incredible, incredibly hard-to-find double-album by The Garbage & The Flowers, Eyes Rind As If Beggars. Each jacket was hand-painted, and all 300 copies sold out in a flash. Thankfully, the great Bo'Weavil label reissued it in 2013. If you haven't heard it, please do listen? OK, you heard it now? You're welcome! The group was Helen Johnstone, Yuri Frusin and Paul Yates - an inspired trio who emphasized lyrical collaboration and sound manipulation as part and parcel to their melodies. They didn't last long as a group, but luckily, they got a lot of their songs recorded. The Deep Niche is music they made before Eyes Rind and it is every bit as revelatory. Johnstone sings over raucous and raw instrumentation. It's real rock, the real real thing. Torben Tilly joined just in time to contribute some keyboard to the track "29 Years," although he mostly was their guitarist. Just in time, too, because The Deep Niche presents a band fresh to playing with some massive tools - The Tools Of Rock, natch. These songs are every bit as powerful as what you hear on Eyes Rind As If Beggars. Believe it."
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