Beat Rhythm Fashion - Bring Real Freedom + Beings Rest, Finally

On this second go around for the Active Listener I intend to occasionally share some deserving music from my home country New Zealand. We're a little country with a small population, tucked away in our own corner and due to our geographical isolation and comparatively small music industry not a lot of our music makes it internationally. So what I share here will be known by very few offshore, beyond a small community of collectors.

Beat Rhythm Fashion, based around brothers Dan & Nino Birch were the ultimate NZ post-punk band. Their wistful dreampop-before-its-time sound compares favourably with The Cure circa Seventeen Seconds. For those that want to read an in depth history of the band I'd direct you to their profile page on the excellent NZ music website Audioculture here. This post is only intended as an introduction to get you listening.

Sadly they never released an album proper during their initial run in the early eighties, but they did manage three absolutely classic singles, of which the gorgeous Turn of the Century (embedded below) is the undisputed crown jewel. Get that playing now while you read the rest of this, you'll not be disappointed.

Christchurch (by way of Japan) label Failsafe Records have managed to collate two fantastic archival collections of recordings by the band from this era over the years, both of which are available through Bandcamp. 

Bring Real Freedom constitutes the three singles and their b-sides plus a selection of well recorded live material which would have likely appeared on a debut album if they'd had the opportunity to record one.

Beings Rest, Finally digs even deeper to complete the picture, with rare compilation appearances and more live material that has been extensively restored and sounds absolutely superb.

Though both collections are revelations, I'd start with Bring Real Freedom. These two releases belong in the collections of anyone who is a fan of the Cure, Sad Lover & Giants, the Lines, the Sound, the Chameleons and the like.

Unfortunately Dan passed away in 2011 but Nino has released several albums of new material as Beat Rhythm Fashion since 2018 with Caroline Easther, former drummer for the Chills. They can also be found on their Bandcamp page.

Listen to Bring Real Freedom on Bandcamp. 

Listen to Beings Rest, Finally on Bandcamp.  

The Garrys - Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (Original Score)

This Saskatchewan trio's regular fare is pretty closely aligned to the La Luz school of surf guitars and girl-group vocals - which they do very well - but this is something else entirely.

Recorded to accompany a 2019 showing of the classic 1922 film Häxan: Witchcraft Through The Ages, this is a beautifully realised synthesis which on paper shouldn't work, but proves to be inspired.

The Garrys' sound translates to this medium surprisingly well. Largely bypassing the rapid-fire, staccato guitar runs you'd normally expect of the genre, the Garrys here conjure a dread atmosphere by amping up their doomy Shangri- La's vocal harmonies, providing the perfect haunt factor with their witchy chanting and spooky oohs and aahs, atop an ominous bed of swelling tremelo guitars, cymbal splashes and mournful trumpet. And the walking basslines take on a 'being stalked in the dark' quality in these surrounds. 

It stands up perfectly well on its own but for the full experience you can watch the film and score synced together on the Garry's YouTube channel here. 

Ghosts of Jupiter - Keepers of the Newborn Green

Here's another that's not new (but new to me and hopefully some of you too). Ghosts of Jupiter is the sort of band that I'd have championed endlessly on my first run of the Active Listener if I had only known of their existence. Just goes to show that there is always something great that you've missed, and make no mistake, Ghosts of Jupiter are great. 

I'll focus on their latest release, 2021’s Keepers of the Newborn Green, as it’s what I’ve listened to the most from their catalogue, but from what I’ve heard of the others you’re pretty safe jumping in anywhere.

Now, there is an elephant in the the room, so let’s get that out of the way first. Yes, this sounds an awful lot like Midlake, but that’s no bad thing as far as I’m concerned as I can never get enough of them. Forest prog I guess you could call it and there are certainly moments on here (especially during some of the instrumental passages) that strongly evoke the moodier elements of some of my favourite early 70s UK prog albums from the likes of Ginhouse, Tonton Macoute and Steel Mill, so if that’s the sort of vibe you’re looking for you’d do well to get stuck in here.

Highlights for me are the mid-album duo of Sea of Madness which has a great hook and superlative flute and keys interplay, and the spacey synth washes of Battlekat, which revels in its Floydian grandeur.

Definitely one to spend some time with.

 

Junkboy - Littoral States

Junkboy's previous album Sovereign Sky was one of my favourite albums from my first stint on the Active Listener so it's only natural that I should belatedly draw your attention to its follow up, 2023's Littoral States. 

Like Sovereign Sky, it's an exquisitely arranged and produced affair, with gorgeous string arrangements that can trace their distinctly English lineage back to Robert Kirby's work for Nick Drake, and beyond.

Sussex folk singer Hannah Lewis is a welcome presence on a number of tracks, but for the most part this is a wistful instrumental ramble through the Sussex countryside, evoking a strong sense of place - not surprising given their interest in psychogeography (they were interviewed for Phil Hubbard's book "Listening To Landscape" which looks fascinating and is on my to-read-when-I-can-find-a-copy list).

It's all impeccably done of course. A perfect Summer listen which has accompanied me on many trail walks already with many more to come I'm sure.

Others have already covered this more eloquently, so I'll leave it to your ears to be the judge, but anyone who enjoys investigating the meeting place between hauntology and pastoral folk will find plenty to enjoy here.

Magick Brother & Mystic Sister

Discovering the music of this Spanish duo was pretty much single-handedly responsible for me reviving the Active Listener. They really opened my eyes (ears?) to how much great music was still being made out there, and this is just too good to not share.

The Gong inspired moniker makes it pretty clear what to expect, and these two have really got their vintage seventies space-rock / psychedelic / progressive vibes honed to an impressive degree. 

Their self titled 2020 debut shows no signs of trying to find their way and aptly demonstrates how fully formed their sound already was at that stage, but it's their two Tarot albums, released six months apart in 2024 that really show the full mastery of their craft. Beautifully produced, these albums make full use of the sonic spectrum and the spacious mixes give the rich instrumentation (including plenty of mellotron, flutes and sitars) plenty of room to shine. And the treated vocals are absolutely on point.

Broadcast meets early seventies Pink Floyd would I guess be a starting point, but there's plenty more touched upon here and it's all done masterfully. These would be holy grail albums if they'd been released in the seventies, no doubt.

I'm sure a lot of you will already be familiar with these albums but for anyone who has yet to discover them, now's the time. Superb stuff.

Luster

This Belgian group describe themselves as "the missing link between Mazzy Star, Pentangle, Broadcast and Enhet for Fri Musik", so in all honesty there was no way I was not going to check this out. 

Often with these press-releases the reality can't match the hyberbole but in this case they're right on the money - no pipe dreams here.

It's spooky and a bit ethereal and has some doomy drones that give it a bit of a ritualistic folk-horror vibe at times. And at other times it's beautifully evocative and naturalistic.

This 2022 release was ten years in the making apparently. Hopefully a follow up doesn't take that long to manifest.

A Return + Moonrite

Six years! It's been a while since I was last on here. 

How you all doing? 

Life got pretty busy here and for the longest time I almost completely stopped investing time in new music. I got comfortable listening to what I knew and found that I had to really work to connect with anything new.

But over the last month or so I've made some positive lifestyle changes which have, among other things, put me in the right sort of headspace to start being receptive to new music again. And it turns out that there's a lot of pretty impressive stuff still happening out there. So I'm going to start sharing it again.

Time won't allow for anything like the scope of what was going on here before. It'll just be me, not the wonderful team I had working with me previously. I won't be posting lengthy reviews or compiling samplers. But the urge to share has returned with the urge to discover so I'll be posting links and sharing my thoughts on music that speaks to me as I come across it. And we'll see where things go from there. I've got a lot of catching up to do it seems.

Here's a new discovery to get the ball rolling: 

 

Moonrite are a French duo (two brothers) who released two albums and a 7" between 2016 and 2019 but seem to have shut up shop since then which is a pity as they really had a handle on what they do, namely early seventies style psychedelic occult rock. Not your garden variety stoner / doom either, we're talking serious vintage sounds here. And the treated vocals are amazing. 

 

Check them out - and if anyone knows what they're doing now, let me know.

 

The Return of The Active Listener Sampler

Hi folks. I hope everyone is doing OK in these crazy, uncertain times.

It's been a few years since you've all heard from me, but I figured everyone (myself included) could do with a little distraction, so I put a few feelers out to see if anyone was still interested in our old samplers. To my surprise, I received an overwhelmingly positive response from readers and artists alike so here we are with a brand new sampler. No idea at this stage whether this will just be a one-off or the start of something that appears on at least a semi-regular basis. To a certain extent that will depend on you and the response this receives.

So, assuming this is the start of something, I'm now open to receiving submissions for future samplers as well. If you're an artist who would like to feature on a future sampler please feel free to email me at theactivelistener@hotmail.com with download codes / links etc. Please note that these will only be used for sampler purposes - I have no plans to start reviewing again. And that due to the number of submissions I receive, I cannot guarantee a feature.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Here's the new sampler. Enjoy it. 26 tracks from artists familiar and new, including teasers for upcoming albums and lots of demos, outtakes and otherwise unavailable material from a host of your favourites.

And please remember that it's pretty tough being a musician at the moment. With widespread gig cancellations and few outlets currently available to sell merchandise, artists need a bit of a helping hand right now. If you hear anything you like here, please visit the individual artist links on the Bandcamp page and buy some merch and music.

So long, and thanks for all the fish

Hi All.

I just wanted to make official what you've all probably suspected for months now.

The Active Listener has closed up shop and ceased operations. There are a number of reasons for this, but mostly it comes down to the time it consumes, and my lack of time to commit to it.

So there will be no further posts on the Active Listener. I hope you've enjoyed what we've done over the years. If we've turned you on to one thing that you wouldn't have found out about otherwise, then we've done what we set out to do.

The website, Bandcamp page and Facebook account will all remain active resources for your use so hopefully they will continue to spread the good word about these wonderful artists in that capacity.

I'd just like to offer a big thanks to all of the contributors, artists and labels that have helped spread the word and create a community which I hope will continue to thrive.

Most of all though I'd like to thank you, the reader, for your continued support through our various ups and downs. You're all champs.

Live well and be happy x

Thin White Rope - Exploring the Axis / Moonhead

Tempus fugit. It seems scarcely credible to me that I first listened to Exploring The Axis by Davis, California guitar heroes Thin White Rope some 33 years ago. Now remastered by the good folks at Frontier Records and unleashed on limited vinyl runs, the first two Thin White Rope records emerge once more blinking into the light of a red sun reclaiming their rightful place at the very forefront of what we call great independent guitar music.

Context is a good thing. There are two main narratives that are generally considered when we examine California as a centrepoint for musical excellence. The first is the one that radiates in the sunlight and the surf and took the likes of Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks into the realms of odyssey - mythologizing a place of endless summer and good vibrations where fun,fun,fun can be had with reckless abandon. The second narrative is less settling and juxtaposes worldliness and black humour with emotional entropy and the mundanity of violence both real and imagined. This is the one picturing a Venice Beach with Jim Morrison lashed to the joists of Venice Pier, blood spewing from his mouth, of Arthur Lee alienated and sitting on the hillside watching all the people die, of punk rock disaffection with posters strewn at Johnny Mathis' Feet.

This dystopian California, of loathing and bittersweet wonder is the territory that Thin White Rope would pitch up in and proceed to rule for the best part of a decade. Their studies of personal dysfunction, mental illness, relationship breakdown, chemical hallucination and (barely suppressed) violence are shot through with some of the most original guitar playing you will ever hear anywhere. This marked them out from their sunny 'Paisley Underground' contemporaries like the black sheep of the family that they probably never belonged to in the first place. This was underground rock from the magma under the desert soil, claustrophobic and often dark. At times they resembled a desert baked Television, at others a peyote chewing Steely Dan but always and ultimately Thin White Rope transmitted their own new and thrilling musical language that once tuned into can never be vanquished.

Exploring The Axis, the bands 1985 debut, remains amongst the best debut LPs recorded and released in the 1980's. This probably shunts it comfortably into the best debut LPs ever recorded. The band's principle songwriter and dual lead guitar player Guy Kyser writing almost all of the songs with a keen eye for dissonant melody and in partnership with key ally, Roger Kunkel, probably the most consistently intelligent use of controlled feedback that I have ever heard. Opener 'Down in the Desert' is the story of the bands associate 'Karl' who drives into the desert one day and has a nervous breakdown, coming back to his friends profoundly changed but unable to tell them what happened or why. This narrative sits astride a melody and arrangement that I can only describe as a really rather pissed-off/sawn-off 'Alone Again Or'. As a first sonic signal to the wider world it was bold and new and brilliant. 'Disney Girl' is about as far away from The Beach Boys as you can get, its unsettling feedback drones and detached analytical vocal/lyric giving way to sumptuous guitar interplay and flagging another of their innovations - feedback as a swooping, swirling, background vocal - no one had pulled that before. 'Lithium' is the best song with that title from many contenders with its beautiful guitar interplay and feeling of high plains drifting - an essay in distance to borrow a phrase. Awesome. 'Dead Granma's On A Train' poses the question of what might happen if you soul mate's antecedents were killed generations before you came around. This is framed in what would become a classic 'Indie-Americana' arrangement with spangling country-fried guitars and a fiery Kyser vocal reminiscent of Johnny Cash at his most snotty. A gem. The title track closes the record and is just monolithic. It is to Exploring The Axis what 'The End' is to The Doors debut. A chilling tale of hallucination, madness and possible (imagined) murder wrapped in a melody and vocal performance that relentlessly stalks you and reels you in to it's utterly terrible climax. Its "Marquee Moon" meets The Shining. A ridiculously powerful closing statement and one that had me desperate waiting for the follow-up.

By 1987, the speed at which Thin White Rope were evolving into standard bearers at the vanguard of intelligent independent guitar music was becoming abundantly clear. If Exploring The Axis unveiled a Pandora's Box for our inspection then Moonhead not so much opened it as detonated it into a million tiny pieces. The music on this sophomore release is pulled deeper into the earth with terrible certainty, sulphuric and volcanic plumes of guitar ejecting across the night sky. The performances captured here crackle and smoulder with an incandescent and dazzling fury .

Opener 'It's Not Your Fault' looms into view on a truly gargantuan and twisted feedback laden guitar riff, its accompanying narrative setting the tone for the remainder of the record with its feelings of guilt, disappointment, bemusement and fatalism. The ante is upped further on the following detonation of 'Wire Animals'. This is a conflagration posing as a primitive hoedown that scorches your ears and blows your head off before those amazing twin guitars relent, squalling to a molten finale. In my humble opinion it is as good a song as you will hear. Ever. 'Thing' on one level is incongruous and perverse with its simple acoustic guitar and brief, tender vocal disarming you but ultimately it's still a song about disappointment and unresolved feelings. The titular 'Moonhead' is spectacular - a beautiful construction that builds on silvery guitar lines before pulling back the covers to expose a terrible secret. 'Wet Heart' is a dilemma, surgically removed from its author on twin incisions of feedback guitar. 'Come Around' provides an almost light relief with it's conversational, bar-room tone and lightly skipping Nashville beat. This is soon discarded 'If Those Tears' is as dark as a Mojave midnight, swinging and dangling shards of guitar that endlessly criss-cross over an intensely delivered vocal focused on betrayal. 'Crawl Piss Freeze' closes the set - a grindingly abstract Lynchian prose piece that leaves the listener stranded by the side of the highway in the starry silence of the night as the tail lights of the battered pick up truck you were hitching a ride in fades away. Moonhead has changed you but like most of the protagonists in its collection of songs you aren't completely sure how or why.

And there we leave the story for now. Two crucial outings from the 1980's that defined much of what would follow have been cleaned up and sent back into battle. Exploring The Axis and Moonhead are available directly from the label here or from selected stockists around the globe. It's worth noting that the label is selling some super limited vinyl variants (150 of each on vinyl) so if that floats your boat go straight to the source.

Shaun C. Rogan