Playing favourites

In the second of two articles, Roger Shepherd chooses his favourite Flying Nun albums, as the record label celebrates its 30th anniversary.

> Tall Dwarfs: Hello Cruel World

When Chris Knox was recovering from the Toy Love experience in Australia and the demise of that influential band, he spent his time noodling away at his recently acquired four-track with fellow Toy Lover Alec Bathgate.

The result was the primitive but compelling 1981 12" single Nothing's Going To Happen (originally released on Furtive) which gave them the confidence to carry on recording around the EP idea popularised in New Zealand by the Clean. It had it all - home-created inventive sounds and recording devices, variety of material and most importantly great songs. So began a remarkable run of themed or "concept" EPs, starting with Three Songs and Louis Likes His Daily Dip in 1982, Canned Music and the tour de force that is Slugbuckethairybreathmonster.

All are beautifully shaped and self-contained mini-collections that express the potential of the EP format at its best. It is highly unlikely that these 12" EPs will ever be available in their original format so this collection is the best you will ever do. Hello Cruel World is an essential document of the Tall Dwarfs at the height of their powers.

> Skeptics: Amalgam

The Skeptics, were originally from Palmerston North and liked to do things their own way.

They were a product of a post-punk phenomenon so powerful it even reached the outposts of their home town and, it should be remembered, New Pymouth (with the Nocturnal Projections) and Gisborne (delivering the Wasp Factory).

But the Skeptics had longevity and determination, and a degree of enterprise, first founding the Snailcramps venue and studio in Palmerston North and then moving to Wellington to set up Writhe Studio in the old SIS building in Taranaki St.

And with longevity came a slow evolution of sound that embraced new technology and members (John Halvorsen and Brent McLaughlin from the Gordons/Bailter Space).

All the later releases (Sensible Shoes and 3) are excellent but Amalgam is truly stunning.

Calling it inventive would be to understate the achievement. Sounds grind together to produce an ever-varying wash of forcefully played abstract soundscapes that are still coherent songs, overlaid by the enigmatic singing of the late David D'Ath. And We Bake and Sheen Of Gold are anthems of our time.

> Straitjacket Fits: Best Of

Shayne Carter was always going to be playing and making music. Inspired by what he saw developing in the late 1970s and early 1980s in Dunedin, he became an integral part of that scene, first with the precocious Bored Games and then the swaggering Doublehappys before forming Straitjacket Fits with John Collie, David Wood and Andrew Brough.

They were a guitar band and Shayne was a singer who learnt to play that thing to sizzling effect in this band.

The 1987 Life in One Chord EP with Dialing a Prayer and She Speeds told us they were the upcoming band and they had the motivation and ambition to ride it.

The next album, Hail, was released on Rough Trade in the UK before they signed an international deal with Arista and enjoyed the delights of recording big budget albums with "name" producers.

They spent an enormous amount of time touring Europe and the US before finally calling it quits when overwhelmed by a tidal wave called grunge - a horrible way to go for such a great band.

But Shayne has recently been playing a blistering set that includes some of this material. Catch the magic if you can.

> The Subliminals: United State

When I started working in a Christchurch record shop in the late 1970s I became aware of some interesting records in the import section. They were from Germany and all seemed rather mysterious.

When I first listened to Can's Tago Mago album I had a life-changing epiphany. There existed parallel universes of music other than the usual Anglo-American stuff we were normally exposed to.

To my mind the Subliminals have that otherworldliness. Not that they are at all Germanic, although the rhythm section does drive the bus. Nothing else predates them in New Zealand so they have a quirky otherness that makes me think of them as a "pre-post-rock" band.

United State came out in 2000 and the beautiful Bridget Rileyesque cover tells you it's a complete album, one that fits together perfectly, with songs neatly linking and building on the previous. It's rhythmically driven with layers of repetitive and evolving guitar sounds with snippets of simple and direct vocals no more than hinting at meaning. Who needs a full explanation when the music takes you somewhere else?

> Bats: Free All the Monsters

Just out and already universally regarded as a powerful return to form, Free All the Monsters was recorded at Seacliff under the careful attention of Dale Cotton.

Robert Scott's songwriting has never been better and a feature here is the variation of material presented. The playing ebbs and flows around the slower songs and builds into almost kraut-rock workouts elsewhere.

This is a band that are assuredly confident in what they do but that relaxation is not smug or self-congratulatory. It is used to push sounds to new places within the Bats "sound".

It is all complemented by Robert Scott's voice, which shines through in part because of a generally relaxed self-confidence which has made that possible. Furthermore, Kaye Woodward's singing stands out and adds variety and colour.

Top tracks for me include Free All the Monsters, In the Subway, Simpletons and Spacejunk. A masterpiece.