garage

Rip It Up, Issue 176, 1 March 1992, Page 35

garage

GESTALT Hex (Frisbee) Another carousing debut from the Frisbee stable and the guitar stew Gestalt spew up here is "well tasty", as they say in England. There's a sensitive moment somewhere on side one and the vocals tend towards the English boy yearning variety, but otherwise this is music designed to pack a punch; loud, lean and a tad spooky. * Side two leaps into the fray with power drumming from Luke Casey (Jules "Second Child" Barnet is otherwise ' . drummer in residence), but generally the vibe is not so straight ahead. Crystalline production and gold packaging makes Hex an example of independent recording at it's slickest and you are herewith advised to take a punt on this. Available from Marbecks, Truetone, Real Groovy, Comer Records, Brashs. DONNA YUZWALK STEVE McCABE ; \ Houndstooth (Sleek Bott) Second tape in about as many days from this talented young singer-songwriter comes in attractive houndstooth-tweed package containing extensive and complicated liner notes — the main unifying thread is a "song-cycle" dealing with behind the scenes criminal activity in a circus and other laterally-related sinister stuff (see liner notes), the whole "concept" whoozis seeming to lend to the whole and thence to the individual songs and thence back

again a weird kind of structural integrity/discipline much unlike the sprawl n'scribble of the preceding Lindy Lou or The Fisherman. Guess you could say that makes it ''better', yeah, why not. •' DUANEZARAKOV THE AXEMEN Recliner Rocker (Put Yer Ya-Ya's Back In) / (Sleek Bott) . Dunno why it is that people in Auckland are having more of a hard time with the Axemen than we ever did back in Christchurch and Dunedin, but I'd guess it's. really a lifestyle thing, ie, that there's a certain righteous mind-and-body regime necessary to an understanding of the Axemen's rigorous yet subtle gestalt and you suckers just haven't got it. Just take for instance the recent critique of an A-men recital in STAMP the guy seemed to ? have a problem with their obvious indebtedness to advertising jingles "as a basis for serious music", quote, and concluded 'this is the 90s, not 1 983". Well 'scuse me if I'm too dumb to know what this means. But anyhow, as to this tape itself—the puns are pretty good, none of the vocals are particularly high-pitched and if you are passing familiar with the Beatles, the Stones and maybe the Fall, it's not exactly "incomprehensible*. Get it before it gets you, dickweed. (NOTE TO READERS OUTSIDE OF THE AUCKLAND METROPOLITAN REGION: This review contains references to things that if you are lucky you know nothin' of. Please do not take this personally). Send sl2 incl p&p to Sleek Bott, CPO

Box 487, Auckland.

DUANE ZARAKOV