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LP
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TW X-LP
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Over the last ten years, Michael Morley has embraced the acoustic guitar as the means of channeling the darkest threads that have run through his work since the early 1980s. While he largely made a name for himself as a maverick of primitive electric guitar and electronics in The Dead C and Gate, Morley's love of song form has never been far from the surface. In recent years, chance discoveries of Spanish and classical guitar records languishing in the discount and free bins at junk shops in South Dunedin proved to be a revelation. These records, largely recorded in the 1950s and 60s, began to shift Morley's work and lead him to piece together a new musical language from elements completely removed from the rock and avant-garde underground from which he first emerged. Spanish, Mexican and South American composers such as De Fossa, Ponce, Lauro, Barrios, Pujol, Albéniz, Falla, and Villa-Lobos as well as more traditional classical guitar composers like Schubert, Haydn, and Scarlatti all began to etch themselves into his consciousness. Rather than emulate them, Morley "channeled the experience of listening to these strange guitar sounds" as he began to play the acoustic guitar for hours at a time every day as an almost meditative exercise and a way of discovering a new way to play. This new musical language is realized on Pushed Streets, a suite of 12 songs Morley recorded at home in Kōpūtai/Port Chalmers, New Zealand. The music is quiet, almost ephemeral. Chords and melodies are traced in a dark atmosphere with Morley's unmistakable voice almost imperceptibly double tracked, words softly sung and stretched, sometimes at a near whisper. There are no amplifiers, no effects, nothing to distract from Morley's words and the tone of his guitar. Recorded with two 1970s guild guitars, an orchestral six string and dreadnaught twelve string, the guitar sound is rich and dynamic, chords and melodic figures are struck with what sometimes seems the gentlest possible gesture, resonating and floating away into the night. The music and voice, the lyrics are all of that dark thread, distilled with frightening clarity. The music is intimate and fragile, unadorned and heartbreaking in a way that recalls the spirit of lonely and world-weary albums by Skip Spence, Bill Fay, and Loren Connors; yet against the backdrop of the absolute finality of today's culture, the album's alchemy of Spanish and classical influences with Morley's formative work avant garde work, Pushed Streets exists in its own hauntingly desolate realm.
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2LP
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TW M-LP
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Michael Morley has long been acclaimed for his electric guitar and electronic forays in New Zealand's legendary The Dead C and Gate. On Heavens Idleness Awaits, he strips his music to its most elemental state. Recorded at home and using only a single-tracked acoustic guitar, Morley creates an intimate and intensely meditative work. Over four, side-long tracks, he weaves hypnotic melodic figures that slowly unfurl to reveal a minimalist masterwork and one of his most powerful statements to date. Gatefold sleeve; Includes download.
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LP
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KYE 037LP
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"Kye is proud to announce the release of Moonrise, the brand new solo LP by Michael Morley. After a 30-odd year history cutting electric music with the likes of Wreck Small Speakers on Expensive Stereos, The Dead C, and Gate, Morley opens a new chapture with Moonrise, being the first readily available document of the man in solo acoustic mode. "Moonrise was recorded as an experiment in my newly established recording studio to see what might happen if I played acoustic instruments only, with an ear to some early Spanish guitar music and the Persian oud. After 30 years of playing the acoustic guitar in private for no good reason, I decide to record the activity." (Michael Morley). Moonrise arrives in a full color Morley designed matte stock sleeve, with complimentary inner bags, in an edition of 500 copies."
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