Grand Palace Records - Review Of The Day - Tall Dwarfs
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Artist:
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Album:
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Track:Wings / We Bleed Love / All Is Fine
Tall Dwarfs – Fork Songs (Cloud Recordings)
The acclaimed duo of Chris Knox and Alec Bathgate's 1980s output on the Flying Nun label was profoundly influential on a generation of lo-fi music. Their influence can be traced in the music of Yo La Tengo, Pavement, Smog, and others working with intimate and primitive songcraft. Legendary home recorders, Fork Songs continues to expand their self-built universe and deepen their songwriting partnership. Fearless assemblages of noisy loops, primitive guitars, and household objects are the instruments favored, and the ease with which they sculpt oblique elements into delicate upbeat songs is stunning. Like the Television Personalities, their low-tech methods prove that great songs will transcend recording methods, and Fork Songs is only another crucial chapter in the book of musical invention that the New Zealand duo wrote. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------**Grand Palace Personal Testimony**I love, love, love the Tall Dwarfs, in my opinion they are pretty much responsible for all of the lo-fi indie pop that I have loved for years, like Elf Power, OTC, Neutral Milk Hotel, Animal Collective and all that stuff. This duo have the gift to make simple into beautiful. I had the chance to see these guys open for The Olivia Tremor Control at the last Orange Twin Fest (a great collective, check them out at www.orangetwin.com), and I was blown away, and that was jsut two years ago. Basically my point is that you should buy every Tall Dwarfs album (by the way the Chris Know solo releases rule too), and that I am super cool for getting to see these guys because they are super cool.-Lynn ---Line Stuck In My Noggin--"Most People Love The Likes Of You, They Jostle For A Better View, They Can't Beleive You're Really True, 'Cos Truth Is Dirt and No-One's As Clean As You" - from the song "Dare To Tread" (track 1)**Bio**Pioneers of the lo-fi aesthetic and towering figures of the New Zealand pop music scene, the Tall Dwarfs were formed in 1979 by singers/songwriters Chris Knox and Alec Bathgate following the demise of their previous band, the legendary Toy Love. Recording on Knox's four-track machine, the duo debuted with the 1981 EP Three Songs, highlighted by the classic "Nothing's Going to Happen." The record was a hit, although it left many Toy Love fans baffled by the pair's new musical direction: Tall Dwarfs' releases were deliberately primitive, the D.I.Y. ethic at its purest — songs were all recorded at home (performed in bedrooms, hallways and the like) and defiantly experimental in nature, presaging the rise of what was ultimately dubbed "lo-fi" as the sound began to grow in prominence and influence over the course of the decades to follow. In 1982, Bathgate relocated from Dunedin to Christchurch; with the distance between him and Knox now totalling some 750 kilometers, Tall Dwarfs was relegated to a side project, with both men meeting once or twice annually to record and perform the occasional live date. The first product of their long-distance union was the EP Louis Likes His Daily Dip, issued in 1982 on the fledgling Flying Nun label; Canned Music followed a year later. With 1984's SlugBucketHairyBreathMonster, Tall Dwarfs scored their most successful record to date; the track "The Brain That Wouldn't Die" was a cult hit across New Zealand, and with its inclusion on the Flying Nun compilation Tuatara, it received significant international exposure as well. After recording 1985's That's the Short and Long of It, Bathgate moved to the U.K.; many predicted the duo's demise, but he returned after a year, and the Tall Dwarfs reunited for 1986's Throw a Sickie (so named because both Bathgate and Knox were suffering from colds during production).With 1988's Dogma, the duo finally graduated to a proper studio; the EP featured "The Slide," a tale of euthanasia which became one of their most controversial and best-known efforts. The long out-of-print first four Tall Dwarfs EPs were mined for the subsequent Hello Cruel World best-of collection; the first of their records to earn proper worldwide release, it won them considerable global media coverage. In 1990 they reconvened in the studio, emerging with so much material that the longstanding EP format was finally forsaken to release a full-length LP, dubbed Weeville; a year later another album, Fork Songs, appeared. A tour of America followed in 1992, and in 1994 Tall Dwarfs issued the 3 EPs LP, a collection of 18 new tracks sequenced to resemble a trio of mini-albums. Though Knox had long maintained a solo career, Bathgate waited until 1996 to make his solo debut with Gold Lamé; still, Tall Dwarfs remained intact, issuing Stumpy a year later. **Cloud Recordings Bio**Chris Knox and Alec Bathgate have made music together since 1977, as founding members of one of New Zealand's first punk bands called The Enemy. They then formed Toy Love in 1979, which signed to WEA, had a few charting singles, then broke up. In 1981 Chris and Alec returned as the Tall Dwarfs. They purchased a TEAC four track and became home-recording pioneers, who would later influence bands such as Pavement, Yo La Tengo, and Neutral Milk Hotel."We would listen to the Tall Dwarfs [legendary New Zealand Flying Nun band] and we'd think, 'Gosh, these guys are recordings stuff on 4-track, it sounds totally hi-fi.' We'd listen to the Beatles and Beach Boys and think, 'These guys recorded on 4-track and it sounds totally hi-fi.' We said to ourselves, 'We have a 4-track, it doesn't sound so hi-fi but it's something to shoot for.' So we decided these recordings that we were making weren't just f***ing around, they were albums." -from a 1998 interview with Robert Schneider (The Apples (in Stereo) / producer Neutral Milk Hotel & The Olivia Tremor Control)Hypnotic tape-loop rhythm tracks & brilliant songwriting with lyrics that range from the political - "Sign the Dotted Line" to the nature of human existence - "Bodies".**The Dusted Review**When it first came out in 1992, Fork Songs started off the Tall Dwarfs' second decade on a high note. At the time, the world seemed to be coming around to Chris Knox and Alec Bathgate's way of thinking. The New Zealanders had spent the ’80s recording EPs at home on a 4-track tape machine, which made them forerunners of the lo-fi craze. The big difference between the Dwarfs and their acolytes was talent and inspiration, and Fork Songs overflows with it. Each song sets a lacerating lyric and an insistent hook to an idiosyncratic but entirely a propos arrangement. Opener "Dare To Tread" pairs a sputtering three-peas-in-a-box beat (until recently, the duo routinely crafted their own rhythm loops from voices and household objects) with stacks of stirring, anthemic guitars that lift up Knox's ambivalent analysis of seductive corruption with the fervor of Brazilian soccer fans hoisting the winning team onto their shoulders. Skip forward a couple tunes and Bathgate takes the mic for "Wings," a yearning folk tune replete with wheezing accordion and sweet slide guitar licks and a lyric that explores the way spiritual aspirations frustrate human connections. "Lowland" is a sputtering acoustic reggae-blues tune about incestuous small-town paranoia. When Fork Songs first came out, there was a backlog of vinyl-only Tall Dwarfs material, so the 1988 EP Dogma was tacked on, and this reissue follows suit. This was a rare experiment with "outside" musicians (actually bassist Paul Keen and drummer Mike Dooley, who had played with Bathgate and Knox in the punk band Toy Love) and an actual studio. Neither variation makes a huge difference; the grooves are a bit denser, but still sound like they came out of a tool shed. The centerpiece here is "Lurlene Bayliss," which pairs spoken word and rattling percussion to tell a shaggy dog tale that argues for tolerance of mental illness.**Links In Which You Might Be Interested** Tall Dwarf's "Nothing's Gonna Happen" (Video) - This is sooo Rad!! 
http://www.neverhappened.org/neverhappened/2005/02/tall_dwarfs_not.htmlCloud Recordings Page w/ Mp3s
http://www.cloudrecordings.com/sights.htmlNZ Music “Tall Dwarfs” Page (w/ a bunch of Videos)http://www.nzmusic.com/artist.cfm?i=33Tall Dwarf's "Nothing's Gonna Happen" (Video) - This is sooo Rad!! http://www.neverhappened.org/neverhappened/2005/02/tall_dwarfs_not.htmlMagnet Magazine Review
- Grand Palace Records 128 1/2 N. Church Street Murfreesboro , TN 37130 615-890-3221http://www.grandpalace.us http://www.myspace.com/grandpalace PS: Special Grand Palace Records Public Service Announcement
The acclaimed duo of Chris Knox and Alec Bathgate's 1980s output on the Flying Nun label was profoundly influential on a generation of lo-fi music. Their influence can be traced in the music of Yo La Tengo, Pavement, Smog, and others working with intimate and primitive songcraft. Legendary home recorders, Fork Songs continues to expand their self-built universe and deepen their songwriting partnership. Fearless assemblages of noisy loops, primitive guitars, and household objects are the instruments favored, and the ease with which they sculpt oblique elements into delicate upbeat songs is stunning. Like the Television Personalities, their low-tech methods prove that great songs will transcend recording methods, and Fork Songs is only another crucial chapter in the book of musical invention that the New Zealand duo wrote. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------**Grand Palace Personal Testimony**I love, love, love the Tall Dwarfs, in my opinion they are pretty much responsible for all of the lo-fi indie pop that I have loved for years, like Elf Power, OTC, Neutral Milk Hotel, Animal Collective and all that stuff. This duo have the gift to make simple into beautiful. I had the chance to see these guys open for The Olivia Tremor Control at the last Orange Twin Fest (a great collective, check them out at www.orangetwin.com), and I was blown away, and that was jsut two years ago. Basically my point is that you should buy every Tall Dwarfs album (by the way the Chris Know solo releases rule too), and that I am super cool for getting to see these guys because they are super cool.-Lynn ---Line Stuck In My Noggin--"Most People Love The Likes Of You, They Jostle For A Better View, They Can't Beleive You're Really True, 'Cos Truth Is Dirt and No-One's As Clean As You" - from the song "Dare To Tread" (track 1)**Bio**Pioneers of the lo-fi aesthetic and towering figures of the New Zealand pop music scene, the Tall Dwarfs were formed in 1979 by singers/songwriters Chris Knox and Alec Bathgate following the demise of their previous band, the legendary Toy Love. Recording on Knox's four-track machine, the duo debuted with the 1981 EP Three Songs, highlighted by the classic "Nothing's Going to Happen." The record was a hit, although it left many Toy Love fans baffled by the pair's new musical direction: Tall Dwarfs' releases were deliberately primitive, the D.I.Y. ethic at its purest — songs were all recorded at home (performed in bedrooms, hallways and the like) and defiantly experimental in nature, presaging the rise of what was ultimately dubbed "lo-fi" as the sound began to grow in prominence and influence over the course of the decades to follow. In 1982, Bathgate relocated from Dunedin to Christchurch; with the distance between him and Knox now totalling some 750 kilometers, Tall Dwarfs was relegated to a side project, with both men meeting once or twice annually to record and perform the occasional live date. The first product of their long-distance union was the EP Louis Likes His Daily Dip, issued in 1982 on the fledgling Flying Nun label; Canned Music followed a year later. With 1984's SlugBucketHairyBreathMonster, Tall Dwarfs scored their most successful record to date; the track "The Brain That Wouldn't Die" was a cult hit across New Zealand, and with its inclusion on the Flying Nun compilation Tuatara, it received significant international exposure as well. After recording 1985's That's the Short and Long of It, Bathgate moved to the U.K.; many predicted the duo's demise, but he returned after a year, and the Tall Dwarfs reunited for 1986's Throw a Sickie (so named because both Bathgate and Knox were suffering from colds during production).With 1988's Dogma, the duo finally graduated to a proper studio; the EP featured "The Slide," a tale of euthanasia which became one of their most controversial and best-known efforts. The long out-of-print first four Tall Dwarfs EPs were mined for the subsequent Hello Cruel World best-of collection; the first of their records to earn proper worldwide release, it won them considerable global media coverage. In 1990 they reconvened in the studio, emerging with so much material that the longstanding EP format was finally forsaken to release a full-length LP, dubbed Weeville; a year later another album, Fork Songs, appeared. A tour of America followed in 1992, and in 1994 Tall Dwarfs issued the 3 EPs LP, a collection of 18 new tracks sequenced to resemble a trio of mini-albums. Though Knox had long maintained a solo career, Bathgate waited until 1996 to make his solo debut with Gold Lamé; still, Tall Dwarfs remained intact, issuing Stumpy a year later. **Cloud Recordings Bio**Chris Knox and Alec Bathgate have made music together since 1977, as founding members of one of New Zealand's first punk bands called The Enemy. They then formed Toy Love in 1979, which signed to WEA, had a few charting singles, then broke up. In 1981 Chris and Alec returned as the Tall Dwarfs. They purchased a TEAC four track and became home-recording pioneers, who would later influence bands such as Pavement, Yo La Tengo, and Neutral Milk Hotel."We would listen to the Tall Dwarfs [legendary New Zealand Flying Nun band] and we'd think, 'Gosh, these guys are recordings stuff on 4-track, it sounds totally hi-fi.' We'd listen to the Beatles and Beach Boys and think, 'These guys recorded on 4-track and it sounds totally hi-fi.' We said to ourselves, 'We have a 4-track, it doesn't sound so hi-fi but it's something to shoot for.' So we decided these recordings that we were making weren't just f***ing around, they were albums." -from a 1998 interview with Robert Schneider (The Apples (in Stereo) / producer Neutral Milk Hotel & The Olivia Tremor Control)Hypnotic tape-loop rhythm tracks & brilliant songwriting with lyrics that range from the political - "Sign the Dotted Line" to the nature of human existence - "Bodies".**The Dusted Review**When it first came out in 1992, Fork Songs started off the Tall Dwarfs' second decade on a high note. At the time, the world seemed to be coming around to Chris Knox and Alec Bathgate's way of thinking. The New Zealanders had spent the ’80s recording EPs at home on a 4-track tape machine, which made them forerunners of the lo-fi craze. The big difference between the Dwarfs and their acolytes was talent and inspiration, and Fork Songs overflows with it. Each song sets a lacerating lyric and an insistent hook to an idiosyncratic but entirely a propos arrangement. Opener "Dare To Tread" pairs a sputtering three-peas-in-a-box beat (until recently, the duo routinely crafted their own rhythm loops from voices and household objects) with stacks of stirring, anthemic guitars that lift up Knox's ambivalent analysis of seductive corruption with the fervor of Brazilian soccer fans hoisting the winning team onto their shoulders. Skip forward a couple tunes and Bathgate takes the mic for "Wings," a yearning folk tune replete with wheezing accordion and sweet slide guitar licks and a lyric that explores the way spiritual aspirations frustrate human connections. "Lowland" is a sputtering acoustic reggae-blues tune about incestuous small-town paranoia. When Fork Songs first came out, there was a backlog of vinyl-only Tall Dwarfs material, so the 1988 EP Dogma was tacked on, and this reissue follows suit. This was a rare experiment with "outside" musicians (actually bassist Paul Keen and drummer Mike Dooley, who had played with Bathgate and Knox in the punk band Toy Love) and an actual studio. Neither variation makes a huge difference; the grooves are a bit denser, but still sound like they came out of a tool shed. The centerpiece here is "Lurlene Bayliss," which pairs spoken word and rattling percussion to tell a shaggy dog tale that argues for tolerance of mental illness.**Links In Which You Might Be Interested** Tall Dwarf's "Nothing's Gonna Happen" (Video) - This is sooo Rad!! http://www.neverhappened.org/neverhappened/2005/02/tall_dwarfs_not.htmlCloud Recordings Page w/ Mp3shttp://www.cloudrecordings.com/sights.htmlNZ Music “Tall Dwarfs” Page (w/ a bunch of Videos)http://www.nzmusic.com/artist.cfm?i=33Tall Dwarf's "Nothing's Gonna Happen" (Video) - This is sooo Rad!! http://www.neverhappened.org/neverhappened/2005/02/tall_dwarfs_not.htmlMagnet Magazine Review- Grand Palace Records 128 1/2 N. Church Street Murfreesboro , TN 37130 615-890-3221http://www.grandpalace.us http://www.myspace.com/grandpalace PS: Special Grand Palace Records Public Service Announcement
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