#bailterspace

[rastronomicals]

9:52 AM EST December 6, 2025:

Bailterspace - "Retro" From the album Wammo (March 21, 1995)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

Flying Nun released the album in New Zealand on the date shown. Matador would release it in the States on May 23rd.

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[khrushchov]

[laszonasabisales]

Bailterspace - Bailterspace

[dustedmagazine]

Bailterspace — Wammo (Matador)

Wammo by Bailterspace

Wammo is Bailterspace’s “pop” album, though only in relative terms.  The band, known for sprawling, droning, noisy guitar experiments, had always had ties to New Zealand’s lo-fi jangle community — Hamish Kilgour played on the first album, Nesh Bailter Space — and certainly stray bits of tunefulness radiated through the earlier, Flying Nun albums like Tanker, Grader Spader and even Thermos. But Wammo takes it further, putting melody in the forefront, though without diluting its raucous, prickly, feedback-blistered rock underpinnings much. If you’re looking for a Bailterspace album to sing in the shower, this is the one.  

Wammo was the third and final album that Bailterspace recorded for Matador after its members, Alister Parker, John Halvorsen, and Brent McLachlan, moved to New York.  In 1995, Nirvana had just broken big. Loud, uncompromising bands like Dinosaur Jr. were having a moment, as were rough-edged fuzz pop bands like Guided by Voices and Pavement. Sonic Youth was turning away from noise and towards its late period lyrical sound, with Washing Machine. The boundaries between experimental scree and mainstream success must have seemed unusually permeable. It was as good a time as any to shift towards a jangly, droning, unhinged melodicism, and Wammo delivered exactly that.

Not that the band had gone twee. “At Five We Drive,” maybe the disc’s best song, revs and roars at full speed and volume, its guitars screaming in a barbed, head-rattling repetition, as Parker whispers, “Stay on the dotted line,” repeatedly. It is coiled, contained chaos, stabbed through with rays of dissonance, and it picks you up and transports you, whether you’re ready or not. But “Zapped” following immediately after, is from a whole other universe, with bright chimes of guitar and a bittersweet drift of melody. Sure, it kicks up a ruckus mid-cut, as those shimmering guitars sharpen into razor-blade slashers, but there are parts that sound like R.E.M. And “Retro,” towards the end, blossoms out in epic, psychedelic grandeur, its slow clanging guitar riffs falling in radiant, unhurried time, its melody reaching out to the astral plane in modal smoke and incense. It is really rather good, its guitar noise tamed into something like a Paisley Underground jangle.

Wammo strayed far enough from expectations that mid-1990s critics didn’t know exactly what to make of it, but evidently the live show was, despite the tunefulness, still blisteringly loud. In his review of Trinine back in 2014, Bill Meyer reminisced, “When I finally got my chance to see them play, in support of their final Matador release Wammo, they played at dairy-curdling volume; so excessive, even McLachlan’s kit was augmented with electronic pads to trigger even more blasts of noise.” So, yes, Wammo is a bit more accessible, a bit more hummable, but don’t get too cuddly with it. It’ll blow your ears off.

Jennifer Kelly

[dizzzymind]

Bailter Space

[bandcampsnoop]

11/25/20.

Yes!  I was hoping The Gordons (Christchurch, New Zealand) would be reissued.  I sold my Flying Nun copy of this years ago (stupid me!) and have regretted it since.  Members of The Gordons went on to form Bailterspace.  The lineage is easy to hear.  This also recalls the solo work of Hamish Kilgour.  And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention clear nods to The Fall and early Pere Ubu.

1972 Records (Oakland, California) is reissuing this.  The Bandcamp page states:

“The Gordons LP, which followed in 1981, matches the abandon with motorik churn and livewire dissonance, evoking New Zealand antecedents as divergent as This Kind of Punishment and the Dead C. Brought together on this release, they’re a noise-rock landmark anticipating fans such as Sonic Youth.”

1972 also has an excellent Maximum Joy reissue.

[rastronomicals]

10:38 AM EST January 31, 2025:

Bailterspace - "Colours" From the album bailterspace (2004)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

A best-of compilation with some alternate versions produced by Flying Nun exclusively for the New Zealand market. Except that it doesn't contain anything from Solar.3 (which wasn't a Flying Nun record), this is an excellent overview of the band through the beginning of their hiatus in 2000.

I actually ordered a physical copy of this from a distributorship in Christchurch, and they shipped me one to the La Historia World HQ here in South Florida. It's the longest-distance mail order transaction I've ever made, and close to the longest any two parties can make. If the distance were any further, it'd be closer in the opposite direction.

First released on Wammo, from 1995

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  <700x700>

[rastronomicals]

6:03 PM EST January 14, 2025:

Bailterspace - "LUNA (Heavy Sample)" From the Digital EP Newspaperman (December 1, 2023)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

File under: Aotearoa