“There are some fine moments on this release, but this is not the place to start with this otherwise exceptional band.”
XPRESSWAY PILE=UP, PART 2 by DAN VALLOR
PART 1: Intro and The DEAD C.: “Even at its most structured, The Dead C. consistently has a sound so involving that it has a meditative quality.”
POPWATCH #9 Summer 1998 (page 48)
LESLIE GAFFNEY & MR. LESLIE GAFFNEY, Publishers & Editors
Pretty thorough overview and excellent pictorial history of PETER JEFFRIES at Audio Culture NZ, where the 1984 photo of TKOP (above) was lifted.
GRAEME JEFFRIES & the CAKEKITCHEN, also at Audio Culture
Previously on Fuckin’ Record Reviews:
The entirety of Dan Vallor’s Xpressway history is available in viewable form as a lovingly (i.e., much better than FRR’s) scanned PDF with one simple click…you’ll never believe what happens next!
DAN VALLOR is well regarded as a musician, archivist and all around good human by those who know. He’s the producer of those essential GAME THEORY reissues Omnivore put out the past few years, but also works under the name CLARINETTE/KLARINETTE and has a brand new long player coming out on Feeding Tube Records on 3/24/17!
Order CLARINETTE’s The Now Of Then at Feeding Tube or Forced Exposure; Byron Coley summarizes Dan Vallor’s work: “In the 15 years since Thurston and I released the firstClarinette LP, Haze (Ecstatic Yod), Dan Vallor has continued to produce music unabated. Most of it has been released in very limited editions (on CDRs, cassettes and lathes), but it has been a consistently cool flow of drone accrual and invention from a guy we still sorta think of as pop-oriented. Dan’s best known work probably remains his archival activities inside the archives of the late songwriting genius, Scott Miller, although others may know him from his efforts to catalog the output of the NZ lathe underground.Clarinette is a long running solo project that began in the ’80s, then went dormant until early in the 21st Century. The music is largely based on electric guitar huzz and hum, but there are plenty of sound events that pop up throughout the record, disturbing and enriching the surface with sproings, rasps and groons. The pieces on The Now of Then are all fairly reflective, and probably more suitable to stoned drifting than freak dancing, but hey — it never pays to second guess audience reaction. If you feel the urge to freak, so be it. Clarinette’s music definitely twangs the freak register. Who are we to say you should remain seated?”(2017)
An overview of Bruce Russell’s Xpressway at Audio Culture: “’Bruce Russell’s catch cry was ‘we know what’s good for you’,” [Stephen] Kilroy says. ‘And he could talk to it in an intellectual or artistic kind of way and justify it. People knew to trust Bruce; if it’s on Xpressway it must be good’.”
