#peter stapleton

[backstreetsbackalright]

Scorched Earth Policy, “Too Far Gone” [Flying Nun, 1984]

As I understand it, this was a promo shot in the band’s practice space for a video compilation.

[feneron]

Digital Painting Process: Epic Croc by Peter Stapleton

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[dustedmagazine]

Listed: Eye

(Photo by Kim Pieters)

Eye is an improvising ensemble from Dunedin, New Zealand. The group comprises original members Peter Stapleton (of the Vacuum, Victor Dimisich Band, Pin Group, Terminals, Scorched Earth Policy, Dadamah, Rain, Flies Inside The Sun) on percussion, radio, and electronics; Peter Porteous (Lapdog, Empirical) on guitar and singing bowls; and relatively recent recruit Jon Chapman (Double Leopards, Rory Storm and the Invaders) on electronics. They that first convened in 2003 and have kept a low profile, playing very occasionally on New Zealand’s south island and releasing a trickle of records on various mico-labels before teaming up with Ba Da Bing! This association seems to have kicked things into high gear; since 2015 they’ve issued an LP and a cassette that scratch the same ineradicable itch as recent Dead C. All three members of Eye contributed to this list, which they characterize as “a random list of music/film/books/epiphanies.”

SOUND EPIPHANIES

(PS) – Working several decks down in the empty holds of bulk carriers at the port of Lyttelton and hearing the huge natural reverb on the clash of steel on steel anytime the ball of the crane hit the sides. Also …a childhood memory of massed cicadas in the trees at the height of summer in Christchurch sounding like the roar of the sea.

(PP) – Living in London in the early ‘90s, I was walking along a street when I heard the most incredible music up ahead (some version of Bailter Space, I thought to myself?). I quickened my pace, got to the corner and turned it to be confronted with a group of workmen digging up the road. I stood there for fully ten minutes, conflicting thoughts racing around my brain: “it’s not music… but it sounds amazing… but it’s not music… but it sounds amazing… .” That day changed something in my brain.

(JC) – The wonky, ancient, pressed-cardboard window fan of childhood summer nights; the dual fans’ drones diced up the nearby highway’s thalassic ebbs and the backyard’s bedtime chirruping. Alternately lulling and compelling. Later, re-absorbed by its corollary during sweaty graveyard shifts in a vast plastics factory amongst hundreds of rattle-patterns from the punching machines.

MUSIC

The Velvets’ ‘Sister Ray’ (and its lesser sibling, the long-form Silver Factory jam, Symphony of Sound) as being a marker and source of inspiration and permission – immersive duration and eminent distortion, feedback, structure under degrees of chaos, guts, the ecstatic emergent. Seeing.

The two Thises: This Heat (UK) and This Kind of Punishment (NZ). Coming out of/into punk/post-punk. Two new freedoms, oceans apart — still unlike anything else: urgent, elegant, potent, raw.

John Coltrane – (paraphrasing US chef Anthony Bourdain) happiness is sautéing onions and garlic to the beginning of Kulu Sé Mama. Occasionally wondering whether to throw away any record which is not by John Coltrane.

FILM

Tarkovsky. Stalker, a wondrous dream. Filmed in the ravaged eastern bloc with a sense of austere beauty, the captivating idea that there is a room in the Zone where wishes can come true; the scientist and the writer whose dreams illustrate different takes on humanity. Aching long-take slowness, the grace he finds in light: the magnetising shot in The Mirror, where an absent teacup’s steam ring swiftly dissipates from a polished tabletop.

The Holy Mountain, The carnival rapture of Jodorowsky’s divine kaleidoscope.

Chris Marker’s La Jetée – always mysterious even after many viewings, but addictive and naggingly prescient. In particular, the whispering sticks in the head.

LITERATURE

(PP) – Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, the huge wonderful meta-novel set immediately post-WWII in lawless Europe, following endless tribes crisscrossing the landscape on their way home. Convoluted plots, a cast of thousands, science, philosophy, poetry, suppressed histories, slapstick comedy, darkness and depravity as a response to war. Vectors of desire.

(JC) — On Wings of Song by Thomas Disch. Via singing plus electronics, citizens discorporate and fly free through a 21st century where Christian Right Middle America is radically separated from the decadent Coastal Elites. Art and repression, and a metaphor for LGBT liberation.

(PS) – Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy - from beginning to end the bodies just pile up until you can almost smell them rotting in the hot sun, but even the bleakness is kind of poetic.

[bandcampsnoop]

5/12/26.

Siltbreeze Records (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) often provides me with a post-on-sight reaction. I see the release and know I'll post, even without hearing a note. "An Afternoon with Victor Dimisich" is such a release. Tom Lax's label is known for uncovering/reissuing rare gems from New Zealand. In the Bandcamp notes, Lax mentions that this release is "much like The Spies 'The Battle Of Bosworth Terrace' lp" in that it "has never before been released & its historical significance cannot be overestimated."

Captured in 1981 in Christchurch, this definitely has the feel of a demo, although, according to Roy Montgomery's notes the purpose was, "to flesh out the threadbare Pin Group repertoire in early 1981. These songs were captured in pared back form because certain people felt that some very tender Cogle/Stapleton [Stephen Cogle and Peter Stapleton] works were being lost in VDB [Victor Dimisich Band] steamroller mode."

Stephen Cogle's voice (which at times recalls Ed Askew) is instantly recognizable and haunting. This release of course sits nicely next to formal recordings of The Victor Dimisich Band, but also Dark Matter, which Siltbreeze also released in 2014.

[jsoliday]

A Handful of Dust Lines of Flight Festival 03.22.19 Port Chalmers, N.Z.

Galbraith/Stapleton/Russell

[bandcampsnoop]

12/18/19.

“In Ba Da Bing I Trust” - at least when it comes to New Zealand music.  Hamish Kilgour, Eye, Roy Montgomery, Peter Jefferies and Bill Direen have all been NZ music I’ve gotten from Ba Da Bing.

Dadamah is like a fantastic amalgamation of all the above.  They can sound like those bands and nothing like them simultaneously.  I would add The Great Unwashed to the list.

Dadamah was a Dunedin quartet:  Roy Montgomery, Peter Stapleton (The Terminals, Eye) and Kim Pieters and Janine Stagg.

Ba Da Bing Records is based in Brooklyn, New York.  Kranky Records released a compilation back in the 1990s...it’s here on Bandcamp.

[fhtagn-and-tentacles]

BROOD OF N’ZOTH 

by Peter Stapleton For Blizzard’s Hearthstone

[nedraggett]

A Dadamah live recording in Christchurch in 1991, and that's my day made already.