Roy Montgomery: Temple IV Expanded Reissue (Kranky)
Expanded and remastered reissue of Roy Montgomery’s Temple IV solo-debut, originally issued on CD in 1995, via Kranky.
It’s difficult to express how impactful this music felt upon its initial release. Together with Scenes from the South Island (Drunken Fish, 1995) and his “Fantasia on a Theme by Sandy Bull” track included on the Harmony of the Spheres boxset (Drunken Fish, 1996), Montgomery’s musical voice felt like something always and already fully-formed, pulled directly from the side of Zeus’s head. Alongside a smattering of initial singles on then well-distributed labels like Gyttja, Roof Bolt, and Ajax, these primary (one might call them the Big) three Montgomery releases appeared in what felt like a simultaneous retail flash.
Used to play Temple IV on repeat in my early retail life in the East Village. At the time some of us were also fans of Dadamah (Majora,1992), but almost positive I had never heard of Montgomery’s early band The Pin Group. With Janine Stagg, Kim Pieters, and Peter Stapleton, Dadamah’s songs felt carnivalesque, wildly freewheeling and loosely improvisatory, though still very much set in a rock vernacular. Montgomery’s initial solo releases, however, delivered contemplative and site/location-specific guitar music. And even though there are no vocals on these recordings, the music feels lyrical and expressive, somewhat analogous to Montgomery’s deep baritone singing voice in Dadamah: steady; slowly evolving with subtle resonance and nearly imperceptible changes; musical phrases repeating without feeling repetitious; dramatic tension, without any of that theatrical or overly histrionic stuff.
From today’s vantage point, on Temple IV one hears traces of the canonical 4AD catalog, Eno, the much-maligned “shoegaze” fad, Popol Vuh, et al. But upon its initial reception, these recordings felt like they appeared without context. Even this release’s song titles and sequence felt wedded to an exotic location, a New Zealand far outside Flying Nun and Xpressway orbits.
The fact that so much of this early material was recorded here in NYC always felt like a complete mystery. In terms of our own retailing, where I worked was just 4.5 very short East Village blocks from the apartment address (324 E. 13th Street #7) were the homerecordings took place. This felt (and continues to feel) incongruous/implausible/totally remote/alien impossible. The first two albums, their titles and sequencing seem so directly connected to a New Zealand landscape that few of us, possibly in New Zealand too, had access.
In the years since, we’ve located a primary source to help contextualize how these recordings came to light. Our current Greenpoint neighbor, David Watson, a New Zealand expat, musician, composer and curator had moved to the East Village in the late 1980s, on the heels of the breakup of his very Downtown sounding Primitive Art Group, from Wellington. Montgomery stayed in Watson’s 324 E. 13th Street apartment while Watson was away.
In 2024, David recalls: “I'd crossed paths with Roy a couple of times in New Zealand. I'd organized a fringe-festival for the Asian Composers Conference in 1984, at Cafe Artattack. The fringe-festival had almost nothing to do with the conference and Roy was part of the Free Theater group that came up from Christchurch to perform. Maybe he was wearing a cowboy hat and singing a Sam Shepherd song. At the end of the week the cafe was closed down under a pile of complaints. The strangely grateful owner came up to me and said, ‘Fantastic! This was getting stale and it could have gone on for years.’
This time [for the sublet] we [Roy and David] were connected by a mutual friend. I was heading back to New Zealand for months, he [Roy] was in the UK on an extended stay. It worked for both of us. Roy was shocked at just how cheap an illegal East Village sublet could be […] Obviously the best part was that I left out a 4 track Portastudio, a chorus/delay ‘time machine’ and a couple of guitars […] All the equipment was a little funky and gave me lots of issues. I was shocked when I got back. Roy had everything working perfectly, pristinely, and had produced—I don't know how many—projects/releases.
I think having some sympatico bars around, just one or two friends, provided a focus, a perfect kind of tunnel vision, getting in the cave and out of the cave, getting stuff done. Roy said somewhere, about being more isolated and focused in Lower Manhattan than in an empty landscape.
When I returned the only thing I recall him really commenting on was an Arnold Dreyblatt CD I had out.”
****
Always cautious when adding non-contemporaneous work to an iconic album like this, but the two supplemental tracks from 2018 sound suited to Temple IV’s time and mood: “The Light is Heavy The Rain is Soft” and “I Will see You There,” indeed.
Buy with confidence and our hightst recommendation.
Expanded and remastered reissue of Roy Montgomery’s Temple IV solo-debut, originally issued on CD in 1995, via Kranky.
It’s difficult to express how impactful this music felt upon its initial release. Together with Scenes from the South Island (Drunken Fish, 1995) and his “Fantasia on a Theme by Sandy Bull” track included on the Harmony of the Spheres boxset (Drunken Fish, 1996), Montgomery’s musical voice felt like something always and already fully-formed, pulled directly from the side of Zeus’s head. Alongside a smattering of initial singles on then well-distributed labels like Gyttja, Roof Bolt, and Ajax, these primary (one might call them the Big) three Montgomery releases appeared in what felt like a simultaneous retail flash.
Used to play Temple IV on repeat in my early retail life in the East Village. At the time some of us were also fans of Dadamah (Majora,1992), but almost positive I had never heard of Montgomery’s early band The Pin Group. With Janine Stagg, Kim Pieters, and Peter Stapleton, Dadamah’s songs felt carnivalesque, wildly freewheeling and loosely improvisatory, though still very much set in a rock vernacular. Montgomery’s initial solo releases, however, delivered contemplative and site/location-specific guitar music. And even though there are no vocals on these recordings, the music feels lyrical and expressive, somewhat analogous to Montgomery’s deep baritone singing voice in Dadamah: steady; slowly evolving with subtle resonance and nearly imperceptible changes; musical phrases repeating without feeling repetitious; dramatic tension, without any of that theatrical or overly histrionic stuff.
From today’s vantage point, on Temple IV one hears traces of the canonical 4AD catalog, Eno, the much-maligned “shoegaze” fad, Popol Vuh, et al. But upon its initial reception, these recordings felt like they appeared without context. Even this release’s song titles and sequence felt wedded to an exotic location, a New Zealand far outside Flying Nun and Xpressway orbits.
The fact that so much of this early material was recorded here in NYC always felt like a complete mystery. In terms of our own retailing, where I worked was just 4.5 very short East Village blocks from the apartment address (324 E. 13th Street #7) were the homerecordings took place. This felt (and continues to feel) incongruous/implausible/totally remote/alien impossible. The first two albums, their titles and sequencing seem so directly connected to a New Zealand landscape that few of us, possibly in New Zealand too, had access.
In the years since, we’ve located a primary source to help contextualize how these recordings came to light. Our current Greenpoint neighbor, David Watson, a New Zealand expat, musician, composer and curator had moved to the East Village in the late 1980s, on the heels of the breakup of his very Downtown sounding Primitive Art Group, from Wellington. Montgomery stayed in Watson’s 324 E. 13th Street apartment while Watson was away.
In 2024, David recalls: “I'd crossed paths with Roy a couple of times in New Zealand. I'd organized a fringe-festival for the Asian Composers Conference in 1984, at Cafe Artattack. The fringe-festival had almost nothing to do with the conference and Roy was part of the Free Theater group that came up from Christchurch to perform. Maybe he was wearing a cowboy hat and singing a Sam Shepherd song. At the end of the week the cafe was closed down under a pile of complaints. The strangely grateful owner came up to me and said, ‘Fantastic! This was getting stale and it could have gone on for years.’
This time [for the sublet] we [Roy and David] were connected by a mutual friend. I was heading back to New Zealand for months, he [Roy] was in the UK on an extended stay. It worked for both of us. Roy was shocked at just how cheap an illegal East Village sublet could be […] Obviously the best part was that I left out a 4 track Portastudio, a chorus/delay ‘time machine’ and a couple of guitars […] All the equipment was a little funky and gave me lots of issues. I was shocked when I got back. Roy had everything working perfectly, pristinely, and had produced—I don't know how many—projects/releases.
I think having some sympatico bars around, just one or two friends, provided a focus, a perfect kind of tunnel vision, getting in the cave and out of the cave, getting stuff done. Roy said somewhere, about being more isolated and focused in Lower Manhattan than in an empty landscape.
When I returned the only thing I recall him really commenting on was an Arnold Dreyblatt CD I had out.”
****
Always cautious when adding non-contemporaneous work to an iconic album like this, but the two supplemental tracks from 2018 sound suited to Temple IV’s time and mood: “The Light is Heavy The Rain is Soft” and “I Will see You There,” indeed.
Buy with confidence and our hightst recommendation.
Expanded and remastered reissue of Roy Montgomery’s Temple IV solo-debut, originally issued on CD in 1995, via Kranky.
It’s difficult to express how impactful this music felt upon its initial release. Together with Scenes from the South Island (Drunken Fish, 1995) and his “Fantasia on a Theme by Sandy Bull” track included on the Harmony of the Spheres boxset (Drunken Fish, 1996), Montgomery’s musical voice felt like something always and already fully-formed, pulled directly from the side of Zeus’s head. Alongside a smattering of initial singles on then well-distributed labels like Gyttja, Roof Bolt, and Ajax, these primary (one might call them the Big) three Montgomery releases appeared in what felt like a simultaneous retail flash.
Used to play Temple IV on repeat in my early retail life in the East Village. At the time some of us were also fans of Dadamah (Majora,1992), but almost positive I had never heard of Montgomery’s early band The Pin Group. With Janine Stagg, Kim Pieters, and Peter Stapleton, Dadamah’s songs felt carnivalesque, wildly freewheeling and loosely improvisatory, though still very much set in a rock vernacular. Montgomery’s initial solo releases, however, delivered contemplative and site/location-specific guitar music. And even though there are no vocals on these recordings, the music feels lyrical and expressive, somewhat analogous to Montgomery’s deep baritone singing voice in Dadamah: steady; slowly evolving with subtle resonance and nearly imperceptible changes; musical phrases repeating without feeling repetitious; dramatic tension, without any of that theatrical or overly histrionic stuff.
From today’s vantage point, on Temple IV one hears traces of the canonical 4AD catalog, Eno, the much-maligned “shoegaze” fad, Popol Vuh, et al. But upon its initial reception, these recordings felt like they appeared without context. Even this release’s song titles and sequence felt wedded to an exotic location, a New Zealand far outside Flying Nun and Xpressway orbits.
The fact that so much of this early material was recorded here in NYC always felt like a complete mystery. In terms of our own retailing, where I worked was just 4.5 very short East Village blocks from the apartment address (324 E. 13th Street #7) were the homerecordings took place. This felt (and continues to feel) incongruous/implausible/totally remote/alien impossible. The first two albums, their titles and sequencing seem so directly connected to a New Zealand landscape that few of us, possibly in New Zealand too, had access.
In the years since, we’ve located a primary source to help contextualize how these recordings came to light. Our current Greenpoint neighbor, David Watson, a New Zealand expat, musician, composer and curator had moved to the East Village in the late 1980s, on the heels of the breakup of his very Downtown sounding Primitive Art Group, from Wellington. Montgomery stayed in Watson’s 324 E. 13th Street apartment while Watson was away.
In 2024, David recalls: “I'd crossed paths with Roy a couple of times in New Zealand. I'd organized a fringe-festival for the Asian Composers Conference in 1984, at Cafe Artattack. The fringe-festival had almost nothing to do with the conference and Roy was part of the Free Theater group that came up from Christchurch to perform. Maybe he was wearing a cowboy hat and singing a Sam Shepherd song. At the end of the week the cafe was closed down under a pile of complaints. The strangely grateful owner came up to me and said, ‘Fantastic! This was getting stale and it could have gone on for years.’
This time [for the sublet] we [Roy and David] were connected by a mutual friend. I was heading back to New Zealand for months, he [Roy] was in the UK on an extended stay. It worked for both of us. Roy was shocked at just how cheap an illegal East Village sublet could be […] Obviously the best part was that I left out a 4 track Portastudio, a chorus/delay ‘time machine’ and a couple of guitars […] All the equipment was a little funky and gave me lots of issues. I was shocked when I got back. Roy had everything working perfectly, pristinely, and had produced—I don't know how many—projects/releases.
I think having some sympatico bars around, just one or two friends, provided a focus, a perfect kind of tunnel vision, getting in the cave and out of the cave, getting stuff done. Roy said somewhere, about being more isolated and focused in Lower Manhattan than in an empty landscape.
When I returned the only thing I recall him really commenting on was an Arnold Dreyblatt CD I had out.”
****
Always cautious when adding non-contemporaneous work to an iconic album like this, but the two supplemental tracks from 2018 sound suited to Temple IV’s time and mood: “The Light is Heavy The Rain is Soft” and “I Will see You There,” indeed.
Buy with confidence and our hightst recommendation.