The VerlainesThe NZ music scene in Dunedin in the 80's was vibrant place.  The DIY ethos of punk fuelled a generation of musicians to do their own thing.  There was no world wide web to inter-connect.  Local radio apart form the local universitiy student station refused to touch the homegrown product.  Nothing fitted the middle of the road, 3 minute product being placed on the airwaves at the time.  The Verlaines certainly didn't fit that bill.  They took the name not from Tom Verlaine but French poet, Paul Verlaine (go on, do a google)

The band was driven by Graeme Downes whose musical passions lay more in the direction Gustav Mahler rather than Anarchy in the UK and the Velvet Underground that inspired a lot of their contemporaries.  The music was complex, full of unusual chord changes.  But the Verlaines thankfully never fell into the overbloated, flatulent excesses of Classical Art Rock proponents like Emerson Lake & Palmer. A live concert by the Verlaines was a roller coaster ride of dynamics.  Songs went from blistering wall of sound to a pin drop.

Hallelujah All The Way Home was released in 1985 and is their debut album.  Downes was studying music at the time and submitted the album as part of his course assessment.  Legend has it he got a A.

Colossal YouthYoung Marble Giants formed in Cardiff in 1978.  Colossal Youth was their only album & was released in 1980 on Rough Trade.

The album wasrecord was recorded in three and half days for princely sum of £1000.  A far cry from the lavish months Pink Floyd spent on Dark Side of the Moon. The band deliberately went for first takes in a deliberate attempt to keep the music 'alive'.  There was next to no overdubbing.  The preduction was simple but the effect is greater than sum of the parts.

The sound is a sparse use of perscussion loops with bass and guitar or keyboard with Alison Stratton's naive vocals. Their rhythms came from a home made drum machine using diagrams in Practical Wireless magazine.   The songs are simple with a naive quality that cover topics as diverse as failed romances, robots and train crashes.

The result is a warm  and delicious recording.  Go buy the album, have a listen and then make a list of all the bands over the last 20 years that have been influenced by this album.

Dark Side of the MoonThis was the first album I bought.  I was about 12 &  had heard some of the tracks the the mona AM static of the local radio station.  I was attracted to the odd, spacey sound.  I took it home and put on my dad's radiogram.  There was no such thing a stereo in my house.  The only way to get the stereo effect was to put my forehead up to the radiogram firmly between to 2 speakers to lap up the stereo effects. I'd heard notheing like it in my life before.

Dark Side of the Moon still stacks up well.  It still gets a regular airing in my house after all these years.