The Mountains, The Land and the Stars Keep

“A circle looks at a square and sees a badly made circle.”― Jeff VanderMeer

Jul 06, 2023

The first time I heard anything by Michael Morley was while shopping one foggy San Francisco day at Aquarius Records. The music was by Morley’s band The Dead C…its fuzzed out, noisy experimentations altering the air and place surrounding the record bins I was flipping through. What was that crazy sound coming from the speakers? For all of his career, Morley has evolved the musical genres in his studio laboratory similarly to the mysterious force that mutates nature in Jeff VanderMeer’s Area X (a happy birthday to the author). His music is a twisted village of songwriting and field recordings and noise experimentations that has helped define the outer reaches of music since the 1980s.

Morley hails from New Zealand, where he is also a professor and a painter. His first band, the duo Wreck Small Speakers On Expensive Stereos, set the pace for his brave willingness to push sonic boundaries…moving from spaces of meditative beauty to harsh bombastic expletives (the gambit can be experienced on the group’s song Lots of Hearts). In the 90s, with the alternative rock explosion brought on by Sonic Youth and…to some degree…the rise of Nirvana…his next band, The Dead C, formed with friends Bruce Russell (also a NZ musical pioneer) and Robbie Yeats (occasional drummer of The Verlaines) found a moment where their music was embraced by a wider fanbase with albums like The White House and The Operation of The Sone (both released on the fantastic Siltbreeze label).

Last year, when putting together the reinterpretation of The Golem soundtrack for the Reboot Rescored series, my partner in crime Gretchen Gonzales Davidson suggested we reach out to Michael to record a piece for it. Working with Michael Morley? Really? How exciting! And it turned out that Morley was a huge fan of the film and composed one of the most ethereally stunning pieces for the project (you can buy the record here). It was during the period of communicating with him around The Golem that we started to think about what it would look like to release a record he hat recorded some years before by his solo (ish) band GAte on my label, Birdman, in conjunction with Gretchen’s label, El Studio 444 (which she runs with the fab Leigha Rankin).

After all these years of listening to and deeply appreciating Michael’s music, the idea of putting a record of his out was almost unimaginable. Yet two weeks ago, Gate’s new record, The Numbers, was unleashed to the world, released by Birdman/El Studio 444. To mark this moment in time, Michael was kind enough to answer some questions for me that I asked over e-mail as he was touring around Europe. Please enjoy. And if you would like to purchase the vinyl, you can get it HERE from our distributor, Revolver USA!

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DAVID: You made this latest record, The Numbers, a while ago. How do you relate to past work, different artistic eras? Does the record coming out make it feel new?

MICHAEL: The Numbers spent a long time on a hard drive, only heard by myself and Sara Stephenson. I always liked it but after offering it to a label in 2012 and hearing nothing back I just lost interest in it and thought it an interesting artifact and perhaps not for public consumption. I see it as being part of my interest in pulling apart the constituent parts of rock music, an ongoing project. It was after posting it to Bandcamp and the interest from yourself and Gretchen that I realized that the recording was really valid as an example of the Gate aesthetic. Yeah it feels new plus people's responses to it have been wonderful in terms of giving me assurance that I was on the right track with this project.

DAVID: You are opening a show of your paintings. Does your painting fuel your music? Does you music connect to your painting?

MICHAEL: The show is called Les Petites Fléchettes at 100 Bell Towers, Montreal, Quebec. I listened to a lot of 78 rpm discs during the making of this work, mostly classical and blues, operating a windup gramophone. I would listen to the exit grooves for hours, it is similar to the sound of a train on railway tracks.

For a long time I have viewed the two things as distinctly separate. Now I play synth patches in the studio while I paint, they seem to inform one another, maybe it is a dialog?

DAVID: What is the underground music scene like these days in New Zealand?

MICHAEL: As far as I can tell it seems very healthy at present. I haven't traveled much beyond Koputai and Otepoti recently. So it is only the local scene that I can really comment upon.

There are a lot of younger artists performing a range of different material, from folk, rock, improvisation, noise and dance. I enjoy it when I can get out and hear new stuff.

I played a rave with The Fuck Chairs in May, that was a lot of fun, a large number of performers, a very late night with lots of dancing, laughter, and drones.

DAVID: For the newest release, what was your process in making it? Is there anything that influenced the sound? A musical influence or other?

MICHAEL: The process was fairly straight forward, I recorded everything live and made vocal overdubs later. It meant having to coordinate the drum machine, synthesizer and guitar in real-time but this allowed for a rather quick recording period, two days in total. The main influence was a desire to make something that could be called, or might sound like - "punk rock".

To that end the influence of The Double Happys, The MC5, and The Stooges feature prominently in my mind.

I think it is classic Gate material. The idea of the palette is fascinating as I think I did approach it with a set of limited instrumentation and the desire to make something again that could sound like rock music. There is certainly a direct line from Wreck Small Speakers On Expensive Stereos, through the Dead C, and to Gate. I think I was also inspired by listening to [infamous and tragically short-lived early 1980s band] the Double Happys, and remembering their performances as a duo with the drum machine. There was such utter chaos and anarchy during their sets, with a desire to represent punk rock at its nascent truth, I wanted to see if it was possible to re- imagine that feeling.

DAVID: What is on your reading shelf at the present?

Mihi: Collected Poems by Hone Tuwhare
The Foghorn's Lament, by Jennifer Lucy Allan
Papermaking and the Art of Watercolor in Eighteenth-Century Britain: Paul Sandby and the Whatman Paper Mill, edited by Theresa Fairbanks Harris and Scott Wilcox.

DAVID: You seem to be on the road. Any new recordings coming?

MICHAEL: The Dead C toured Europe in June, 12 dates with Roy Montgomery and some extras, Tunnel Bitches in Lyon and CIA Debutante in Bruxelles.

"Fun" does not begin to describe the reality of touring again, playing to a crowd of happy screaming people again, playing and talking with friends again.

It was reaffirmed to me that playing music to an audience has some rather special qualities associated with it. I should do more of it, if possible.

Yes more records are being planned - The Dead C, and another solo acoustic L.P., some collaborations...

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