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NZ guitar skronk

John L Murphy | Los Angeles | 10/28/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"With a great cover of the two crusty fellows responsible for this noise assemblage posed in front of a giant fish statue, this 1993 release on Wayne Rogers' label, distributed by fellow near-Bostonians Forced Exposure, by Michael Morley (Dead C) & David Merritt (with help from his brother Sid) sums up what you'd expect from a duo that recorded soon after with Lee Renaldo of Sonic Youth. Not what I'd play regularly, but sometimes it fits my imprecise mood. It's not unpleasant at all if you like 52 minutes of what gradually turns aggressive & meditative noodling, grating strings, feedback, distortion, and expletive-laden song titles. This is meant as a compliment; if you've stumbled across this review then I assume you may be a like-minded aficionado.



The abovementioned names involved, along with the NZ posse from Xpressway, triangulate where this Gate opens into the far-left side of guitar-based rock, in the loosest sense of this overused term. Morley, sometimes with pals, went on to record more under the Gate title on the label Table of the Elements, moving into that label's experimental tradition (fitting oxymoron?) of extended assaults and inversions of electronic waves & pulses."