
Roy Montgomery - 2021 4xCD Series (Subscription Pre-Order)
Includes Island of Lost Souls, That Best Forgotten Work, Rhymes of Chance and Audiotherapy. Subscribers get $15 off the total list price for the four albums and will also receive four postcard prints of the Trudi Cameron paintings used for the four albums in the subscription, only available with subscription purchases.
*Note: Please choose accordingly from the drop-down menu how and where you would like your Roy Montgomery CDs shipped to you. All postage is included in the above prices.
As an islander himself, based in New Zealand’s largest city, Christchurch, Montgomery draws from his surroundings as he writes. Straddling the urban and the rural, the sparse and the frenetic, his compositions can be beautiful as well as disconcerting, and often speak to precarity and dread. The opening track, “Cowboy Mouth (For Sam Shepard),” infuses space rock with a cinematic arc and intensity befitting the late experimental playwright of the dedication. “The Electric Children of Hildegard von Bingen (For Florian Fricke),” named for the 2nd century Benedictine composer and mystic while dedicated to the Krautrock master of Popol Vuh, is an ecstatic 15-minute piece grounded by a booming staccato melody. Sounds rise and retreat again through shifting keys, suggesting Hildegard’s visions.
Island of Lost Souls cries out like a chorus, though there are no vocals on the record. Its tracklist instead builds upon the lonesome and polyphonic dimensions of guitar in order to express universal feelings of communion and isolation, resisting conclusion but never resorting to fatalism. Life is all about navigating these contradictions and we are all with Montgomery on this island whether we’d like to admit it or not. Here, the artist has created a work of wisdom and grit, a searing beauty, a new masterpiece for an uncertain and restless time.