Label: Discreet Music

1990年代半ば頃までひっそりと存在したというニュージーランドはウェリントンのアンダーグラウンド・ミュージックシーン。その周辺で動いていた人物Helen Johnstone、Kristen Wineera、Yuri Frusinが結成、95年にレースカット盤1枚だけを残し消えてしまったフィメールグループDressの唯一音源が再発。手掛けたのはスウェーデン最深部より素晴らしい音源を発信し続けるDiscreet MusicのサブレーベルFordamning Arkiv。まさにこのレーベル好みの良い具合にひしゃげたアヴァンポップ/フォーク作品であり、一つの楽曲で多彩な要素を目まぐるしく混ぜこぜにする異様な上手さが光る高内容。オリジナルは10インチ盤でしたが、新たにリマスターを施し45rpmの12インチへと変更、16ページのブックレットが付属。





"By the mid-1990s, there was a quietly thriving underground in Wellington, New Zealand, made up of a number of loosely aligned operatives - Surface of The Earth and their World Resources imprint; Fever Hospital and 8 Dec, and the music made by the members of The Garbage & the Flowers after that group temporarily dissolved in 1992..." One of those rather short-lived groups was Dress, who on record consisted of Yuri Frusin and Helen Johnstone from The Garbage & the Flowers and Kristen Wineera from Entlang. Their sole release was a lathe cut 10" released in 1995 on their own label Hell On in a total run of 120 copies. Fördämning Arkiv here presents those wonderfully puzzling tracks to a wider audience, now pressed as a 45rpm 12" with the original recordings remastered for vinyl by Ben Wright Smith. While the ambience is kind of similar to what was going on in the early The Garbage & the Flowers stuff, the music that was made by Dress was very different: improvised and non-song-based but kept in place by repetition and odd melodies. Hypnotic and perplexing music that existed in its own parallel universe for a brief moment in time. The 12" is packaged in a sleeve with slightly reworked artwork though staying very close to the original 10" cover and comes with a 16-page booklet featuring extensive liner notes by Jon Dale, lots of photos and a reprint of the interview with Helen Johnstone and Yuri Frusin published in Opprobrium #1 in 1995. Edition of 500 copies.