Mixed Seasons

"MIXED SEASONS" 4 WAY SPLIT TAPE W/ERASERS, GHOST OF 29 MEGACYCLES, BABY BIRDS DON'T DRINK MILK & THE TOWNHOUSES is out now on the OWLS Label.

This release is very limited and available for only $5 from DADA Records in Perth.

If you are Interstate or Overseas please contact OWLS at erasersonpencils@hotmail.com to purchase.

Textura review of The Hummingbird Dream

The Ghost of 29 Megacycles: The Hummingbird Dream
hellosQuare Recordings

For whatever reason, I'd thought before hearing it that The Ghost Of 29 Megacycles' The Hummingbird Dream might be a blistering, guitar-fueled meltdown of some kind, but the thirty-two-minute release, the Australian outfit's follow-up to its debut CD Love Via Paper Planes, turns out to be the complete opposite. Born from “sleepless nights, morning silence, and sadness,” the new release pairs a twenty-four-minute first part played entirely by Greg Taw using guitar, organ, and field recordings as sound sources with a shorter second part where Taw is joined by Jessyca Hutchins (vocals), Rupert Thomas (organ), and Rebecca Orchard (vocals).

The elegiac drone that is Part one generates a beautiful drifting character when its crystalline guitar figures stretch out interminably and its slivers and shadings flicker overtop the thick drone that the organ establishes underneath. The mood is becalmed yet blissed-out too, especially when the smoldering slow-burn of the electric guitar moves to the forefront. The late-inning appearance of bird sounds gives the track an early morning feel, which in turn suggests that what has come before could be read as an aural simulation of a somewhat restless sleep state. “The Hummingbird Dream (Part 2)” comes a bit closer to the shoegaze spirit I'd expected before hearing the recording but even here the music is pitched way down, and consequently the dream-like quality of the opening piece persists into the second albeit in different form. Electric guitar strums and hushed vocals lend it a haunting, song-like quality, while a brief vocal interlude courtesy of Rebecca Orchard points the music heavenward again. Call it dreamscaping for the lost and lonely.

January 2011

http://www.textura.org/reviews/ghost29megacycles_hummingbirddream.htm

Love via Paper Planes review from Derives Webzine

There can be just a small difference between authentic and generic and "Love Via Paper Planes", the debut LP from The Ghost of 29 Megacycles - an Australian three-piece, with Greg Taw (vocals/guitars), Karen de San Miguel (vocals/drums) and Matt Aitken (organ), balancing between Perth and Melbourne - could be too quickly assimilated to the later.

I discover this album backward, having enjoyed their more recent EP "The Hummingbird Dream" I decided to give another try to this work I discarded previously.

"Love via paper planes" is indeed very typical of their style of music but also disarmingly honest with heavily reverberated guitars, ethereal vocals and organ. It would be a shortcut to resume their work, as succedaneum of Kranky aesthetics. More precisely, i consider them as long lost cousins of artists like Windy & Carl, Roy Montgomery, Insides or Landing, who finally emerge to the light of the day.

This is a coherent and strong, haunted debut album and what they lack of originality is replaced by a focus on details through the monotony of a very delimited style magnified by a precise sense of minimalism. This six songs, forty-four minutes long album sounds almost like a long single shoegazing track which puts you in an hypnotic and vaporous melancholic state of mind.

If you give them a chance and the time to convince you, they will, and even if it may sound slightly outdated you feel the are engaged on a very promising path.

The opening track, "The Cold Light of Silence" lasts almost sixteen minutes and is a slow progression around pulsating organ waves, crystalline guitar drones and a few ethereal female transparent vocal lines, like a slow solitary walk on an ice field during snowstorm.

"Passing, Daydreams" seems even colder, surprising from an Australian band, reminiscent of the early discography of the The Stars of the Lid. Like on their EP, they become more interesting when their music is more personal and melancholic, when you feel that Greg Taw is taking the lid, like with the guitar theme of the first part of "We Are the New Romantics. “Love Via Paper Planes” is almost a mantra trying to make you rise through the slow evolution of repeated patterns.

"Dusted" reminds me of a more intense echo of the opening track. A cover of the Daniel Johnston song "True Love Will Find You in the End" closes the album with the hesitant but haunted vocals of Greg Taw reminiscent of the early Smog discography.

"Love via paper planes" is the promising debut of a promising band.

http://derives-webzine.blogspot.com/2010/12/ghost-of-29-megacycles-love-via-paper.html

The Hummingbird Dream review on Derives Webzine

Almost 31 minutes. 2 tracks. "Part 1" is a long slowly evolving drone of 24 minutes, while "Part 2" and a dreampop postshoegazing contemplative song with reverberated low vocals, close to 7 minutes.

The Ghost Of 29 Megacycles is an Australian three-piece, with Greg Taw (vocals/guitars), Karen de San Miguel (vocals/drums) and Matt Aitken (organ), balancing between Perth and Melbourne and this is their second release after a debut album called "Love via paper planes'.

This is nothing you haven't already heard before, between Windy and Carl, Roy Montgomery and early Stars of the Lid records, or through more recent records by Belong or Grouper.

"Part 1" has been conceived and realized mostly by Greg Taw alone, while on "Part 2" he has been helped by Jessyca Hutchins, Rupert Thomas and Rebecca Orchard, and the whole EP reflects a difficult period he has been through with persistent sleeping problems.

You get the idea on a sleepless night on "Part 1", feelings of loneliness and despair, in a silenced environment, with artificial lights and nocturnal sounds, and it ends with birds waking up and chirping as the dawn opens the new day. It is more a report than a trial at something cathartic, with a sense both overwhelming and diluting, and you're left sighing about insomnia when everything you would be hoping for would be yawning.

"Part 2" would be the sublimation of a so long expected recovering night, translating it into a dream, walking in a state of quasi weightlessness through luxuriant vegetation, while glowing sunlight streams sunlight on our bodies like purifying rainfall. While the first track is relatively average for their style of music, here on this second track, Greg Taw captured something highly precious.

http://derives-webzine.blogspot.com/2010/12/ghost-of-29-megacycles-hummingbird.html