here is the NFO file from Indietorrents
Lend a hand, leave your BitTorrent downloads open as long as possible, even after it is complete. It will help everyone’s downloads go faster and give you a good share ratio. Thank you!
Interested in indie music? Join us at #indie.torrents on EFnet (IRC).
#indie.torrents tracker: http://www.indietorrents.com (now invite only)
Please support indie artists and labels. Buy this release or see a live performance if you enjoy it.
*—#indie.torrents—*
Artist: The Gordons
Album: The Gordons
Label: Flying Nun
Year: 1981
Genre:
RIAA Radar Status: SAFE
Encoder: iTunes v10.2
Sample Rate: 48.0 kHz
Codec: iTunes MP#
Avg Bit Rate: 252 kbps
Posted by: Mesmerize
Description / Review:
————————
They came out of nowhere (well, Christchurch, actually), killed many sets of eardrums with their dissonant maelstrom, toured the country a couple of times, made one EP and one album that have proved both ahead of their time and hugely influential on groups as important as Sonic Youth. And then they went away.
Okay, they did a second album with a revised lineup, and reformed with a revised sound as Bailter Space, but this wee tribute is about the early days, so imagine the mists of time swirling around, tumbling us all the way back to 1980.
They say that context is everything, but honestly, even if The Gordons hadn’t somehow animated themselves from the gloom and despondency of Christchurch in 1980, they would still have been as potent, as terrifying, and as strikingly original.
Rather than standard punk thrash or pub rock new wave, The Gordons somehow (and the ‘how’ is still a big mystery to me) found their way to something altogether more galvanizing. When Alistair Parker, Brent McLachlin and John Halvorsen rolled into Wellington (where I lived at the time) in 1980 and got stranded there for weeks with a broken-down van, they immediately fit into the slightly arty, self-conscious, darkly post-punk community then prevailing, with groups like Naked Spots Dance, The Wallsockets, Life In The Fridge Exists and especially, Shoes This High. But there was something singular about this trio, whose music consisted of short, savage bursts of vitriolic noise that often left audiences gasping for air. Luckily, those audiences had time to breathe between quite a few songs as broken guitar strings were laboriously changed.
When I interviewed the almost destitute group at the time, they told me their songs “are generally aimed at the illness” defined as the “condition/conditioning of each individual in society.”
When The Gordons returned to Wellington later that year, they had saved up to hire a grunty Cerwin Vega PA system, and at this precise point in time, I still think they were the best band on the planet. Imagine a whole album’s worth of songs like ‘Adults & Children’, ‘Future Shock’ and ‘Machine Song’, performed so loud it left my ears deadened for days and screaming with feedback-type dissonance for weeks. (I loved it, imagining that the noises in my head were like a super-extended echo of the gig – great value for money!) They had become a well-oiled machine, but one that still stopped for string-changing, or to swap instruments and band personnel.
Their music had all the velocity and anger of the best punk, but in their raw fashion, they were engineering a new music; something with the bite, power and riffage of the best metal, and something new as well – odd harmonics, twisted feedback and loads of dissonance that would later have groups like Sonic Youth admitting their influence on them and other American post-hardcore bands.
By ’81 the group had recorded its debut album in one session at Harlequin recording studio, creating an on-the-spot bunch of longer pieces that had time to ramble and improvise. And then they broke up, when Alistair became a born-again Christian (temporarily) rejecting the rock ethos on religious grounds.
There was a second album, with a new member, and it wasn’t a patch on the first (but still deserves a CD issue, Mr Shepherd) and a long road to salvation, wherein a new group called Bailter Space eventually coalesced around the VERY SAME LINEUP as the original Gordons. But that’s another story.
One of the great tragedies of NZ music is that the original repertoire of The Gordons was never put on plastic, except for that three-song EP. But those of us who heard them live will never forget them (we’ve got the tinnitus to prove it) and that first album (with the EP added in for good measure) although a disappointment at the time, now sounds timeless and eloquent and effortlessly great.
– GARY STEEL, 2010
http://www.flyingnun.co.nz/artist/39/show_group
Track Listing
—————-
[01/07] Spik And Span (5:03) 256 kbps 9.25 MB
[02/07] Right On Time (8:32) 269 kbps 16.50 MB
[03/07] Coalminers Song (5:40) 275 kbps 11.19 MB
[04/07] Sometimes (3:58) 238 kbps 6.76 MB
[05/07] Just Can’t Stop (2:31) 233 kbps 4.21 MB
[06/07] Growing Up (9:19) 237 kbps 15.86 MB
[07/07] Laughing Now (4:05) 257 kbps 7.56 MB
Total number of files: 7
Total size of files: 71.36 MB
Total playing time: 39:08
Generated: Wednesday, May 2, 2012 9:52:40 PM
Created with: #indie.torrents NFO Generator (Mac) v2.3b1