With Throats As Fine As Needles

Richard Francis
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DIGI022 | SOD02
With Throats As Fine As Needles
Compact disk
Edition of 1000

'Beginning with the steady stream of projects to emerge out of Bruce Russell’s Xpressway label many moons ago, New Zealand has enjoyed a constant groundswell of cross-pollinating free noise collaborations. With Throats as Fine as Needles started as a duo between Birchville Cat Motel’s Campbell Kneale and Nether Dawn’s Antony Milton, but has since become a quartet with Richard Francis (Eso Steel) and James Kirk (Sandoz Lab Technicians). These recordings were made Jewelled Antler-style in an abandoned bunker with only battery-powered instruments in tow. The ritualistic sprawl of purring tones, snarling noise, longform vocal mantras and kling-klang metallic gestures blur together in an atmosphere of concrete dampness. Industrial transcendence lives again!'
THE WIRE

'Co-released with Digitalis, this is the first pro-pressed release from the Throats, who have previously released a cdr entitled "Czechoslovakia" on Celebrate Psi Phenomena. Here the core duo of Campbell Kneale and Antony Milton is augmented by James Kirk and Richard Francis. Gorgeous, spectral drones from the bunkers of New Zealand. Everyone hates the term supergroup. But sometimes a group is SO super, you’re really left with no choice. Check this out: Campbell Kneale (Birchville Cat Motel, Black Boned Angel, Celebrate Psi Phenomenon head honcho), Antony Milton (AM, Mrtyu, Nether Dawn, Pseudo Arcana head honcho), James Kirk (Sandoz Lab Technicians, Gate) and Richard Francis (Eso Steel). With a pedigree like that we’d be happy to just sit outside their studio and listen to the guys talk about the weather. As cool as that would maybe be, this is most definitely a lot cooler. A massive sprawl of organic drone all recorded in the great outdoors using battery-powered instruments. A thick swirling fog of sound, warm drifts of drone and rumble, shimmery and soft focused. This is far from the recent spate of metallic sludge some of these dudes have been slinging, instead this is dark and delicate, crystalline and so completely gorgeous. Whispery ambient whirls, subtle pulses, all sort of blurred and dreamlike, with lots of natural reverb, and subtle intrusions form the world around them. So goddamn beautiful. Packaged in a plastic sleeve with a sleeve made from the most gorgeous paper we have ever seen, a soft cottony blend of blacks and reds and purples and yellows, sort of like a soft oilslick rainbow. Nice!'
AQUARIUS

'With the minimalist of packaging and the minimalist of musical changes, this drone super-duo’s second release is still a monster of excess to digest mentally. Recorded live in an underground bunker with all portable electronics, seemingly to a single microphone, the six unnamed tracks spread slowly out from the speakers and curl warmly under the frontal lobe of your brain. With Throats as Fine as Needles is an ongoing collaboration between Campbell Kneale (of Birchville Cat Motel / Black Boned Angel / Ming fame) and Antony Milton (of PseudoArcana fame). The pair layer wave after wave of single note drones and slow oscillations and texture them with strange bending keyboard lines. The beauty of this record is the complete attention to the aesthetic; nothing is too far out of place as the pair (with two additional musicians at times,James Kirk (from Sandoz Lab Technicians) and Richard Francis (from Eso Steel) acting almost in perfect union while improvising this blissful beauty. The space they are recording in, a concrete box full of slap back reverb and scrawled graffiti, is the fifth, and possibly most important “musician” on this record, and the group uses it to the fullest effect. The drones are no longer sterile electronics after being draped in natural echo and ambiance, and you can almost hear the ghosts watching on as the duo unknowingly creates a musical eulogy to their passing. A limited run collaboration between the fabulous Digitalis label and the newly created Students of Decay, this self-titled release by With Throats as Fine as Needles is a must-have for any fan of the Birchville Cat Motel, Double Leopards, Mouthus or any of the other hundred drone-noise outfits of note. If you don’t recognize any of these names, you should still check this out for a chance to hear one of the most thoroughly dream-like records recorded this year.'
INDIEWORKSHOP