By 1995, Roy Montgomery had already cemented his place in New Zealand music history, if only because the 7″ single »Ambivalence« by the Pin Group, of which he was a member, was the first release on the legendary Flying Nun label in 1981. He was also involved in a handful of other projects that overlapped with Bardo Pond or Flying Saucer Attack. But it wasn’t until 1995 that Roy Montgomery started releasing solo work. And he’s been doing so ever since. From the beginning, his solo work has been inspired by landscapes. It started with »Scenes From The South Island«, inspired by the sparsely populated South Island of New Zealand. Then came »Temple IV«, one of the first releases on Kranky, inspired by a visit to the ancient Mayan city of Tikal in northern Guatemala.
Accordingly, the music on »Temple IV«, now released on vinyl for the first time, is meditative and transcendent. The musician from Christchurch layers guitar parts on top of each other, step by step, up to the highest temple of the complex. Stylistically, it’s reminiscent of both Kosmische Musik (though it came too late for that, and despite having a German father, Montgomery is hard to sell as Krautrock) and the psychedelic meanderings of the New Weird America (but perhaps it came a bit too early, and Montgomery is a New Zealander, born in London, not an American). Perhaps it was this categorisation problem that caused »Temple IV« to go unnoticed at the time. It certainly wasn’t the quality. The album is great.
Temple IV
