Roy Montgomery is one of the initial practitioners of New Zealand post-punk with his early 80s band, the Pin Group, being the first band to release a record on the brilliant Flying Nun record label. After the Pin Group dissolved, he later had the great bands Dadamah and Dissolve as well as other significant projects and solo releases. Temple IV was his second solo release that originally only came out on CD back in 1995, and is thankfully finally getting the vinyl reissue treatment. The music is guitar-based hazy and semi-lo-fi instrumentals, recorded on a 4-track with some added monophonic Moog to thicken up the sound. Introspective and almost cinematic, it’s often pegged as post-rock even though he doesn’t utilize that genre’s clichéd overuse of crescendos and decrescendo; instead, this music is thoughtful and full of texture, though minimalist at its core. Montgomery continues to make brilliant music and his catalog is vast, but Temple IV is a great place to start.

Kranky