[Af_List] The Garbage & the Flowers tour

[kristen wineera]

The Garbage and the Flowers (based in Sydney, formerly of Wellington)
and Panel of Judges (Melbourne) are touring NZ.

26 Oct - Christchurch - Media Club - with The Renderers

27 Oct - Dunedin - Crown Hotel - with The Aesthetics

28 Oct - Port Chalmers - with The Aesthetics

2 Nov - Wellington - Happy - with Campbell Kneale

3 Nov - Lyttleton - The Wunderbar - with Bruce Russell

Coming out of Sonic Youth-drenched Wellington, NZ in the early
nineties, The Garbage & the Flowers were always going to be an
anomaly. Denounced as the fifty-thousandth band to sound like the The
Velvet Underground, and even as a Christian band in the local street
press, the five-piece nevertheless built up a solid gang of devotees,
who claimed their sound to be "unique, fractured, and psychedelic" and
ideal to take acid with and get stoned to. Championed by songwriter
Alastair Galbraith, they released a critically acclaimed first single,
"Catnip/Carousel", and double album, " Eyes Rind As If Beggars", both
on US labels. The latter, with its "sun-burning" and lyrical
improvisations found them a secure place in the noise pop canon.

Former drummer Torben Tilly, now of Berlin based electronic duo Minit,
described their sound thus:
"In The Garbage & The Flowers (TGATF) there's this crystalline
structure of a song with its architecture of chords and idiomatic
vocal melody. It's something quite arcane and folkloric, owing a lot
to Helen and Yuri Frusin's song-writing and Helen Johnstones'
sapphirine voice. Being a part of this 5-pronged entity has been
something I have really enjoyed and has definitely been influential on
my approaches to making music. If all the musical parts work together
in an almost mechanical kind of way to create a song it can be really
satisfying. Sometimes however, through our own hazardous doing as a
band,  these songs would become unhinged and collapse into fractured
shards of noise and disunion, leaning heavily like wine. This was
especially the case when playing live, even if it was intentional or
accidental. Part of its beauty was that almost at the same instant
that it was falling apart it was beginning to fall back together
again, creating a counterpoint of melancholy and joy. I quite like it
when it is so chaotic and entangled. Somehow it feeds the imagination
and the music takes on a life of its own, revealing secret patterns
and ghosts in the recordings."

Based in Sydney since 1997, The Garbage and the Flowers, now a
three-piece, are returning to their homeland with revered Melbourne
band, Panel of Judges for a five date tour. They will be playing songs
from recent albums "Coronation" and "Stoned Rehearsal", and to
celebrate their forthcoming NZ tour a limited edition split
Panel/Garbage & the Flowers 7" will be pressed.

http://www.myspace.com/thegarbageandtheflowers