STONE HARBOUR
“Emerges” (1974) plus bonus tracks
“Extraordinary
basement psych with two multi-instrumentalists creating a
melancholic dreamlike state with songs fading in and out of
the speakers, cavemen drums, primitive electronics and murky
fuzz lurking in the background. The best tracks go into places
no other albums reach. Actually closer to the heart of psychedelia
than most other records listed here.”
—Acid Archives of Underground Sounds
“What's a boy to do? It's 1974, you're young and have
a head full of Hawkwind and Roky and the Elevators, and old
brutalist blues in the Hound Dog Taylor/Fred McDowell backwoods
whisky-fucked mode; you're stuck in Hicksville, USA; the music
scene sucks: glam's dead or dying slowly; punk is a good year
or so from even starting to get itself born. Town's too damn
small to even muster up a band. It's just and your buddy and
that's it, man. So you grow your hair and wear satin, wander
wide-eyed and tripping across small-town railway tracks and
hang loose at the weekend in your basement. You gather a bunch
of cheapo instruments on the never-never and you start cutting
low-fi bedroom demos. Stone Harbour were Ric Ballas and Dave
McCarty, and out of nowhere and nothing, at entirely the wrong
time, they cut an LP that will blow your head clean off. This
is a trip into the true dark heart of psychedelia! The music?
‘You'll Be a Star’ shimmers and aches in the midnight;
cymbals wash over you, Dave McCarty's vocals emerge from some
subterranean cave, as the keyboards flicker, flicker, flash
across the periphery of the song; ‘Rock & Roll Puzzle’
is dark, twisted fried garage punk blues brutality, pre-empting
The Gories and Pussy Galore by a good ten years! Songs fade
in and out; finger-picking blurs into screaming squelching
synths; guitars melt in the mid-summer heat. ‘Grains
of Sand’ frazzles like The Stooges through a fucked-up
amp and filtered through a transistor radio with the valves
burning out, whilst ‘Summer Magic is Gone’ is
the most haunted, haunting song in many a long strange moon.
Shimmers like stars in the 2 am fog and haze, and bleeds lost
and lonely and bruised into the heat-warped dawn. You're still
awake, although the brain doesn't work like it used to. Blurred
and bleary and exhilarated and stoned to the very core of
your soul.” Booklet includes lyrics and notes; disc
has a handful of previously unreleased tracks from 1975 sessions
as bonus tracks. Yowzah.
Tracklist
1 You'll Be A Star 4:34
2 Rock & Roll Puzzle 3:16
3 Grains Of Sand 5:14
4 Summer Magic Is Gone 3:15
5 Stone's Throw 1:25
6 Thanitos 1:48
7 Still Like That Rock & Roll 4:02
8 Ride 3:30
9 Dying To Love You 3:24
10 Workin' For The Queen 3:05
11 Taurus 4:15
12 Wonderland 3:58
13 Witch To You 4:37
14 BattleAxe 3:17
Catalogue number: LION 621HCD
UPC: 778578062125