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The Shadow Ring, “Hold Onto I.D.” (Siltbreeze (1997) / Blank Forms (2025))

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Newly reissued, this singular 1998 album is billed as arguably being The Shadow Ring’s best-known and most accessible album, but there are a couple of important caveats to that claim. The main one is that The Shadow Ring’s entire discography had been maddeningly out-of-print for years before Blank Forms ambitious reissue campaign began and this album was the only one available on streaming platforms, so it is arguably their best-known album for reasons other than its merits alone. Secondly, accessibility is a relative thing and “most accessible Shadow Ring album” essentially means “a bit more accessible than a Jandek album.” Despite the clattering martial-style percussion on de-tuned drums, Lambkin’s discordant guitar abuse, and Goss’s queasily disorienting synths, however, this album is an improbably fun and haunting glimpse into a deeply weird and unfamiliar world.

Notably, I personally find the earlier Wax-Work Echoes to be much more musically satisfying and easier on the ears, but the more spoken word-centric Hold Onto I.D. is a fascinating and unique release in a completely different way, as it offers an unsettling and vaguely sinister account of Graham Lambkin & Darren Harris’s new life in Coombe House (a former ambulance station) after moving out of their parents’ homes (which were still within walking distance). While Blank Forms rightly describes this as the band’s “most overtly autobiographical” release, the actual reality of Coombe House is transformed into a curdled magical realist nightmare in which our two dour protagonists are continually besieged and menaced by an alarming infestation of sea creatures.  

Notably, this is the Shadow Ring’s second album to feature Tim Goss on electronics and keyboards. In theory, the reduced emphasis on Lambkin’s jarringly discordant out-of-tune guitar strums seems like it should have heralded a big leap forward in listenability, but that is again not always the case here, as Goss unleashes some willfully annoying and incredibly shrill sounds in Hold Onto I.D.’s first two pieces. Also, there is still plenty of dissonant and gleefully inept guitar playing to be found. There have been plenty of bands over the years that have transcended their crap gear and lack of instrumental competence to make magic, but the Shadow Ring is not one of them on this particular album. 

Fortunately, the combination of Lambkin’s half-sardonic/half-creepy lyrics and Harris’s amusingly bitter and hostile-sounding readings of said lyrics are compelling enough to make the music itself feel like a somewhat irrelevant afterthought. Apparently, Lambkin made a conscious effort to use bureaucratic language on this album, which often makes Harris sound like an incredibly disapproving government official grumbling about snails and other prominent Shadow Ring concerns. In fact, I am tempted to characterize Hold Onto I.D. as a wonderful and bat-shit crazy spoken word album that also happens to have some music.

My favorite pieces are “Coombe House” and “Like When,” but the real appeal of this album is akin to a found footage horror movie mingled with flashes of jet-black deadpan comedy (though the band repeatedly insist that it is “no occasion to laugh” and dourly add that “prawn got a bit involved”). Fittingly, “You’ve got to watch the water” is the overarching concern this time around, as Harris laments snail infestations and notes “leaving this house becomes a dream” (a sentiment that the band’s lone hapless neighbor probably echoed as well). While the aforementioned sea creatures allegedly send the band’s piano to a simultaneously watery & grisly grave at one point (no occasion to laugh again, obviously), there are also plenty of amusing and pseudo-autobiographical details that suggest Coombe House is not entirely an unending nightmare. For example, Harris proudly notes at one point that he can now cook whenever he wants or open any window at any time he wants and further notes that “the washing up gets done” (“aided and abetted by brushes and things”). Concerned listeners will also be relieved to learn that “there are no dictators anymore over fat-free milk.”

There is also a good deal of deadpan meta-commentary on the album itself, as a microphone abruptly quits and vows “to work with better bands” at one point. Harris also drolly notes “I am not concerned with the music tying in with the words—not now…and I never was that bothered before.” Lambkin also throws some wonderfully groan-inducing dystopian jokes into the lyrics, as “Basic Everyday Life” finds Harris warning of a future in which fish are only caught in “internets” and robots determine whether you have chicken or tripe for dinner. They also arguably break the fourth wall at the end of “Coombe House,” as Harris grimly insists “black out…NOW.. Do it now.” Of course, that may have instead been directed at Harris himself by Lambkin (he DOES stop speaking for the song’s final minute). 

While I can certainly see why the aforementioned disgruntled microphone sought refuge elsewhere, Lambkin, Harris, and Goss were really onto something quite amazing on this release: every time I listen to the entire thing, I get sucked deeper and deeper into The Shadow Ring’s mind-bending rabbit hole of dissonance, rot, and improbable apartment problems. I think that makes this some kind of outsider masterpiece, as my deep immersion in this album this week has left me feeling like a half-mad resident of Coombe House myself (though I am thankfully not yet fearful of my shower drain).

Listen here.

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The Dead C, “The White House” (Siltbreeze, 1995)

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This 1995 release is generally regarded to be one of the dirt-encrusted jewels of The Dead C’s frequently perplexing discography. For the most part, however, that place of honor is almost entirely due to just one song: the lumbering and smoldering epic “Outside.” A fairly strong case can also be made for one or two other pieces, but the remainder celebrates the trio at their messy, contrarian, hookless, and indulgent height. Some listeners will likely find those pieces brilliantly annoying, but most (like me) will probably find them exasperatingly pointless and half-assed. On the bright side, “Outside” is almost longer than all of the weaker pieces combined and it is about as good as noisy guitar music gets.

In what can only be described as a classic Dead C move, The White House opens in singularly obnoxious and off-putting fashion. Few artists are less concerned with putting their best foot forward than these guys, a fact borne out by the one-two anti-punch of “Voodoo Spell” and “The New Snow.” For its part, “Voodoo” literally sounds like two minutes of someone just messing around with a new pedal they bought or an excerpt from some justifiably forgotten noise cassette from the early ’80s. 

The following “New Snow” is initially a lot more promising, as it seems like the blown-out wreckage of cool rock song pregnant with possibility. Instead of developing into something better, however, it becomes a near-unlistenable 12-minute spew of masturbatory synth noodling. It is the sort of thing that is so terrible that I am forced to wonder what kind of stuff did NOT make the album. Later, I am similarly perplexed by the 1-minute celebration of hollow plunking that is “Aime to Prochaine Comme toi mem.” For a six-song album, three worthless songs is fairly unforgivable, no matter how short two of them are.

Thankfully, the remaining three pieces are a different breed altogether, aside from still being characteristically messy and lo-fi. The first (and least) of the trio (“Your Hand”) sets the template, taking rock music into an appealingly mumbly, dirge-y, hissing, and jangling place. It is a perfectly fine piece, if a bit plodding, but it is easily surpassed by what follows. 

That said, the plodding pace is kind of the point, as The Dead C are at their best when they sound like a live recording of an otherwise great band totally falling apart (or at least not caring at all what they sound like): guitars stop and start seemingly randomly, the drummer is trying to play as little as possible, the singer sounds half-asleep, whatever structure there is quickly crumbles, and the guitar solos are indulgent bursts of cacophony. By all rights that should be a uniformly awful aesthetic, but the trio sometimes alchemically transforms that mess into something that sounds almost impossibly cool and bad-ass. “Bitcher,” for example, has an actual chord progression and a heavy, sludgy groove, but then it is all gleefully sabotaged with overzealous flanger use that makes it sound like the band is being slowly sucked into a black hole.

The White House‘s final piece is its clear zenith, as well as a very solid pick for the single best song that The Dead C ever wrote (though that honor probably goes to Harsh ’70s Reality‘s “Love” for me). In a general sense, “Outside” does not do anything particularly different from the other “songs,” aside from boasting a clearer, stronger vocal melody. In all other respects, it sounds exactly like The Dead C, only the best version possible: recording seemingly started with the song already underway, the “beat” is lumbering at best, the vocals are half-mumbled, there are only a couple of chords played ad infinitum, and everything is heard through a sheen of static and stuttering, snarling guitar squall. 

That is admittedly slightly reductive, as there are some weirdly beautiful buried or chirping guitar parts, but the secret formula otherwise seems to be: 1.) come up with a few cool-sounding chords, 2.) add a decent vocal melody, 3.) turn it all into a smoking wreckage, and 4.) make sure it goes on for a long time. I do not quite grasp why duration works in The Dead C’s favor, but it does: at nearly 20 minutes, the sizzling, escalating entropy of “Outside” becomes somehow transcendent and hypnotic. 

I wish I could say that the rest of the album approached similar heights, but it is crazy to complain that The White House only achieves ragged, stumbling genius once, since no one else has quite achieved anything like it (not that people are exactly queuing up to emulate these guys). Ultimately, The White House is far from an essential album, but “Outside” is a masterpiece of underground rock at its most magnificently fucked-up.

Listen here.

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The Dead C, “Harsh 70’s Reality” (Siltbreeze, 1992)

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This 1992 double LP has historically been regarded to be The Dead C’s zenith, though contention for that particular honor has gotten quite a bit more crowded with some of their more recent efforts. In any case, there are certainly a few excellent songs and flashes of outsider brilliance amidst all the stumbling, shambling chaos and gleefully deliberate self-sabotage. The flaws are a large part of the charm though: lots of people write good songs, but no one else has maintained this degree of playful, yet unwavering insouciance for quite as long as this New Zealand trio has (nor would they presumably want to). That inexplicable persistence is its own artistic triumph though and this album is the most towering monument to it.

In classic self-defeating Dead C fashion, Harsh 70’s Reality opens with over 20 minutes of abstract guitar noise in “Driver UFO.” Not a firestorm of dynamic Sonic Youth-style squall, mind you; just a buzzing, sizzling, and roiling ocean of feedback punctuated with occasional stabs of clanging strums or a rare deliberately played note. Gradually it gives way to some indifferently played one-finger Farfisa drones that seem to randomly stop at times, before giving way yet again to a non-crescendo of still more strangled feedback. Admittedly, some of the guitar noises are sporadically very cool (especially when they sound like a large dying animal), but “Driver UFO” is most successful as both a provocation and a statement of intent: it filled the entire A side of the initial vinyl release, forcing hapless first-time listeners to listen to the entire interminable thing in doomed expectation that it would eventually cohere into something more, which it never does.

Of course, the genius of The Dead C lies in their ambiguity and unpredictability, as the line separating “brilliant rock deconstruction” and “improvised, tossed-off mess” is particularly blurry with them. While a lot of their work is admittedly lo-fi, half-assed chaos, they do occasionally get things gloriously right. The first hint that there might be something more to this album comes with the surprisingly propulsive second song “Sky,” which is basically sludgy two-chord punk rock enhanced by moaning and squawking feedback and drumming that sounds like it is constantly on the verge of losing the beat or accidentally changing the time signature (which is presumably intentional, as Robbie Yeats has spent time in, uh, more traditionally competent bands like The Verlaines). Also, the lyrics, when decipherable, are simultaneously cryptic, defiant, and vaguely menacing (at least from their tone).

“Sky” is followed by the epic “Love,” which is one of the best Dead C songs ever and the primary reason why this album is worth owning. It is built upon a lazily strummed, brooding, and murky two-chord progression, which would normally be quite a bit of structure for a Dead C song, but it is initially undercut by a noisy, wandering guitar solo, odd stops and starts, and unnervingly arbitrary snare hits. After about three minutes, however, Michael Morley (I think) steps up to the mic and starts creepily repeating variations of the phrase “and you talk about the rules” with unexpected intensity. From then on, “Love” is basically 9 minutes of slow-burning, ebbing-and-flowing bad-ass noise rock perfection, as either Morley or Bruce Russell unleashes a prolonged meandering guitar solo that resembles nothing less than a demon-possessed Neil Young on quaaludes…which is exactly the sort of amazing experience that I can only get from The Dead C.

The other major song on the album is the similarly lengthy closer “Hope,” which is equal parts great and maddeningly exasperating. Built upon just one insistently played dissonant chord, mumbled vocals, and an accompaniment of cool echoey guitar noises, it sounds like one of the best songs that Jandek never wrote…for a while, anyway. Then around the halfway point, it explodes into an awkward crescendo and also sounds like it is suddenly being recorded live in a loud club, which is disorienting to say the least. Then it ends, then comes back…without any crowd noise at all. I think the crowd noise might actually be a tape, as it sounds just as loud as the music and it also seems like quite a lot of happy people chatting, which seems like a very implausible thing to be happening during an incredibly bleak song by an incredibly obscure band (at the time, anyway).

The rest of the album is the proverbial “mixed bag,” as there is quite a bit of lo-fi, treble-heavy messiness strewn about. I like the brief “Suffer Bomb Damage” a lot though, which combines a forlorn Farfisa non-melody with the jagged, murky scrape of a single insistently strummed chord. The smoldering “Baseheart” is another strong moment, as feedback and gnarled guitar slashes buffet a sludgy bass throb and unexpectedly decipherable and consistent vocals. The lesser songs are not exactly filler though, as they all nicely augment the mood of dark, anything-can-happen nihilism that pervades the album.

The version of Harsh 70’s Reality that I have is the 1998 reissue, which omits two songs from the original LPs: “Shark” and “T. is Never Over I & II.” Both were restored, however, for Siltbreeze’s “remastered” 2012 reissue (I cannot detect any improvement in the band’s willfully messy sound, nor would I necessarily want it to be improved in the first place). “T. is Never Over” is a fairly inessential bit of smoldering guitar wreckage that later turned up on the Vain, Erudite, and Stupid compilation. “Shark” is quite a compellingly ridiculous piece though, combining sloppy guitar noodling with a pitch-shifted voice recording and spirited “polka beat” drumming that sounds perpetually on the verge of careening out of control (a recurring Dead C highlight, I suppose).

Notably, I have seen Harsh 70’s Reality periodically hailed as both a masterpiece and one of the single best albums of the ’90s, claims that seem absolutely insane if I base my judgment solely on the quality of the songs. I suppose it is kind of a masterpiece in some less tangible sense, however, as it is an absolute monolith of sprawling, willful wrongness that practically dares people to try and like it. Though that attitude certainly appeals to me, I suspect that folks who are less amused by brazen contrarianism than I am will find little to warm to here aside from the absolutely stellar “Love.” There are certainly more song-based, accessible Dead C albums out there to be enjoyed for those who want them, but this is the ideal destination for those looking for something a bit different: a prolonged wallow in the messy, smoldering ruins of rock music.

Listen here.