Search - Gate :: Dew Line

Twenty years is long enough. It's time to acknowledge Michael Morley as an indie-rock patriarch. As the guitarist and vocalist for New Zealand noise-trip trio The Dead C and the man behind Gate, Morley is the rare artist that record hounds love to unearth; an isotope in the body Pop, radiating an invisible influence. He ranks in the company of Jandek or Loren Connors, but his geographic isolation keeps his work from reaching more ears. Still, if you don't recognize his name, you've heard his reverberations, in the ambient post-rock of Flying Saucer Attack and Labradford, in the neo-psychedelia of Bardo Pond, and in the fidelity-challenged whorl of Pavement and Sebadoh. "The Dew Line" was recorded in 1993 and has been out of print since. No-fi guitar subduction, locked-in-the-car-trunk vocals, scraping synthesizer menace, and Paleozoic riffage. The crust of noise is there, but crack open the sonic geode and you'll discover some nifty songwriting. An anti-rock classic.