I’ve mentioned the importance of the New Zealand experimental noise and pop scenes on my teenage (y)ears, so it’s exciting to announce the first new Gate record in more than a decade. Gate is the late ’80s/’90s Precious Metal/Majora/Table Of The Elements/Forced Exposure-conjuring project of the Dead C‘s Michael Morley and a revolving cast (Lee Ranaldo, Downtown NYC and NZ regulars, others). The excellent Republic Of Sadness‘s six songs are a surprising/not-surprising development, finding Morley affixing those intimately noisy sheets of guitar and suffocated vocal drones over increasingly danceable beats, space-cramming loops, tranced-out electronics, strange funk moments, and a slew of unidentifiable hypnotic nocturnal rumbles. The resulting 46 minutes should go over well with fans of contemporary experimental/psychedelic/”dance”/drone (Oneohtrix Point Never, Svarge Greiner, Salem, etc.) along with the older school of ’90s Union Pole, Chocolate Monk, Road Cone, Twisted Village, Xpressway, the stuff covered in Chemical Imbalance, etc. (It happily made me think of Bugskull for the first time in a long time.) Republic‘s a vinyl-only release, but we’re offering a listen to the beautifully rattling “All” for those of you without record players.

• Gate – “All”Download

A Republic Of Sadness:

01 “Forever”
02 “All”
03 “Desert”
04 “Wilderness”
05 “Freak”
06 “Trees”

A Republic Of Sadness is out (as of yesterday) via Ba Da Bing! in an edition of 1,000.