Nova Scotia/Eye Split 12"

"Nova Scotia/Eye Split" cover art

Untitled split 12" featuring Nova Scotia (with guest trumpet player Guy Nichols) on one side and Dunedin band Eye (Peter Stapleton, Peter Porteous, Jon Chapman and Nathan Thompson) on the other, released in 2011 by Tipped Bowler Tapes (TBT 011).

Tracklisting

1. Nova Scotia - A Million Corpses of Dead Bees (18:54)
2. Eye - High Road (15:38)

Reviews

• "Inspired split LP that pairs two contemporary NZ outfits with tentacles that run deep into that country’s singular drone scene. Nova Scotia is the quartet of Richard Whyte, Rick Jensen, Guy Nicholls and Dean Brown and they play a form of hands-on eternal music that touches on the previous experiments in horizontal guitar tones and bowed electricity of Surface Of The Earth, Sandoz Lab Technicians, Thela, CM Ensemble, Flies Inside The Sun etc. Manipulated guitars and distant horns relocate the ritual aspect of Heathen Earth to the very edge of the world while aggressive free form drums ala Robbie Yeats/The Shaggs push the whole deal into a primitive free jazz zone where punk aggression and endlessly smeared tones combine in staggering vertical take-offs. Pretty amazing. On the flip the Eye quartet – featuring key NZ players Peter Stapleton, Peter Porteous, Jon Chapman and Nathan Thompson – perform a haunted electro-séance with arcs of sighing electricity cut-up with distant audience noise and obsessively minimal hovering melodies that build to claustrophobic architectures of feedback sounds and overheated amps until it feels as if the instruments are playing each other and the melodies are buckling under the strain. Beautiful grid-locked psychedelic drone from a bunch of masters of the form. Who knows what it is about New Zealand but the end of the world never sounded so magnetic. Edition of 250 copies on 150g vinyl with silkscreened sleeves by Alan Sherry. Highly recommended!" (David Keenan, Volcanic Tongue review)
• "Here's a split 12" by Nova Scotia and Eye who are both underground experimental New Zealand artists. The Nova Scotia side is called A Million Corpses of Dead Bees which is a frightening image. I love bees and the last thing I want to think of is the sad faces of millions of dead bees staring at me wanting their life back. Mass bee genocide aside you get a whopping 18 minute sax fueled free rock jam smothered in lo-fi shambling drums. Random drum hits flailing around sporadic cymbal crashes coated in feedback whilst the saxophone skronks away in its own world. It peaks and troughs and before you know it the 18 minutes is over and it's time to check out the Eye side. Their track is called High Road (much less controversial) and it's awash with feedback and electronics. Again its a buildy uppy thing and it's more...shall I say...brutal than the A side. Lots of strange noises and feedback is essentially what's on offer here." (Norman Records review)