GARBAGE & THE FLOWERS, THE - The Deep Niche

If you were a certain type of music fan in the mid-90s, you may have heard tell of an incredible, incredibly hard-to-find double-album by The Garbage & The Flowers, Eyes Rind As If Beggars. Each jacket was hand-painted, and all 300 copies sold out in a flash. Thankfully, the great BoWeavil label reissued it in 2013. If you havent heard it, please do listen? OK, you heard it now? Youre welcome! The group was Helen Johnstone, Yuri Frusin and Paul Yates - an inspired trio who emphasized lyrical collaboration and sound manipulation as part and parcel to their melodies. They didnt last long as a group, but luckily, they got a lot of their songs recorded. The Deep Niche is music they made before Eyes Rind and it is every bit as revelatory. Johnstone sings over raucous and raw instrumentation. Its real rock, the real real thing. Torben Tilly joined just in time to contribute some keyboard to the track 29 Years," although he mostly was their guitarist. Just in time, too, because The Deep Niche presents a band fresh to playing with some massive tools - The Tools Of Rock, natch. These songs are every bit as powerful as what you hear on Eyes Rind As If Beggars. Believe it." - Grapefruit.

"Wellingtons most brilliant pop band, is equal parts classic underground rocknroll and a hazy ramshackle history pockmarked with bursts of genius and stoned rehearsals‚Ķ They really did seem out there, on their own, absorbed in their own world, dropping gem after gem of fractal noise-pop onto slowly corroding four-track cassettes, willing these songs into existence just long enough to let them catch breath and glide away from the speakers for a few moments, before Frusin and Johnstone would knuckle down and write yet more beautiful melodies for beautiful losers." - Bo Weavil.