Trick Mammoth, photographed by Emily Hlavac Green http://lenslapse.com/
Trick Mammoth – that’s Adrian, Millie & Sam – have decided the time is right to share some of their new album – ‘Floristry’ – with everyone who has been waiting patiently.
They’ve put the digital download equivalent of a “Double-A-Side” single up on the Trick Mammoth Bandcamp page. ‘Delphine (With A Purpose)’ and ‘Pinker Sea’
They wrote these words about their music and album:
“Formed in early 2013, Trick Mammoth are a pop band from Dunedin, New Zealand. Fragile, lucid but rough around the edges, their songs are unintentionally sincere and bashfully honest, performed with open arms and a soft indifference.
Drawing mostly on film, literature and poetry, their music discharges a shy pretension buried under layers of simplicity. With comparisons ranging from Black Tambourine to The Carpenters, Trick Mammoth have crafted a sound saccharine sweet yet doused in death.
In mid July 2013, the band recorded their first full length album with the assistance of Tex Houston (The Clean, The 3Ds). Adrian Ng and Millie Lovelock play guitars and sing, Sam Valentine plays drums and sometimes sings.
Their debut album ‘Floristry’ is scheduled to be released through Fishrider Records in NZ this year and co-released by Fishrider Records and Occultation Recordings in the UK early in 2014.”
They recorded the 10 song album here at Fishrider HQ (the same basement room space we’ve recorded albums by Opposite Sex, The Puddle and The Dark Beaks in). Bringing in someone of Tex’s experience was a good move for all of us. You can read an interview with Adrian on the making of ‘Floristry’ here.
The results are pretty special. The songs have undergone something of a transformation from the fragile washed out reverb lo-fi of their early self-recorded demos, described perfectly as ‘tiny cacophonous dream-pop psychedelia’ (to interpolate the translation from Hipersonica website in Spain).
Trick Mammoth had no desire to be shackled to a sound that was forced by their circumstances at the time (ie possessing only a solitary SingStar microphone and a laptop with one input when they recorded those remarkable demos). They’ve taken the chance to fully form their sound and have created something beautiful, haunting and distinctively Trick Mammoth.
Ian @ Fishrider HQ, Dunedin, NZ
8 October 2013
PS: For those interested in disappearing down the rabbit-hole underground of inter-connected Dunedin bands you may be interested to check out Millie’s other band Astro Children. Their debut album Proteus is also out next month, on Auckland noise-pop label Muzai Records. It was recorded & mixed/ produced by Adrian from Trick Mammoth. Here’s a song from that:
Fishrider Records 