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Gate
The Dew Line
1994

Table of the Elements
[Titanium] TOE-CD-22
Compact disc

Twenty years is long enough: It's time to acknowledge Michael Morley as an indie-rock patriarch.

And why not? As the guitarist and vocalist for New Zealand noise-trip trio The Dead C and the man behind Gate (ostensibly a solo project, although Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo makes frequent guest appearances), Morley is the rare artist that record-hounds love to unearth: an isotope in the body Pop, radiating an invisible influence. With scores of micro-batch releases and an unmistakably intimate performance idiom, he ranks in the company of Jandek or Loren Connors, but it's Morley's geographic isolation rather than social disengagement that has deflected his work from reaching more ears. He tends his shambling craft in antipodean exile, in the remotest corner of the verdant backside of our increasingly Hollywood Planet, and his international live appearances are less common than eclipses. Still, if you don't recognize his name, you've heard his reverberations, in the ambient post-rock of Flying Saucer Attack and Labradford, the neo-psychedelia of Bardo Pond, and the fidelity-challenged whorl of Pavement and Sebadoh.

Recorded in 1993 and out of print since, Gate's The Dew Line is the first part of his "rock trilogy" (followed by The Monolake in 1996 and The Wisher Table in 1999). Rock it does. Typical Gate/Dead C no-fi guitar subduction and Morley's locked-in-the-car-trunk vocals are prominent, but there's also a hefty amount of scraping synthesizer menace and Paleozoic riffage. The crust of noise is there, but crack open the sonic geode and you'll discover some nifty song-styling. In someone else's universe, the gem of an opening track "Millions" gets play on AM radio, while "Have Not" climbs the FM charts. Full of brooding atmospherics, The Dew Line is the most—dare we say it—accessible of any of Morley's records, and it stands on an equal footing with his Dead C high-water mark, Harsh 70s Reality, as an anti-rock rock classic.

“As a guitarist, Michael Morley undertakes a leap of faith similar to that of rugged individualists Keiji Haino and Borbetomagus' Donald Miller, restoring devotion to his archaic instrument's electric threat through the organic mutilation of volume and lethal distortion. A low-tech delay-pedal-as-phantom-turbine is his most ubiquitous processor; an analogue synth vibrates oblique planes of sound; songs become dust, dispersed by the mercurial rhythms of undulating mirages."
The Wire

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Gate
The Monolake
1996

Table of the Elements
[Krypton] TOE-CD-36
Compact disc

Gate is New Zealand artist and Dead C scribe Michael Morley. These studio recordings (begun during his 1994 US tour with Faust, Keiji Haino and Thurston Moore) delve deeper into an opaque song style. The Monolake is a road-trip across transcendental drones and detoured records that culminates in an unbelievably heavy, meta-literal "cover" of "Jennifer" from Faust IV.

“Napalms the entire history of rock."
Blow-Up

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OWN THE ARCHIVE

(Posted by Within Things, May 18, 2023)

From 1993, US recording label Table of the Elements has staked its claim on a massive enterprise. It intends nothing less than to rewrite the history of American music in the second half of the 20th century. The label’s 150-plus releases are a vital contemporary chronicle, a survey of meaningful eruptions across a broad horizon of improvised, experimental, minimal and outsider sounds.

The label’s carefully cultivated archive now contains over 15,000 CDs and LPs, an impossible quantity to logistically or financially maintain. Rather than “recycle” the majority of these modern sound and design artifacts, Table of the Elements is making them available to the public via Within Things.

From rich bundles of obscure recordings, exclusive printed material, and limited quantity “holy grails,” Within Things is excited to help connect this important archive to the public. We’re very honored to collaborate with a label that helped define a path and inspire what we do, long before our store even existed.

Click the image above to be taken directly to the Table of the Elements section on our site, and stay posted for the announcement of limited offerings via our newsletter.

~~o0o~~

"The supremacy of Table of the Elements as an unwavering outpost of ultra-experimental strains can be attributed to its concomitant adherence to valiance. Most of the Table of the Elements catalog has no broad commercial appeal, and many of its projects are risky ventures, even with respect to the experimental marketplace. Yet, this philosophy of risk works because everybody associated with the label feels like they're doing important work releasing important records, and they're willing to go for broke to make it happen.”

—Pitchfork

"The music made and cultivated by such artists as Tony Conrad, Captain Beefheart, John Fahey, Cecil Taylor, Rhys Chatham, Charlie Feathers, Dock Boggs, Jim O’Rourke, Faust, Derek Bailey, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, Keiji Haino, Arnold Dreyblatt, Charley Patton, Harry Smith, and scores more, is at once among the most radical and deeply rooted of the 20th century, transcending time and place through the agency of the vibrating string, the resonance of the drone, the terrifying beauty of electric amplification, the hypnotic power of repetition, and the revelatory genius of cranky individualism. 

"How does someone begin to represent that in a visual manner? The trick involves some old-fashioned alchemy. Everyday commodity has to be constructed as both miniature museum and theater. No longer a mere object, it now becomes a site in which one can endlessly indulge a sense of wonder, love and, yes, obsession. It’s not often that someone can cast an influence on a broader design aesthetic — think Blue Note in the 1960s, with its hip Reid Miles album covers — but as this sizable body of work took shape, that’s exactly what happened.”

—Steve Dollar

“The hallmarks of this New Archivism [are] beautiful and innovative packaging, elaborate and idiosyncratic liner notes, rare and obscure recordings ... Working with graphic designers such as the Grammy-winning Susan Archie, [the label] produced a collection that combines varied textures, lavish finishes, and period details with art from the era of the original source recordings. Their treatment of Robert Longo’s late 1970s photographs for Rhys Chatham’s releases could, for instance, measure up to what’s on view at most contemporary art centers. In addition to its archival endeavor, TotE also releases the new work of its avant-garde heroes and their devotees. TotE’s active support of the work of sonic pioneers ensures that theirs are living traditions – not ossified museum objects.”

—Art Papers

Tony Conrad: Completely In the Present
A Film by Tyler Hubby

"Hubby's film captures Conrad in all his facets ... broadly as a man determined to make 'abstract art funny, happy, energetic, joyful.' Conrad lived long enough to see his early recordings, barely or never released, get the reissue and the attention they deserve. ... [Completely In the Present] is a sharp, sweet, eloquent documentary about the merriest, most artistically expansive minimalist on record. His work and his life asserted the importance of listening for the sounds nobody else has heard."

—Chicago Tribune

“Joyous, exhilarating, and transformative, Tyler Hubby’s documentary is essential viewing for anyone involved in the history of music and visual art.”

—Artforum

"Conrad was 100 percent badass. Without Tyler Hubby’s documentary and Table of the Elements ... one of the great stories of American music and art might have gone underappreciated.”

—Henry Rollins

All contents ©2024 Table of the Elements ®2024 Table of the Elements Archive. All Rights Reserved. Related media from the Table of the Elements Archive published courtesy the estate of Tony Conrad.

Since 1993, Table of the Elements has staked its claim on a massive enterprise. It intends nothing less than to rewrite the history of American music in the second half of the 20th century -- and beyond. The label’s 150-plus releases are a vital contemporary chronicle, a survey of meaningful eruptions across a broad horizon of improvised, experimental, minimal and outsider sounds.

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