Poise Etc

A collection of Pumice recordings from 1993-'99, when teenagers Sugar Jon Arcus and Stefan Neville learned about music by doing it. The album covers the earliest days of the band recording on ghetto blasters with untuneable guitars at home in Whatawhata and Hamilton, New Zealand. There are a couple of recordings from their first public performance with drummer Ugly Dog Davies, at which their friends yelled at them relentlessly. There is material from their years spent living in Dunedin, NZ, with cassette four-track machines. Living cheaply in a cheap city with pet dogs and all the time in the world. Finally, the album includes music from the move back north to Hamilton and Auckland. Material that was released in microscopic editions as lathe-cut 7s and cassettes, documenting Arcus's final participation in Pumice activities. The LP features trio and duo recordings as well as solo recordings by both Arcus and Neville. The basic multi-directional creative impulse for which Pumice is known is there from the beginning. One-chord pop songs, crumbling folk music, and smeared-organ sound-sculptures. Small speakers shitting themselves with distortion and tape saturation. Acoustic guitars twanging and Neville and Arcus clearly learning to write songs of real quality. This music-making manages to be bold, reckless, and stupid, as well as delicate, sad, and instinctive. Pumice has always done whatever the fuck it wants to. Edition of 300 copies in silkscreened sleeve.