M.I.E. music celebrate their 5th birthday with an incredible bill with three of psychedelic music's most treasured mavericks - all artists with releases on the label. Ecstatic drone ensemble Pelt, The Dead C's Michael Morley in solo guise as Gate and the North of England's flute/drum/WTF? duo Part Wild Horses Mane on Both Sides.



PELT

Pelt’s drone-based improvisations have spanned electric and acoustic realms and incorporated cataclysmic roars and near-comatose whispers, folk music sensibilities and extended techniques. From the mid-’90s on, Pelt have occupied a singular place on the musical map – counted among the founders of so-called “New Weird America,” but alone in preoccupations with exploring the echoes of traditional musicks amid the clang and om of long-form avant workouts.

“What separates Pelt … is the willful sonic escalation from monk chant and Appalachian bowed sitar to Blue Ridge mountain grinding ear-death. … They’ve not become giants; they’ve become the mountain.” The Washington Post.

Pelt are the definition of musical voyagers. Jack Rose famously sprang from their ranks to furnish the world with new possibilities for the guitar; other members of the band are also part of old-time shitkickers The Black Twig Pickers, and Pelt are belatedly getting their dues as groundbreakers in the purveyance of the drone and the ecstatic dirge, albums such as Ayahuasca becoming widely regarded as a classic of the genre.

In October 2012, MIE will release 'Effigy' - a new double LP from Pelt - their first record since 2009 and their best work to date.



GATE

Most famous for his role as one third of NZ avant rock legends The Dead C, Michael Morley has released over 60 titles under a variety of monickers from The Weeds to The Fuck Chairs, Gate being perhaps the most compelling. After the hiatus that followed the release of 2001’s The Lavender Head, the appearance of A Republic Of Sadness (Ba Da Bing!) in 2010 marked a joyful return. Its a hypnotically engrossing record with nonchalant vocals dripped and mechanised rhythms splashed over loops that revolve way too long across tracks divided by silences way too lengthy, creating an aura of serene, endearing detachment and holding us transfixed in its glare. Across an expansive career, Michael Morley has stamped a huge influence on a generation of artists ranging from the classic lo-fi of Sebadoh and Pavement, the psych-rock of Bardo Pond through to the after-noise of Pete Swanson. Despite being a highly influential figure, Michael still remains extremely hard to categorise outside his standing as a pioneering cult individualist of new musical trajectories alongside the likes of Keiji Haino, Jandek and Loren Connors.

"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-pedalas-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

Gate and MIE have recently reissued 'The Dew Line' on 2LP. 20 years after it first came out it sounds as fresh and unique as when it was first released. MIE is looking forward to continuing reissuing Morley's work in 2013 with The Monolake and The Wisher Table still to come.



PART WILD HORSES MANE ON BOTH SIDES

PWHMBOS were mainstays of MIE's Manchester shows and the label reissued their Poisson cassette in a deluxe vinyl edition. Looking forward to being reunited with them in London.

"...The greatest live band in the UK right now, Manchester’s Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides. Percussionist Pascal Nichols and flautist Kelly Jones have minted a profound new form of improvisation that carves spectral shapes from silence and creates free music with a spare orchestral beauty and deep psychedelic atmosphere. Augmenting their instruments with electronics, tapes and old military communication systems, they expand the basic free jazz format with drones, feedback and zoned vocals, taking the Cherry/Blackwell duets and relocating them upwind of the alien soundtracks generated by Japan’s Taj Mahal Travellers." Volcanic Tongue





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