In Focus: Roy Montgomery 7th June 2024

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NTS Guide to: Albarika Records

Based in Cotonou, Benin, which at the time was referred to as Dahomey, Albarika Records was founded by the French-born, Benin-based producer and entrepreneur, Emmanuel "Manu" Dibango, who had a significant influence on the local music scene. The label was instrumental in releasing records from some of the region's most prominent musicians during the golden age of African music. Many of the artists signed to Albarika Records were known for blending indigenous African rhythms with Western jazz, funk, and soul influences. This made their sound distinctive and part of a broader movement across West Africa during the 60s and 70s, as music became a form of social and political expression.

Post-Geography w/ Ike Zwanikken

Nick Malkin hosts Post-Geography, featuring ambient and atmospheric selections, live from the NTS studio in L.A.

Post Rock Post Punk Space Rock

New Zealand guitarist Roy Montgomery's music was once described by NPR journalist Lars Gotrich as "swimming through phantoms" – it may sound like an overwrought analogy at first, but simply spend half an hour enveloped in Montgomery's tones, and you'll understand.

Originally a part of Pin Group in the 1980s, releasing Joy Division-indebted post-punk on the revered Wellington label Flying Nun records, Montgomery eventually unmoored himself from the strictures of verse-chorus-verse songwriting, and other musicians entirely, composing drifting, gauzy guitar instrumentals that channeled his own personal grief and loneliness into a seductively baleful magic.

Collection: Listener Picks: June '24