Audiopile Review: The perfect entry point into the ever expanding Roy Montgomery universe finally gets its first vinyl issue, his 1995 debut Temple IV. His continued onslaught of releases, which we’ve been feverishly gobbling up over the past several years (12 albums issued in the last 8 years!), can all be traced right back to this debut. Recorded in NYC during the same sessions that would also yield his magnificent Scenes From The South Island, also released in ’95 (reissued in 2019 via Grouper’s Yellow Electric imprint) Temple IV was an attempt by Montgomery to aurally sculpt his memory of a Mayan temple (Guatamela’s Tikal Temple IV) that he had visited in the early 90s. With only a cheap guitar, a couple pedals and a four-track, Montgomery creates so much with so little. Temple IV’s interwoven guitars are built up to colossal heights, the vision of the Mayan temple coming into view as Montgomery piles on his delicate layers of reverb and delay, counterbalancing the heavenly kraut-lilt with scorching VU/Spacemen 3-style distortion. While you can certainly make a case for a handful of Montgomery solo albums to be considered his best, Temple IV is an integral part of his catalog, real ‘first thought best thought’ stuff. But we’re glad to finally have it on vinyl where it belongs.

This is the first vinyl issue of Temple IV, arguably Roy Montgomery’s finest solo album, originally released in 1996 on CD. The original album has been enhanced with two newer tracks that constitute side four of the album. Montgomery states: “The two new tracks recorded in 2018 were about asking the question “Can you step into the same river twice?” Heraclitus said you cannot. I say you can…”

From the original press release:

Few recording artists have aligned the quantity and quality of their releases as well as New Zealand singer /guitarist Roy Montgomery has in 1995. Beginning with kranky’s release of the soundtrack for an imaginary film That That Is…Is(Not) by Montgomery’s duo Dissolve early in the year, a series of superb albums and singles have been issued by a variety of labels across the world. Each one of them is a must have. Most recently, the Drunken Fish label released a collection of pastoral drones entitled Scenes From The South Island, singles have appeared on the Roof Bolt and gyttja labels, and further singles are scheduled with Ajax, Siltbreeze and others.

Temple IV is the first solo recording by Roy Montgomery on kranky. The album was recorded by Montgomery on a four-track tape deck and then thickened up with monophonic moog. The tracks on the album are thick with interwoven guitar lines and moog drone, inspired by the Guatemalan rain forests and the mysterious ruins of the temple and ruins Montgomery visited there.

Roy Montgomery spent the past year in New York, Chicago and London before returning to New Zealand. While in the UK he played live with Flying Saucer Attack and collaborated with spoken word performer Kirk Lake. A brief tour across the United States in September saw him performing before enraptured audiences in New York, Boston, Chicago, Detroit and Los Angeles.

The long overdue recognition of Roy Montgomery as a crucial figure in New Zealand’s musical history as a member of The Pin Group, Shallows and Dadamah, is now augmented by his new recordings. Temple IV will serve to extend and deepen that appreciation.

“His crowning achievement of the period. It haunts; cajoles; taunts; seduces; and even comforts with its use of nuance, timing, and dynamic and opaque shape-shifting elegance.” —AllMusic