Roy Montgomery & Friends - Broken Heart Surgery (2024, Discreet Music, LP)

stream: https://discreetmusicgbg.bandcamp.com/album/broken-heart-surgery

Roy Montgomery is a pioneer of the NZ underground as a founding member in classic bands like The Pin Group and Dadamah but he’s spent the better part of the last three decades exploring a sprawling music project under his own name. For Montgomery there seems to be endless sonic terrain to investigate and life experiences to transmute. He’s been on a real tear the last seven years having released a staggering ten albums for Grapefruit Records in which he's managed to navigate disparate genres, scenes, and atmospheres, always at the forefront of experimental independent music. This miraculous run culminated with 2022’s Camera Melancholia, a double album meditation on love and loss and acceptance.

Broken Heart Surgery is Roy’s first for Discreet Music and it represents a difficult and at times harrowing new beginning for the artist. For this album, Roy has been closely collaborating with friends. Some done in the same room at Nightshift Studios in Ōtautahi Christchurch: Emma Johnston, Stephen Cogle and Nicole Moffat. Other friends recorded their parts at distance: Martha Skye Murphy in London, and Alicia Merz in "the Coromandel" in Te Ika a Māui or the North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand. Discreet Music are very honored to be able to present this cinematic masterpiece which continues Roy’s trajectory into the uncharted and unpredictable.

Mastering in Aotearoa New Zealand by Arnie Van Bussel at Night Shift Studios. Mastered for vinyl by Lasse Marhaug. Cover artwork by Trudi Cameron. Edition of 500 copies.

Discreet Music 16, 2024