Album Stream: King Loser - Caul Of The Outlaw (Music Month Special)

Last year to mark New Zealand Music Month we inadvertently began an annual tradition of streaming a series of local albums that we considered to have been lost in time, or that are not readily available online like the deluge of digital releases in the current musical climate. For those inaugural posts we cast a glance back at the likes of Xanadu, Ghidrah, Surf City and Cloudboy to aid in an experience of rediscovery (and in some cases straight-up fresh-eared discovery) and to honour the generous wealth of music that comes out of these fine shores decade after decade.

For this year's round of features we got our mitts on a handful of fantastic releases to share, starting with the 1996 album Caul Of The Outlaw that comes courtesy of Nineties indie band King Loser. It is the third and final record from the group, which was vocally fronted by provocative couple Celia Mancini and Chris Heazlewood. The pair met in 1991 in Auckland, but relocated to Heazlewood's hometown of Dunedin and started a six-year run of making macabre music that has been sonically compared to the likes of Sonic Youth and Velvet Underground. Caul of the Outlaw was released by Flying Nun, whom the group had signed with the year before, and follows their previous releases Super Sonic Hi Fi (1993) and You Cannot Kill What Does Not Live (1995).  Alongside Mancini and Heazlewood, the record was laid down with Sean O'Reilly on guitar and Tribal Thunder (aka Lance Strickland) on drums. With it's instantly recognisable painterly artwork, Caul of the Outlaw is arguably King Loser's most popular album from the low growl of opening track 'Troubled Land' through to the fractured closing instrumental cut 'Four From The Dark Side'. Take a listen below...