Pre-Order- Ships Early Sept
For the first time on vinyl! 140 gram.
Landmark 1998 album from Sea Scouts is one of our favorite albums, not just a favorite Zum release! One of the great under-heralded acts of the '90s. Was that our fault? We heralded as hard as we could. Originally released as a CD by Unstable Ape and Patsy, licensed in the US to Zum, this is a long out-of-print masterwork
Core trio Tim Evans on guitar and vocals, Alex Pope on bass and vocals, and drummer Monika Fikerle deliver raw bleakness and angst like an exposed nerve.
Re-mastered by Dave Gardner, pressed in the US at Smashed Plastic Chicago.
All the black copies went to the band and to the distributor, we only have clear vinyl and a small handful (21) of the transitional vinyl between black and clear swirled.
“Many butterfly wings flapped to land this disc into my palms in the first year of Zum’s formation as a label. I remember sitting at my office desk hitting play, confidently stone-faced that my Australian co-worker who I’d been shared CDs with (Blonde Redhead, Unwound, Nuzzle) could not nail my taste profile - I did, after all, run a fanzine in San Francisco. The hairs on my neck stood up at the first salvo of ‘Song For Che,’ roiling, churning bass, an immediate unease and famliarity. The full-throated yelp of Pope bleeding in with Evans’ mournful cries, wiry guitar cutting the density, all buoyed by Fikerle’s ferocious thumping toms. Life-changing stuff - I spent the rest of my dotcom dayjob grilling my Melbourne co-worker about them, ended up booking their US tour, distributing the CD, and pressing a 7”.”- George Chen (Zum)
“I remember first hearing Sea Scouts in the late 90’s and loving how harsh and methodically tangled up they were. That was rare for me in a world where 99% of the so called arts is just a bunch of self obsessed, conformist wankers and charlatans looking for a pat on the head from similar idiots. Sea Scouts were obviously not people like that. So when the world finally goes to shit and the last survivors return to the caves I will not be blaming the Sea Scouts.” - Gareth Liddiard (The Drones, Tropical Fuck Storm)
"Sea Scouts are the quintessential Tasmanian band; ragged, bleak and powerful like an undertow. But beneath the surface are a million hooks, long line perfection catching everything in its wake. Death marches and sea shanties from the southern ocean." - Tom Lyngcoln
"Dense driving percussion transforming slowcore murk into something much more epic and transcendent. A darkly melancholic blast of soft noise and minor key pathos that would have been right at home on Xpressway. The Dead C covering Codeine, Bailter Space channeling Low, The Skeptics duking it out with Duster." - Andee Connors (A Minor Forest, P.E.E.)
Laura MacFarlane (Sleater-Kinney, Ninetynine) appears playing vibraphone on The Nest
New back cover art embroidery from the artist of the original cover (Halszka Serefine Masash), inner sleeve design and packaging by Sonny Kay.