Olumpus is New Zealanders Stefan Neville (aka Pumice) & Pat Kraus combing their bags of rickety tricks to create a very fun racket! After a handful of listens to Olumpus’s second LP I’m slightly lost for genres or points of context for those unfamiliar with either Kraus or Pumice, but over these 14 tracks I’m reminded of things as varied as Swell Map’s Jane From Occupied Europe, the extended guitar techniques Mdou Moctar, The Fall’s classic literature deconstruction of rockabilly, Ralph records era Yello, Klaus Dinger’s post-Neu pulsing glam band La Düsseldorf, Henry Flynt and even Moondog. On Caucus they’ve enlisted some of the most uncompromising heads from the NZ underground and a couple of high-profile (at least in the Repressed Records racks) international guests including Steve Dean, Ducklingmonster, Richard Youngs, Demarnia Lloyd, Clayton Noone, Matt Plunkett (The Trendees), Mr Sterile and Dan Melchior. Both Pat and Stefan have such an endearing small market/no-frills community fostering approach to music production and act as a great link between different modes of NZ music subculture. This wouldn’t mean crap if they didn’t encourage, facilitate and constantly produce such great music. Choice stuff, cheers cuz! –Nic
