Normil Hawaiians - More Wealth Than Money
This lossless post of one of the most popular ESWA features has been on the back burner for quite some time. There was much love around for the Normil Hawaiians debut album when I featured More Wealth Than Money as a scratchy mp3 rip a good few years ago. Lead Hawaiian Guy Smith popped up said hello, paid tribute to the late Hawaiian Jim Lusted who had sadly passed away, and hinted that he was looking at getting the album reissued. That is still to happen and I for one hope that we all buy a copy when it does finally appear. I was recently chatting with a former employee of Illuminated Records who suggested that most copies ended up as landfill back in the eighties which is a real shame.
If you have a spare £60 - £130 you can pick up a copy of this album through the usual resellers. To label this double vinyl LP a classic may seem a little far-fetched to many, but to me, this is a long lost, long deleted gem. The 2014 Record Collector Rare Record Price Guide doesn't even value the album which should hold down prices for original copies, but all it would take is a resurgence in rare post-punk vinyl for values to rocket. Collectors of rare psyche music have been driving the second-hand market prices, maybe if they were eventually to turn their attentions to the eighties period, then the worth of this product and similar releases (like the Bam Caruso catelogue) can only rocket.
Normil Hawaiians were a South East London post-punk outfit revolving around guitarist/singer Guy Smith who used varying ensembles of musicians with each release. After a couple of low key singles (all previously featured here), the band's debut was a huge double slab of overblown progressive post punk (there's a new tag label for your ipod). Think Joy Division meets Pink Floyd meets Magazine meets Amon Düül playing Wire. Krautrock influences are all over the place as well, A New Standard is much like the motorik beats of Neu's Hero, Left Alone With Her Pipe owes as much to Can or Amon Düül II as it does early dubbed PIL. This double vinyl treasure is, to these ears, two saucers filled with secrets. Every home should have a copy of this, so here's your chance (but for only two weeks).......
Ripped from a double vinyl LP released on Illuminated Records (JAMS 23) in 1982 to high quality flac audio. Thanks to blog follower Alex for ripping his copy for this blog - I have applied a gentle manual declicking and normalised the channels for better fidelity.
A1. Red Harvest
A2. British Warm
A3. Yellow Rain
B1. New Standard
B2. An Old Standard
B3. Better Ways Of Knowing
C1. Words Are Not Enough
C2. Return Of Hollow Lands
C3. Ha Ha, The Story Of A Sunken Fence
C4. Sally IV
D1. Left Alon With Her Pipe
D2. Travelling West
What's Going On? will follow....
