Some of the best music during this decade has often come from collaboration, and Roy Montgomery and Martha Skye Murphy are the latest alliance to carve out alluring results together.
Alongside the likes of Loren Connors and David Grubbs, for decades, the London-born, Christchurch-based Montgomery has been a sentinel in the experimental guitar space. The veteran composer, the architect of compositions that blur the years, the generations and styles. And it’s this timelessness that encompasses his collaboration with Murphy.
On their debut release, Nebular, the renegade guitarist and London pop provocateur exchange ideas from opposite sides of the globe. The results, like the duo are locked inside a capsule akin to a chapter from the In the Fishtank series.
While Nebular sees the duo stitch together abstract ideas, it’s something that feels close. Almost like you’re pressed up against the observation glass. Montgomery’s ethereal soundscapes, sonic beddings for Murphy to weave the same thread from her 2024 LP, Um, (on which Montgomery also featured).
While Um was a dose off-kilter avant-pop dominated by multi-layered vocalisations dotted throughout the mix, Montgomery takes the lead on Nebular – his sonic sketches, illuminating Murphy’s vocals with vivid new colours and tone.
Roy Montgomery and Martha Skye Murphy - NebularThe duo being begin with At Dawn. Underpinned by Montgomery’s droning guitars, it’s subtly immersive, and through headphones, it’s the quintessential cerebral listen, further exemplified by Murphy’s stirring wordless vocalisations.
With crystalline guitars, Cloudburst is like a hymn from the abyss. Deeply hypnotic, Montgomery and Murphy mine in the same corners as the Cocteau Twins. And Satellites Against the Milky Way is actually a nod to the dream-pop legend. Piano-led majesty, with delicate acoustic brushes and synths, as Murphy’s voice emerges through the mix of Montgomery’s tangled guitars.
It leads to the protracted The Play of Light and Dark. A collage that pulls from the preceding compositions. Chugging drone and abstract vocalisations that feel more like a secret code that unlocks the gates to heaven. Its 17-plus minutes, crystallisating the freedom of improvisation.
Featuring harpist, Mary Lattimore, as its titles suggest, At Dusk culminates Nebular with a cavernous sprawl. Lattimore’s spindly arpeggios, piercing through Montgomery’s heavy walls of sound to reveal flickers of light.
And that’s the thing about Nebular. Its contrast, dark and light, uplifting yet ominous. These juxtapositions, informed via the various emotions we as humans experience throughout each day. Through these emotive soundscapes, Montgomery and Murphy tap into this in rich, evocative ways. The often icy nature of the avant-garde, thawed out through sweltering drones and flirtations with the most obscure frontiers of pop, resulting in the pair taking experimentalism to new interesting places indeed.
Nebular is out now via AD 93. Purchase from Bandcamp.
