Roy Montgomery works as an experimental guitarist from his base in Christchurch, New Zealand. Since becoming active in the 1980s, his atmospheric and mostly instrumental guitar explorations have exerted considerable influence on many musicians working in post-rock, space rock, and avant-rock. Numerous solo and collaborative releases have appeared on imprints including Kranky, Siltbreeze, and VHF. After participating in early-’90s recordings with Dadamah, he launched his solo career in 1995 by putting out several collections of shimmering, reverb-saturated guitar instrumentals, one of which was the much sought-after Temple IV. Subsequent projects encompassed Dissolve alongside Chris Heaphy and Hash Jar Tempo alongside Bardo Pond, together with additional solo efforts such as the well-regarded 2000 album The Allegory of Hearing. After remaining largely inactive through most of the 2000s, he issued a split LP with Grouper in 2010 and kept producing material across the following years, among them the ambitious four-album set R M H Q: Headquarters in 2016 and Suffuse in 2018, the latter featuring multiple guest vocalists. Another four-LP series began in 2021 with the appearance of Island of Lost Souls. Beyond his recording work, Montgomery serves as a professor at Lincoln University in New Zealand.
Born in London, he spent a brief period in Cologne, Germany, before his family relocated to Christchurch in the mid-’60s. His first group, the teen garage outfit the Psychedeliks, came together in 1971. He spent the rest of the decade performing in similarly little-known bands such as Compulsory Fun and Murder Strikes Pink, then co-established the influential Kiwi post-punk trio the Pin Group toward the end of 1980. That ensemble’s opening single, “Ambivalence,” also marked the inaugural release on the subsequently renowned independent label Flying Nun; its echoing, darkly melodic guitar textures anticipated the evocative sonic direction Montgomery would maintain throughout his later career. Once the Pin Group dissolved in 1982, he obtained a $750 National Arts Council grant that enabled formation of the Shallows the following year. Their only release, the 1985 single “Suzanne Said,” further refined his expansive drone approach. For the next five years, however, he largely stepped away from music while pursuing studies in Russian language and literature alongside interests in cinema and avant-garde theater.
Montgomery resumed performing in 1990 when a chance encounter with former Pin Group member Peter Stapleton resulted in an invitation to join the emerging noise-pop band Dadamah. After several releases the group broke apart in 1993, and Montgomery reappeared the next year with his initial solo outing, Scenes from the South Island on Drunken Fish Records. Alongside guitarist Chris Heaphy he also created the duo Dissolve, whose album That That Is...Is (Not) came out on Kranky that same year. He then spent roughly eighteen months traveling through the U.S., England, and Latin America, during which time he captured abundant new material that later surfaced on singles for Ajax, Siltbreeze, and Drunken Fish.
Temple IV arrived as a full-length on Kranky in 1996, and the next year he worked with Bardo Pond members in Hash Jar Tempo, releasing Well-Oiled. Also in 1997, Montgomery contributed to the Flying Saucer Attack EP Goodbye while Dissolve issued Third Album for the Sun. The solo album And Now the Rain Sounds Like Life Is Falling Down Through It appeared in 1998, followed a year later by the singles compilation 324 E. 13th St. #7 and True, a theater score created with Heaphy. Summer 2000 brought Allegory of Hearing, and Silver Wheel of Prayer, drawn from the same sessions, surfaced the subsequent year.
Montgomery maintained a low profile for most of the 2000s, with his sole release of the decade being the 2007 double-CD Inroads, which gathered both older single tracks and more recent, previously unreleased pieces. He returned in 2010 with a split LP shared with noted admirer Grouper. TSG, a CD by Torlesse SuperGroup—his duo with Nick Guy—appeared in 2011. A split LP with the Dead C’s Bruce Russell followed in 2012, and later that year his soundtrack for the film Hey Badfinger came out on Grouper’s Yellow Electric imprint. An ambitious four-album project titled R M H Q: Headquarters was issued in 2016, available either as a CD or LP box set or as separate LPs. Two years afterward, Suffuse arrived as a full-length featuring vocals from Grouper, Haley Fohr of Circuit des Yeux, Julianna Barwick, and others. In 2019 he released a 10" single whose A-side contained a cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Last Year’s Man,” and he collaborated with vocalist Emma Johnston on After Nietzsche.
Four decades after the Pin Group’s first single, Roy Montgomery intended to issue four full-lengths during 2021 as part of a 40th-anniversary series. Island of Lost Souls, containing pieces dedicated to Sam Shepard and Florian Fricke among others, appeared first. Later entries in the series comprise That Best Forgotten Work, Rhymes of Chance, and Audiotherapy.
