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With the death in 2020 of long-standing occasional third member Peter Stapleton (percussion/electronics), A Handful of Dust has regrouped as the core duo of Alastair Galbraith (violin, guitar, cello, piano, drums) and Bruce Russell (guitar, electronics). This new set of live-to-four-track recordings from January 2022 is the first album to be wholly recorded 'in the studio' since 1995's Towards a Soundtrack to the 'Anabase' of St-John Perse. Committed to tape at the Rugby Hotel in Dunedin, the four-track recordings were played back in the room where they were made and recorded again, this time to Android telephone, to make a digital mono master which you hear on this record. Unadorned, brutal and sonically austere, this new set captures the 'wild Mercury sound' for which this long-standing unit is rightly feted among cognoscenti of the Antipodean New Thing.

Three pieces that will pop your third eye in seconds flat. Astral travel for now people. Duck and Sally continue their unplanned career in the extreme abuse of the rock'n'roll toolkit. Drowned Phoenician sailors bob disconcertingly to the surface while the captain's tower rocks to a sustained monomachy 'twixt Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, brought back from the grave for that specific purpose. Don't be shy - please jump out of your window. You know you gotta trust us, when you need a friend...

For this digital reissue the album comes with a additional track 'Consider Phlebas Pt 1'.

A Handful of Dust are an improvised noise group consisting of a core duo of Bruce Russell and Alastair Galbraith. Formed originally in Dunedin, New Zealand in 1984, they have released a number of full-length albums on labels such as Corpus Hermeticum, Thin Wrist and Freeway Sound. From 1993 to 2020 they were also frequently joined by the late Peter Stapleton playing percussion and electronics.

1. Thin Wrist
2. alastair galbraith
3. Bruce Russell
4. The Dead C
5. IKUISUUS