Bailter Space

ROCKHAPPENZ Public Collection

Bailter Space  —  originally from Christchurch in 1987 and periodically based in New York .....
Profile image shows Alister Parker (Guitar), Brent McLachlan (Drums) and John Halvorsen (Bass) .....
Previous members had included Glenda Bills (Keyboards), Ross Humphries (Bass) and Hamish Kilgour (Bass)

Bailter Space are one of the longest serving bands for New Zealand independent record company Flying Nun.  The late Hamish Kilgour, was formerly the drummer in The Clean and The Great Unwashed, and Alister Parker, late of The Gordons, shared an interest in dense, groovy guitar noise and their original line-up also featured Glenda Bills on keyboards and Ross Humphries (former member of The Pin Group and also playing guitar in The Terminals at that time) on bass.  This line up released the Flying Nun EP, Nelsh Bailter Space and the single New Man.  After Glenda and Ross left, former Gordons bassist John Halvorsen was recruited for the group.  This line-up recorded the album Tanker and the single Grader Spader at Wellington's famous Writhe Studio with Brent McLachlan at the controls, and also toured America, playing at The New Music Seminar in 1989.  When Hamish decided to stay in America, Alister and John returned to NZ to recruit Brent McLachlan as the new Bailter Space drummer – the same Brent who engineered Tanker and with whom the two had formed The Gordons in 1980.  Reunited on their single-minded musical trek, the three recorded the album Thermos at Writhe in 1990.  They followed that release with a 1991 Northern Hemisphere Tour, and 1992 saw the group based in NZ, where the EP The Aim was released to great acclaim and they completed a new album, Robot World, in Wellington.

Bailter Space packed their bags again, heading for New York and on to Europe to base themselves in Germany.  They returned to live in New York in 1993, where Matador Records released Robot World and the group began recording their fourth album for release by Matador and Flying Nun.  Sandwiched between these two albums comes the EP. B.E.I.P which contains two tracks from each album in radically different versions and mixes.  They began touring the world again from March 1994.

Reconciling the sides of Bailter Space's music expressed on the two previous albums - the smooth journey of Thermos and the futuristic science fright of Robot World - the group had arrived at releasing Vortura where sound and song merged into powerful guitar detonations, shadowy voices, and spooky ambient sci-fi.  1995 saw the release of the album Wammo and the single Retro.  On the surface of planet bailterpop, Retro is the tale of stranded space travellers - the title referring to retro-rockets rather than retro-fashions - laced with the group's sweetest hum of electricity yet.  Retro is followed by two b-side samples of the awe-inspiring Bailter Space live experience that has repeatedly left NZ audiences awe struck, and these two songs were recorded on Bailter Space's US tour in July 1995.  Wammo saw the band step off into brighter territory but its key ingredient still sounded like the traditional Bailter Space method of hammering one enormous riff into a song with some multi-layered sonic texturing.  The last album recorded by the band for Flying Nun, Capsul, with 14 tunes spread over the best part of an hour, offered not only far more Bailter Space-per-album than any other record but gave the trio the chance to break from that previous approach which often saw elements like guitar and vocals smoothed into a seamless sound.  Shredded elements of rock were highlighted and displayed, eventually melting into elongated instrumental passages.  The band went on to record an import only CDEP Photon, and their sixth album Solar 3, for Wildside Records in NZ, and now-defunct label Turnbuckle Records in the USA.  They then released their self titled album in 2004, shortly after which they disappeared  —  Silence for thirteen years  —  then in 2012 they returned and delivered Strobosphere which was followed by Trinine in 2013  —  and that was the last anyone heard of Bailter Space.

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