BILL DIREEN & THE HAT - "The Flavour of the Meat" LP

Bill Direen & The HAT - The Flavour of the Meat LP (Grapefruit, 2013) "Bill Direen and Hamish Kilgour go back to the early days of NZ’s Flying Nun label and even earlier, when the members of bands like The Clean and Vacuum would skulk to each other’s shows in small bars or run-down church halls in the suburbs of Christchurch. In 1983, Direen and Kilgour were working within a cat’s call of each other, Hamish at Flying Nun Records and Bill at his Blue Ladder Theatre. The Clean worked out in the Blue Ladder rehearsal rooms and Bill and Alec Bathgate laid down the eerie ‘Spell’ there on reel-to-reel four-track. But it wasn’t until 1989 that Bill and Hamish worked together on a recording project, when Bill visited NYC for the first time, staying downtown for a couple of months. Hamish, Lower East Side resident, invited some musician friends to make up a band; Bill flew a former Bilder up from Gainesville Florida. 2013 saw the long-living pair Bill and Hamish again in NY, performing in H