A THIRSTY FISH

The fifth re-issue in the Hafler Trio re-issue series is A Thirsty Fish.

"and so it came to pass...and stayed there, finally. a splendiness of extra-re-releasement : sonically enhanced by an order of magnitude, with a full previously lost quarter of the thing put back where it belongs, and oh, how we laughed! artwork restored, millions of minions having toild for years. yes, miracles performed *every day*! come on in! the water is wonderful!" — the hafler trio

Originally released as a 2LP by Touch, then re-issued on one CD (and thus leaving off one side of the music) by Mute, now finally re-released in its original form, as a 2CD set, in the usual Hafler Trio package, with booklet, a poster and a postcard

out of print

photo by Genesis P-Orridge

THE WIRE ISSUE 266 APRIL 2006
HAFLER TRIO
A THIRSTY FISH
KORM PLASTICS 2XCD
BY PHIL ENGLAND

This 1987 release finally sees the light of day once more with the approval and cooperation of The Hafler Trio, after a botched Mute/Grey Area early 90s reissue which crammed three quarters of the original double LP onto a single CD.
Interviewed in 1993, Andrew McKenzie remembered A Thirsty Fish as "a lot of work. For years I made all these incredibly complex things but I had nothing except a TEAC four track reel-to-reel. I didn't even have a mixing desk, I had a switcher box where you could turn four channels into two. There's nothing in it that's not some kind of religious or spiritual material, whether it's readings or preachers or people undergoing past life regressions... Spiritual is a terrible word, but essential experiences."
An impressively accomplished work of considerable complexity, A Thirsty Fish is dense, choppy and overloaded with information. Perhaps it was McKenzie's very lack of means that forced him to consider alternatives to more primitive manipulations such as speed changes and cut-ups. There is a constant turnover of new material (some of the more identifiable sound sources include the sound of a saucepan filling with water, bird calls and human voices), with no themes developed for any length of time or returned to later; it only starts to pull back in its penultimate section.
The result is a series of widescreen, multi-layered events - the source material is abstracted, transformed and transfigured into sound with transportative potential. Considering the limited means at McKenzie's disposal, it's an extraordinarily imaginative work.
 
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