A tribute by The Lloyd Pack

The Lloyd Pack’s A Tribute pushes Dan Melchior’s musical practice and his on-going collaborations in a decidedly more dance—albeit avant-post-punk-and-homespun—direction.

A Tribute initially emerged from a conversation Melchior had with Graham Lambkin (The Shadow Ring, Kye Records chief) about the prospect of doing a “Faux African” record. For two British-expats living in the U.S. in the twenty-first century, this LP offers a peculiarly whimsical variation on the “Faux African,” infusing lo-fi tribal rhythms with post-punk dance in the spirit of early Adam Ant (there’s a nearly unrecognizable version of “Goody Two Shoes”), Fun Boy Three and the Fall. If one were to imagine adding Ivor Cutler to this British-mix, it might approach what Melchior delivers on this LP. And for the record, Cutler is a Scot.

Lambkin offered some vocal components, alongside a large cast (including the late Letha Rodman- Melchior, Angela Sawyer aka Preggy Peggy, Gnarlos, Sarah Hennies, Le Ann Baca Bartlett, and Johnny Brewton), all of whom chimed in on the recording process. Some material was also recovered from an earlier, aborted project. Though the tracks fell together quite naturally, none of the contributors were ever in the same room together. The finished product is dynamic and wide ranging, despite the fact that only Letha, Graham, and Angela actually heard the songs they were contributing to in advance of their contributions.

Over the last decade, Dan Melchior has released dozens of records under multiple guises including the Broke Review, Dan Melchior und Das Menace, under his own name and in collaboration with artists as diverse as Holly Golightly, Russell Walker, The Spits etc. Dan has pushed his idiosyncratic voice beyond its early associations with the garage rock of Billy Childish and Thee Headcoats to become one of the most unique voices in American outsider rock and experimental music. This development, in part, follows his move out of the U.K. to New York in the 1990s, and eventually [in the early 2000s], to North Carolina. The evolution of the Lloyd Pack parallels this evolution, and more expressly, pulling from a regional post-punk dialect-based music into something uniquely his own. This development leans in large part on his long partnership with the late American artist and musician Letha Melchior-Rodman.