Roy Montgomery

After a stint in avant-garde theater, Montgomery had already been at the cutting edge of New Zealand's indie-rock: first in the Pin Group with Ross Humphries and Peter Stapleton, revisiting the trance of the Velvet Underground (Ambivalence and Coat in 1981 were among the first singles put out by the label Flying Nun), whose entire catalog is compiled on Pin Group (Siltbreeze, 1997) and Ambivalence (Flying Nun, 2012;, and then with the Shallows (who released only one single in 1985).

Dadamah's This Is Not A Dream (Majora, 1992 - Kranky, 1993) is one of the most ingenious records to come out of the second generation of New Zealand's indie-rockers, a magic recreation of the Velvet Underground's psychedelic trance, updated to the new wave zeitgeist of the Modern Lovers, sprinkled with effervescent oddities in the surreal vein of Red Krayola and Pere Ubu.
Limbo Swing frantic hypnotic guitar strumming a` la Sterling Morrison, desolate austere wailing a` la Nico, pounding tribal drums a` la Maureen Tucker with the addition of a distorted organ a` la Doors' Ray Manzarek floating a county-fair melody over the manic crescendo and with the variant of vocals that rapidly lose their composure and begin screaming like the most obsessed Siouxsie Sioux. Papa Doc presses on with voodoo tom-toms and distorted organ, while the singers intone a ghostly hymn (the male in a cavernous register reminiscent of British dark-punk, the female an Exene Cervenka of the graveyars). In Brian's Children the guitar/drums thrust is so epileptic that it sounds like a bluegrass bacchanal. Fetid traces of Suicide's depraved and neurotic ceremonies form the lower layer of Nicotine, a miasma of trembling organ shrieks and rumbles amid waves of tribal drums.
The nine-minute litany of Too Hot To Dry, wrapped in loud guitar tones, laid down in a pit of boiling dissonances, propelled by childish drums, evokes specters of Patti Smith and of Jim Morrison, but without the words, without anything to tell, without purpose or message: pure, unadultered agony. The equally long, suspenseful and unnerving High Tensions House is mostly free-form jamming, with a short baritone declamation, in an oppressive landscape of crackling noises, a piece closer to the Swans than to the Doors. The dark maelstrom of Scratch Sun obliterates the melody, caught in a bleak, savage, manic garage-rock frenzy moored to a bass riff by the Who. These longer pieces make a magisterial use of cacophony, which, combined with the utterly demented role of percussions and the relatively primitive playing of the guitars, makes for an emotionally explosive potion.
A requiem-like intensity shrouds High Time, the most gothic track, a duet between the female singer's ethereal vocalizing and the male singer's gloomy recitation.
Prove is a whispered lullaby in the vein of the first Velvet Underground album with a melody that could be from the first Doors album.
Radio Brain is basically an alien version of 13th Floor Elevator's You're Gonna Miss Me.
By spanning the entire corpus of evil rock, from Bo Diddley's beats to new wave's noise, Dadamah gave the entire history of rock music a new twist.
The abstract soundscapes of bassist/singer Kim Pieters and keyboardist Janine Stagg complemented Montgomery's eccentric guitar noises. Peter Stapleton, former drummer for Pin Group, had been jamming in Scorched Earth Policy, a group influenced by free-jazz and the Grateful Dead, and was now in the ferocious Terminals. The foursome was an impressive amalgam of avantgarde and pop lingos. When Montgomery left for America, Pieters and Stapleton continued the Dadamah saga with the Flies Inside The Sun and Rain.

Montgomery's double single Long Night (Siltbreeze, 1996), recorded in San Francisco in 1994, is a continuation of Pin Group's experimentation. The intimate and confessional folk singer of Submerged And Colorful, the pompous intellectual of Film AS A Subversive Art are sounds of an artist that is still evolving. But the melancholy brushed organ atmosphere that recall Nico in Long Night and It's Cold Outside and German Sister call to mind the solemn entreaties characteristic of Popol Vuh.

Later Montgomery formed the group Dissolve, along with fellow guitar player Chris Heaphy, and the record That That Is was put out (Kranky, 1995). The guitars, with no percussion, explore sparse sounds and put ectoplasms in action such as Encounter and Three Films. The sophisticated combination of tuning, chords and tone unearth ghostly melodies such as Strand, Dissong and See The World, that are a continuation of the experiments attempted by Durutti Column and Wire. Mortal Pleasures of Wanda Lust was originally a soundtrack for the theater.

Montgomery then set off on a solo career, recording two albums of instrumental music that straddle the line between psychedelia and folk: Scenes From The South Island and Temple IV.

The impressionistic vignettes of Scenes From The South Island (Drunken Fish, 1995) constitute a throw back to the transcendental spirit of John Fahey (the raga-like fingerpicking of Along The Main Divide), to the divine introspection of Peter Green (Twilight Conversation, a 10-minute tour de force with the guitar imitating natural sounds, mutating into a didjeridoo or a clarinet), to the dreamy psalms of David Crosby. Unlike these masters, who were happy to use the traditional guitar in their spiritual quest, Montgomery had to change the nature of the instrument itself. By exploiting delay, echo and other techniques, Montgomery turned the guitar into a chamber orchestra, and one with a keen propensity for Eastern sounds. The tones of his guitar and the mood of his music are directly related: one justifies the other.
But the way Montgomery pens his surreal watercolors is mostly unique . A Clear Night Port Hills drops an Eastern-sounding vibrato melody in a lake of watery reverbs. Rainshadow Over Christchurch lets a distorted drone orbit in a thick, rumbling fog.
The influence of minimalism is evident on the gradual crescendos of Nor' wester Head-on and The Last Kakapo Dreams of Flying (the latter bordering on Michael Nyman's supercharged scores).
Montgomery tops everything else on this album with the rockabilly-surf vibe of the The Barracuda Sequence, which comprises Downtown To Vesuvio, The Road To Diamond Harbour and the loud, abrasive, Velvet Underground-ian bacchanal of Winding It Out In The High Country. (Note: Barracuda Sequence is listed as a separate track on the original CD, while it is a three-track composition).
Montgomery's art is closer to Eastern rather than Western art because of the way it unravels. There is no linear development (as in "refrain", "bridge", "chorus", etc). There is, on the other hand, a high degree of concentration on a pattern. The pattern floats and evolves. The pattern has a life of its own. Often, one only perceives a dull repetition: the whole is more important than the parts.

Equally experimental, Temple IV (Kranky, 1996), a one-man effort inspired by a visit to Tikal's famous monument, is almost baroque in spirit: an obscure, symbol-drenched metaphysics and an obsessive preoccupation with the afterlife lead through the stages of an imaginary Calvary. She Waits On Temple IV is a psalm worthy of Popol Vuh's Hosianna Mantra that revolves around the trepid and feverish jingling of the guitar, set against a backdrop of cascading bass tones. The technique is borrowed from Indian and middle-eastern music, and the mood is an odd combination of ecstasy and pondering. The guitar sounds like a piano in Departing The Body, hammering its funeral theme and setting the stage for a burning distortion that spirals away to the heavens. The hypnotic strumming of The Soul Quietens acts as a peaceful ouverture for the nine-minute monster The Passage Of Forms, a warped raga that fluctuates on a cosmic radiation, a journey through the darkest depths of the universe, a symphony of colorful tones that even evokes a choir of ghosts. The concept comes to a close with the emphatic ceremonial music of Jaguar Meets Snake, the loudest and most distorted piece.
Not so much a vision as a prayer, Temple IV projected Montgomery into another orbit, in the company of Peter Green's End Of The Game, of Bruce Palmer's End Of The Cycle, of Jimi Hendrix's 1983.

Out of this major piece of work, two singles emerge: the hypnotic mantra Just Melancholy (Ajax), with the transcendent/oriental mood typical of the songs, Particle (Varispeed), the hallucinogenic distortion of Strange Attractor (RoofBolt), which is just as true to form, and the frenzied ragtime of Something Else Again (Roof Bolt, 1995).

That That Is was actually a record by the Chris Heaphy and Roy Montgomery duo. Third Album For The Sun (Kranky, 1997), again credited to Dissolve, is the continuation (no, not the "third" as stated in the title, but merely the second). With the addition of keyboards, percussion and cello, the sound becomes quite a bit more sophisticated. Rogue Satellite (guitar and bass guitar that play off each other in the background while an organ stretches out solemnly into infinity) has a psychedelic atmosphere, that brings back to mind the early days of Pink Floyd. But this is just the beginning. Behind the indianesque litany of Into The Black and the haughty psalm of High On Upper Street there is a roughness and sketchiness that are off key with the project, which sound almost blasphemous. It isn't surprising that one track, Street Philosopher, is a throw back to the lazy and haphazard boogie of Lou Reed (even with no words), or that the ballad of Dream Index indulges in a wildly discordant combination: digging beneath the surface, we find a vast array of layers. The galactic minimalism and the angelic feminine singing of Presume Too Far create a world at the border between Terry Riley and Robert Wyatt. Sunflower Search Engine on the other hand delves once again into muddy waters, nine minutes with Syd Barrett soaked in metallic distortions in a dizzying upsurge, which is when the album loses itself, in the search for its own origins. The songs are all jams heading in a slow but continual build up, mostly instrumental, that sound like closings, tag-ons, appendixes to other pieces yet to be written. They amount to a collection of songs that transmit that spirituality which is akin to the hippie spirit of the sixties and can be considered closer to New Age music than Environmental.

Well Oiled (Drunken Fish, 1997), credited to Hash Jar Tempo, is a collaboration between Montgomery and the Bardo Pond. The long suite in seven movements is a sample of a seventy-minute session which was improvised in 1995, and could well constitute the non plus ultra of instrumental psychedelic rock. Throughout the first movement (13 minuts) the guitars howl galactic one against the other, taking turns in the delirium tremens, while the drums keeps a martial beat. In the third movement (13 minutes) the guitars, without drums, wail languid tonal chords and croak piercing distortions, ultimately achieving a loud synchronized pace in the style of Glenn Branca's symphonies. In the fourth movement (11 minutes), instead, it is rhythm that rules: driving, pounding, fired by hammering guitar hypnoses a' la Sister Ray. The fifth movement (14 minutes) is a long flight of the guitar distortions, soaring in exhausting drones, tickings and nebulas. Movement number 6 (18 minutes) is another stirring dance, spelled by guitars and percussionsin full accord, and number 7 crowns this monumental work with a short but solemn hymn of apocalyptic distortions.
This album is truly a summa of psychedelic rock of all time, a summa of the Velvet Underground, the Pink Floyd, the Doors, the Hawkwind, the Red Crayola and so forth.

At this point Montgomery made a return to his roots. The EP Winter Songs (Roof Bolt, 1997) serves a bit like a overview of his stylistic eclectic foray: the two instrumentals Dawn Fades Over Ocean and the madly percussive Sister Clean (a tribute to the Velvet Underground's Sister Ray?) are erudite post-modernist essays on other peoples' leitmotivs; the other instrumental On The Road is a poem for frenzied fingerpicking, like a John Fahey suite compressed in two minutes; Strange Attractor and Visions Of Emma are two psychoanalytic nightmares sung in a prophetic tone.

The triple album Harmony of The Spheres (Drunken Fish, 1997) contains a facade of Variations On A Theme By Sandy Bull.

With And Now The Rain Sounds Like Life Is Falling Down Through It (Drunken Fish, 1998) Montgomery finally returns to the first person. The album is surreal just as expected. Microscopic instrumentals (which get more and more daring) are interspersed between the songs, with titles as bizarre as they are enigmatic, the lyrics look more like prayers than ballads, the arrangements are as frugal as they are brimming with emotion; the melodies as elementary as they are cerebral, the record as a whole is so moody and rarefied that it sounds more new-age music than rock. In Our Own Time, the opening track, is an Arabic/Indian litany with a tumult of rattling bells. Kafka Was Correct, mere humming like a nasal drone with metallic touches of the guitar, sinks into a Tibetan Monks trance. The liturgy continues with Entertaining Mr Jones, different in its antique fold ballad influence. The instrumental pieces are a sort of separate record, as if there is one Roy Montgomery, composer of avant-guarde music, who is related to Roy Montgomery, the songwriter. Down From That Hill And Up To The Pond takes off on a flight in a psychedelic and minimalist landscape of cyclical chords. (even simpler is Catherine at Aldeburgh, a guitar solo). The experimenter amuses himself with the understated and discordant chamber music of The Small Sleeper. The dramatic height of the record is A Little Soundtrack, overplayed by a piercing sound artfully embedded in a gloomy piano melody. Ill At Home dominates with its eleven minutes: the guitars simulate a martial beat of drums, distorted murmurs fluctuate in the harmony, a filtered singing babbles senseless phrases...truly Kafkaesque. All the songs are enveloped in murmurs, in teeny sounds in the background and in anguished stretches of sound. Above all, this is an album of "absence", of things that are supposed to happen but don't (drums, voice, harmony, apotheoses, chorus)

The single E.N.D. (Drunken Fish, 1998) contains two small gems: Elegy for Nick Drake is a sturdy homage to his idol in the form of a modest reggae and serene "hum"; Intertidal is a sing-song that fluctuates in a cloud of hallucinogenic guitar effects.

Hash Jar Tempo, Roy Montgomery's collaboration with the Bardo Pond, returns with Under Glass (Drunken Fish, 1999), a collection of seven long instrumental jams. The experiment had been started with Well Oiled (Drunken Fish, 1997). The new work is even more experimental.
The harmonic roar and abysses of Praludium Und Fugue D-Moll (ten minutes), its symphony of guitar drones and glissandos spelled by martial drumming and drowned in an icy lake of keyboards, mounted in a grand wall of organ chords, secrete a compendium of Amon Duul, Hawkwind, Iron Butterfly and Red Crayola.
Labiomancy (nine minutes), instead, is a dense and chaotic collage of harsh noises over which fluctuates a feeble female wail, a sort of Sister Ray (Velvet Underground) in which the tempo in crescendo be replaced by very dirty loops of keyboards and the role of the viola be assigned to the guitar.
The album slowly delves into a liturgy of eastern spirituality. On the slower and more organic molasses of Sources In Cleveland fluctuates the horribly deformed tone of a clarinet, bringing back to memory Eric Dolphy's and Albert Ayler's free jazz. A duet of mediterrenean melodies makes its way through Hymenoptera In Amber Crybaby, one tinkled by a guitar and the other croaked in a raga-like manner by another guitar. Gravitational Lens Opera attunes a sideral glissando of the guitars, accompanied by metallic percussions and electronic fumes, ormai in piena trance trascendente.
Atropine (17 minutes) boasts the epic pace of the grand psychedelic journeys. In The Cells of Walken's Corti pays tribute to the King Crimson with a solemn and majestic "acid" requiem which triumphally crowns the album.
(Note: the cover lists seven tracks, but the CD has only six tracks, as the fifth contains both the fifth and the sixth tracks).

Roy Montgomery, at the peak both of his inspiration and of his technical skills, continues to put forth exceptional albums. True (Kranky, 1999), music for the theatre composed and performed in collaboration with Chris Heaphy, who had already contributed to That That Is (Kranky, 1995), is a tonal kaleidoscope of arpeggios, reverbs and free chords. The second part of Virtually So, in a slow crescendo, builds castles and castles of counterpoints and boleros, inspired by the most hypnotic minimalism, overlapped to "galactic" drones and propelled by light melodic breezes. The complexity and the elegance are Bach's. Unfathomable is inspired by Ennio Morricone's atmospheres, with its otherwordly twang and funereal tempos, even if the second version (the ten minutes that close the album) is a merry-go-round of psychedelic and cosmic sounds on a limping rhythm and a garage-surf organ. Clouding Over instead focuses with dissonance, sampling and rhythmic irregularities, albeit without sacrificing the narrative side. Spurious crowns this person fusion of Durutti Column and Ry Cooder with a romantic country-blues. Montgomery's instrumental watercolors have the function of adding a metaphysical and trascendental element to his intensely introspective melodies.

324 E. 13th St #7 (Drunken Fish, 1999) collects 20 tracks that originally appeared on hard to find singles or that never appeared at all. Included are the two sides of the Shallows' 1985 single, Suzanne Said and Trial By Separation, virtually impossible to find, plus the six tracks of Long Night (Siltbreeze, 1996), plus the singles Something Else Again/ Adrift (Roof Bolt, 1996), Just Melancholy/ Used To (Ajax, 1996), Strange Attractor/ On The Road (RoofBolt, 1996), and Elegy for Nick Drake/ Intertidal (Drunken Fish, 1998).
In between the older tracks and the newer tracks, Montgomery launched his major career of noise-maker with Dadamah, Dissolve, Hash Jar Tempo and his two solo instrumental masterpieces Scenes From The South Island and Temple IV. We think of Montgomery as a major composer who writes ambitious side-long suites of abstract psychedelic music. This anthology instead presents the "minor" Montgomery: a humble singer songwriters who wails his angst and strums his guitar. The music is as stark and austere as acoustic music can be. Not truly bleak, but certainly not happy either. When transferred to the shorter medium of the single or EP, the surreal textures of Montgomery's albums tend to dissolve (no pun intended) in down-to-earth meditations. There is no hint of Dissolve and Hash Jar Tempo. This is a man alone in a room, singing to himself, to a very deep part of himself, the way that Leonard Cohen and Nick Drake used to do. It is a welcome addition to the canon. Montgomery's soul opens up in a way that would be impossible in his psychedelic tour de forces. Stand outs like the hypnotic mantra of Just Melancholy and the
The tuneful country ballads Suzanne Said and Trial By Separation may, at this point in time, matter only as archeology, but the other 18 tracks offer a composite and disquieting portrait of the artist as a young man.
Hard to resist the fascination of these songs: the hypnotic mantra of Just Melancholy, the simple requiem of Elegy for Nick Drake in the form of subdued raga and serene "om", the litany of Intertidal adrift in hallucinatory guitar effects, the frenzied jingle-jangle of Something Else Again, which sounds like a ragtime band on speed, the majestic, transfixed prayer of German Sister, which employs mournful keyboards a` la Nico, ...
The added bonus of the anthology are the four previously unreleased tracks. Montgomery toys with the zen stasis of Times Three (populated by ghostly background noises) and his guitar jingle-jangles the refrain of Some Other Time like the Byrds did in Feel A Whole Lot Better. Fine Fine Fine offers more Indian-style chanting and chiming coupled with Velvet Underground noise, and In Your Wake indulges in frantic and intense interweaving of metallic guitar tones.
By all means, an essential anthology.

Roy Montgomery's ambient psychedelia has bloomed over the course of several Dissolve, Hash Jar Tempo and solo albums to achieve an almost transcendental quality. The Allegory of Hearing (Drunken Fish, 2000) represents the culmination of the program begun with Scenes From The South Island. (Note: the track listings on the CD is wrong, as it omits one track).
Montgomery's unique style crafts mesmerizing textures that, while providing a hypnotic base, never sink in drowsy drones and always maintain a rhythmic element. Also important is the contrast with the background, that provides the trance factor to the harmony. This method smells of Indian raga, even if the results may sound quite different.
The melodic theme of Ex Cathedra is fractured into syncopated guitar staccatos and the background in this case are the reverbs of the guitar tones. The tinkling lines of As the Dali Lama Was Remarking I Believe imitate the choking tones of eastern ballets, but their broken, disconnected nature makes them the musical equivalent of Seurat's pointillism (and the background is a spatial guitar tone that sounds like an entire string section). Rock Sea Muse Seek is an even more radical example of this cubist technique because of a harshly percussive drive, while the background is an overdubbed languid wail of guitar (like the beginning of Donovan's Hurdy Gurdy). An acid Farfisa flickers behind the insistent, pulsing pattern of I Hear You Mocking (fifth track, not listed on the CD), that recalls a spiraling sufi dance, while Where the Belltower Once Stood is a playful execise in counterpoint. Each vignette gives Montgomery's raga a different spin. Within each song, one can perceive both a static and a cinematic component, both a floating and percussive manner. They coexist and resonate. They are two different perspectives of the same event, internal and external.
The album's tour de force is the 17-minute, 7-movement suite Resolution Island Suite, that initially recapitulates Montgomery's theory of transcendental musical harmony, but then recasts that pounding/soaring dichotomy into a whirling minimilistic pattern (reminiscent of Terry Riley's Rainbow In Curved Air), until the repetition of tones exhausts the vibrant energy of the first strokes.
With little more than a home tape recorder and a guitar, Montgomery can leave the world (and rest of rock music, in particular) way behind, and journey towards new lands, that are both inside and outside, with a sound that is trance and nostalgy, diary and adventure, hymn and game, haze and mirage.

Roy Montgomery's mission in trance continues with Silver Wheel Of Prayer (VHF, 2001). Each of the seven titles is associated with a geometric pattern, each pattern projecting out from a center towards a circumference. It is not surprising, therefore, that For The Imperiled resembles the sonic equivalent of a stately mandala. Its iterative melody transitions to For The Disoriented, where a liturgic organ envelops it in shooting stars, and then to For The Mortified, where it is bombarded by clusters of dark electronic drones a` la Gordon Mumma.
Minimalistic repetition is used to maximum effects. For The Dispossessed unleashes a distorted guitar riff that exudes anger, and merely repeats slight variations of it. A Suicide psycho-beat propels the frightening charge of For The Intense. The intricate pattern of this piece recalls Terry Riley's Persian Surgery Dervishes on heroin.
The 16-minute For A Small Blue Orb belongs to Montgomery's most classical style (and ranks with his best). The piece relies on the trancey combination of guitar strumming and keyboard drones. For about six minutes the pattern is fairly stable, but then the structure begins to dilate, elements flow in and out. The sound gets harder, louder, faster.
This is as close as Montgomery ever got to composing a symphony of Beethoven-ian proportions.

The double-CD Inroads (Rebis, 2007) collects old and new Montgomery guitar compositions.

Torlesse Super Group (Rebis, 2011), recorded between 2004 and 2007, was a collaboration with Nick Guy that toyed with trip-hop and glitch music, highlighted by the rhythmic and guitar-less 16-minute Erewhon Sentinel.

The split LP Russell/Montgomery (Grapefruit, 2012) delivered Montgomery's Tarkovsky Tone Poem (1994) and Bruce Russell' Mistah Chilton He Dead (1999).

The split LP Montgomery/ Grouper (Grouper Records, 2010) with Liz Harris of Grouper contains Montgomery's Fantasia On A Theme By Sandy Bull (Slight Return), a revision of the piece contained in Harmony of The Spheres.

Roy Montgomery's first solo album in a decade, Music From The Film Hey Badfinger (Yellow Electric, 2012), contains 23 brief guitar solos inspired by Badfinger. It does not even remotely match the intensity and the poetry of his best work. For unknown reasons Montgomery decided to limit each piece to a few seconds, not enough to develop a concept, and to play the guitar in a quivering petulant tone. The guitar is mostly used as a melodic instrument, with little of the rhythmic and polyphonic subtleties of the past. If he had played them slower and in a more archaic register, many of these vignettes would be at least haunting and romantic; but the very concept of a collection of unfinished catchy "songs" is hard to swallow to start with. To be played at half speed.

Montgormery then released a four-disc set, known as RMHQ (Grapefruit, 2016). His singing can be heard only in the eight songs of R: Tropic Of Anodyne (for a total of 43 minutes). The gently lulling Tropic Of Anodyne has the quality of a fairy tale. The brooding Dear Future Loser sits halfway between Leonard Cohen's gothic and Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven. The slow, stoned I Was A Distant Star sounds like Syd Barrett in a trance. The agonizing As The Sun Sets sounds like a sleepy Roger Waters. The guitar accompaniment to these songs is quite trivial for someone with his accomplishments.

The instrumental M: Darkmotif Dancehal (for a total of 44 minutes) is a much more interesting beast, starting with the raging flames of the brief overture, Rough Take-Off, Hypnotic repetitive pattern glide over sinister drones in 10538 Overdrive. Dazed Pig Dreamhome Slide begins like a slow zombie march over a reverbed beat but then the guitar intones a rousing melody against a backdrop of ghostly howling. The pounding Six Guitar Salute To Peter Gutteridge sounds like an instrumental cover of a Velvet Underground song done by Neu (or vicevera). The limitation of these pieces is, of course, each simply repeats a pattern over and over, with minimal variations. There is no sense of narrative. The extroverted Slow Heroes is the only one that seems to "sing" a melody and build up some momentum.

H: Bender is the cinematic disc (for a total of 43 minutes). The solemn twanging tones of Ten Beers With Five Bears At Two Guns, Arizona evoke Ennio Morricone's western-movie soundtracks, while And Later We Looked Up At The Stars has a similar feeling but attacked by a relentless cosmic buzz. Pipeline would fit a psychedelic thriller, and Another David Lynch Thanks No Ice is a majestic transcendental "om" while Chasing Monica Vitti emanates funereal angst This disc ends with the lively, pounding Cocktails With Can, that sounds like a tribute to Neu, not Can. Each piece is constructed via the unwinding of pulsing patterns that then go on to repeat themselves with minimal variations.

The fourth disc, Q: Transient Global Amnesia contains the most daring experiments. The driving, eleven-minute Riding sounds like a folk dance of the steppes (possibly the four disc's standout composition). The brief Unshore achieves the highest concentration of gothic suspense. The 20-minute Weathering Mortality stages a crescendo of hysteria with Emma Johnston's voice buried in the background. Unfortunately, this longer piece displays, more than the shorter ones, the limitations of repetition and limited development. Montgomery partnered with seven different female vocalists for the six songs of Suffuse (Grapefruit, 2018): Haley Fohr (Circuit des Yeux) unleashes her operatic howl over a loud dense soundscape of strumming in Apparition; Jessica Larrabee (She Keeps Bees) whispers detached and aloof in the psychedelic space of Rain Bird; Katie von Schleicher (Wilder Maker) slowly unwinds her yarn amid the reverbed tones and echoes of Outsider Love Ballad No 1; possibly the standout; the Purple Pilgrims (sisters Clementine and Valentine Nixon) erect a solemn prayer in the wavering wavering tinkling of Mirage; Julianna Barwick releases her feathery wordless chant in the dreamy pastoral soundscape of Sigma Octantis; and Liz Harris (Grouper) decorates with her cosmic lament the pulsing vision of Landfall. Not a bad album, but clearly it lacks a cohesive center. It is debatable whether vocals add to or detract from Montgomery's music.

Refuse (2018) contains seven leftovers from the Suffuse sessions.

The single Day Of The Lords (2018) is a cover of the Joy Division song.

Roy Montgomery played all the instruments on After Nietzsche (Aguirre, 2019), accompanied by vocalist Emma Johnston (who sang in the Celtic-rock band Rock Salt & Nails). The most regular song, Fall Rise, sounds like an outtake from a Kate Bush album. Johnston does a lot better with the ethereal seven-minute elegy Realm Of The Senses (to which Montgomery adds only a repeating staccato and a background drone). The ten-minute After Nietzsche begins with majestic overlapping drones to which the singer responds with wordless operatic laments, while the drones slowly assume the quality of a male choir She sings a real song in the 21-minute And Fuck This Eternal Recurrence, Nietzsche over cyclical rhythmic pattern, her voice split in two gentle parallel currents. Ten minutes into the song, as the rhythm acquires a cosmic quality, Montgomery takes over the singing and his sinister tone pushes the song into tribal horror territory. The song then continues wordless as an endless gothic dance.

The single Last Year's Man / After Vermeer (2019) is a cover of the Leonard Cohen song back with a collaboration with violinist Jessica Moss.

In 2021 he released four albums: Island Of Lost Souls (Grapefruit, 2021), that contains the 22-minute The Electric Children Of Hildegard Von Bingen, That Best Forgotten Work (2021), presumably a collection of leftovers and rarities, Rhymes of Chance (2021), which collects instrumentals, songs performed by him and songs performed by Emma Johnston, and Audiotherapy (2022), a collection of leftovers and rarities, ranging from the spoken-word piece Occlusione to the instrumental Audiomemory.