For a small country New Zealand has long been pumping out some impressive music. Way back in the 1960s it was crazed long-haired punkers messed up on all sorts of stuff - musical (the Pretty Things, Love, the 13th Floor Elevators, the Troggs and who-knows-what-else) and I guess otherwise. Some of the best of these bands (at least, the ones that recorded) can be heard on Wild Things vol 1 and 2, compiled by NZ music historian John Baker, the first of which came out on Flying Nun, the second probably on Baker's own Zero Records, also the home to No. 8 Wire: Psychedelia Without Drugs. These compilations are way up there with the best of the Nuggets, Pebbles, Back from the Grave et al collections and are a pretty good outline of the New Zealand scene of years gone by.
The late 60s/early 70s supposedly weren't too bad, either; with the psych/hard rock bands Space Farm or Living Force (if you're into this kind of stuff), Jessie Harper and Human Instinct and, I guess more importantly, Billy T.K., a member of Human Instinct for a few years and later Powerhouse. All these groups have incredibly rare originals floating around; if you're willing to enter the bizarre world of the psych collector be prepared to kiss your cash goodbye. Luckily (?) a couple of reissue labels Kissing Spell and Little Wing took it upon themselves to re-release some of these recordings a few years back. Which are probably no longer available, but who knows. The most important is supposedly the Human Instinct - Featuring Billy T.K 3LP box set released by Little Wing from Germany. Bringing some sanity to proceedings is the Human Instinct homepage listing currently-available recordings and news for those interested. I've yet to hear any of this other than Jessie Harper's LP on Kissing Spell...this particular era of hard/psych rock doesn't really appeal to me so much, though the Harper album definitely does it's "thing". I guess one day. What I like, however is the Vermonster "tribute" to Human Instinct, Instinctively Inhuman (Vermonster is/was a Twisted Village in-house "supergroup" from back in the early days of this label indulging the heavier psych tendencies of those involved. Their debut, Spirit of Yma, is ear-blowing rock of mega proportions. Instinctively Inhuman record number two, is also "bent". The third album The Holy Sounds of American Pipe is a little less focussed but still has it's moments. There were some tracks on singles and compilations too. Except for LP #3 which may still be available the other releases were pain-in-the-arse limited pressings - 500 copies, long since gone, etc.) This carried it's NZ links to extreme proportions featuring Bruce Russell (Dead C/Handful of Dust/Corpus Hermeticum/Xpressway) as "guest" guitarist. If you get a chance to hear it, do.
Something that may be a little easier to lay your hands on is Stranded in Paradise by John Dix. A very wide-ranging history of New Zealand rock music from the mid-1950s up to the late 80s, this is where you should be looking to find out about the above bands. I have no idea if this is still in publication, but it probably can't be too hard to find.
Jump to the mid-1970s and punk rock was having it's effect on New Zealand just as the rest of the world. One person particularly affected was Chris Knox who along with Mick Dawson, Mike Dooley and Alex Bathgate formed the Enemy. Not only one of the first punk bands in NZ, they were apparently the first NZ punk band to play their own material...and influenced or encouraged lots of others to form bands. Read all about it in Forced Exposure #18 which contains a huge in-depth interview with Knox pretty much touching on everything you need to know about NZ music up to the beginning of the 1990s. Essential reading.
The Enemy never left any offical recordings (although there was some primitive, wild film footage and you may find some MP3s floating around), and they eventually mutated into Toy Love who were in their time probably one of the most important NZ bands. Toy Love did leave some recordings, a bunch of singles and most notably the Toy Love album. Toy Love lasted a few years, Knox and Alec Bathgate going on to form Tall Dwarfs while bassist Paul Kean ended up in the Bats along with Robert Scott from the Clean. Tall Dwarfs have released a whole bunch of EPs and albums of unparalled beauty, mostly on Flying Nun...Nowadays most of the Tall Dwarfs releases should still be available; this includes the two anthology CDs on F.Nun, Hello Cruel World and The Short & Sick of it which collect all their early recordings: Three Songs, Louis Like His Daily Dip, Canned Music, Slugbuckethairybreathmonster, from 1981-1984, on Hello Cruel World; That's The Short & Long Of It and Throw a Sickie, 1985/86, on the second collection. This may well be the best the Tall Dwarfs will ever "get" especially the first four EPs as documented on ...Cruel World. Lovely fractured songs inhabiting a world defined but not restricted by Barrett-Era Pink Floyd, Beatles psychedelia Incredible String Band, T. Rex, P. rock, etc etc, mixed up with the unique musical vision of Bathgate and Knox filtered through a lo-fi experimental sensibility and demonstrating just what can be achieved with a four-track recorder and a bunch of instruments like guitars, organ, clavinet, mellotron, percussion, tape loops. They have managed to successfully carry this on for over a decade now, with sporadic releases plus the occasional Knox solo outing to fill the gaps. These solo things tend to see his more experimental side get a good airing (not that it doesn't turn up on the Dwarfs releases) but still follow a similar path to the "band" releases. Knox-wise things to look out for include obviously his first solo album Songs for Cleaning Guppies from 82 or 83 (if you can find it) while amongst the later-era releases 1995s Songs of You and Me stands out. Although Polyfoto Duck-shaped Pain & Gum is OK. I guess you should just listen to all of 'em; Seizure, Croaker, etc and make up your own mind or something. Though one warning, Yes!, features for some unfathomable reason a horrid 1980s new wave drum sound, but once you get used to this it sounds OK. Tall Dwarfs-wise the later releases have their moments...Stumpy is actually a collaborative release; the group elicited tape loops from listeners and utilised them in the album. And yeah, it all sort of fits together and makes sense, but doesn't really go very far. The 3 EPS triple 10" package from 1994 is way more satisfying. Fifty Flavours of Glue has some nice pop ditties and a few interesting bits. I hope Bathgate and Knox have a few more good ideas in them, but I guess if not they still managed to make some of NZ's most memorable music.
Probably the most important band to record on F. Nun was the Clean. David and Hamish Kilgour and Robert Scott (there were different line-ups, all based around the Kilgour brothers. In terms of records, this is the "important" line-up) not only recorded some of the best music to have came out of NZ but also defined an entire sound and helped create a world-wide interest in music from this particular neck of the woods. In fact, Flying Nun was basically formed for the Clean, according to some reports. Although the honour of first release on the label belongs to the Pin Group. But who cares, right? The Clean, with their five original F.Nun releases (the Tally Ho! and Getting Older singles and the Boodle, Boodle, Boodle, Great Sounds... and posthumous Live Dead Clean EPs) pumped out a timeless psych-pop-folk amalgam. The enthusiasm and energy of their music plus the sheer...I dunno, oneness, of their playing draws you into their music every time. Listen if you haven't already.
Like all good things the Clean quickly fell apart. Robert Scott went on to the pastoral pop of the Bats (a load of releases on F. Nun) while the Kilgour Brothers moved onto the Great Unwashed, kind of a low-key version of the Clean. Not as focussed as the latter, the Great Unwashed seemed more of a home recording project. Their one album Clean Out Of Our Minds is a collection of 4-track home doodles, but still has a shit-load of classic moments. Like the Clean, the Great Unwashed were probably a band better experienced live, although they reached a high with their seven inch single pack, two singles enclosed in a paint-splattered vinyl cover which played havoc with the enclosed records and is now long-gone (although the songs were reissued on an EP and more recently the F. Nun Great Unwashed CD retrospective), this saw Peter Gutteridge rejoining the fold (he'd been in the Clean at one time) and yet another bunch of classic songs molded in a much more stripped down format. Sparse rock and roll, including one of the all-time great Kilgour and Gutteridge songs Born In The Wrong Time, 2 minutes of melodic bliss. Love that droning guitar!
Mention should be made here of Snapper, formed mid-80s by Peter Gutteridge and including Christine Voice, Dominic Stones (ex-Bird Nest Roys, in their time an excellent pop band from Auckland) and Alan Haig (ex-Chills). Developing out of a home taping period Gutteridge passed through, Snapper were a howling full-throated version of the music documented on his Pure Xpressway cassette release. The group released an self-titled EP plus two full-length releases Shotgun Blossom and A.D.M. Distorted keyboard throb, reverb and rhythm defined the Snapper sound, they were a monster live, something at least approximated on the EP and Shotgun Blossom.
Back to the Clean. They reformed for whatever reasons and released three new albums plus some singles. Vehicle, the first of their "new" releases stands as the best. Unfortunately the other two, Modern Rock and Unknown Country just sound a little dull and formulaic, lacking any of the sparkling highlights of earlier releases. Shouldn't complain, though; they are still strong pop albums from an "important" band. David Kilgour has continued on with a few solo releases, most notably the Here Come the Cars album, perfectly-realised pop songs. This is the kind of album a lot of other bands of the 80's/90's would have loved to make but just didn't have it in them to...1999 and 2000 saw brief Clean reunions with live shows in Christchurch and Dunedin, but whether anything else will come of this is unknown for now.
Something a lot of bands never had was whatever "it" was that made the Gordons so good. In existence in Christchurch for a little while in the early 80s this group only released three recordings: the Future Shock EP, a self-titled LP and their second LP titled II. I can't remember what labels all these came out on; I know the 2nd LP was on Flying Nun. Future Shock was reissued here, and later turned up on a F. Nun CD reissue along with the first LP but the 2nd album is long, long gone. The Gordons were all about volume and noise; they were before my time but legendary in Christchurch for the sheer volume and power of their performances at places like the Gladstone (a real dive of a pub where once in a while some of the best musical events of the last 20 years took place.) And I know I've been throwing around way too many adjectives and hyperbole but bear with me here and consider "under-heralded masterpiece of pure shredded guitar blather" or "monster noise/psych splurge that'll fry your brain" or "extreme rug-cutting riffage overload" or something along those lines re: the first Gordons LP. This is really very excellent and you really should hear it. Apparently still available as the above-mentioned CD and yes, Future Shock is as gushingly good as the rest.
It was kind of surprising when Alister Parker (he played guitar and did vocals in the Gordons) suddenly re-emerged in the late '80's with Hamish Kilgour, Ross Humphries (from the Pin Group) and Glenda Bills as Bailter Space (originally Nelsh Bailter Space). This line-up played live a few times and released one EP Nelsh Bailter Space on Flying Nun, all of which seemed pretty important at the time, and looking back, probably was. The line-up changed; Humphries and Bills left after the first EP, Kilgour a little later (up to the first album) until suddenly we were back with the Gordons again; Parker joined by John Halvorsen (who had been playing with the dark/industrial Skeptics in Wellington) and Brent McLachlan. Bailter Space have been around as this line-up for a while now, released a bunch of albums, etc. The first few, Tanker and Thermos were OK in a 90s new wave-style but really I can't be bothered with them any more and I'm sure you have better things to do, too.
The Pin Group was mentioned somewhere up above - Roy Montgomery, Ross Humphries and Peter Stapleton were together for a bit more than a year, only ever released three records (2 7"s and the ...goes to town ep) and rarely played live (never out of Christchurch?) Yet the late 90s saw them receiving all kinds of attention culminating in the Retrospective release on Siltbreeze. So what's the big deal? Well, wait until you hear Retrospective and you may begin to understand. But earlier than this the deserved attention relates back to the early 1990s when Peter Stapleton persuaded Montgomery to join him, Kim Pieters and Janine Stagg in a band called Dadamah. They made some recordings which Bruce Russell took with him on a trip to the US hoping to find someone who'd release them, and lo and behold, they had a couple of singles and an LP out on Majora. And this stuff was...different. Velvets-style strum'n'clatter destroyed by freaked electronics and very "out" vocals, Dadamah sounded as if they were beaming direct to your frontal lobes from some distant reality. The album and 7-inches are gone now, but luckily for you Kranky re-issued the whole bundle as a CD compilation.
As well as reviving interest in The Pin Group and their dark, low-key Velvets-via-Joy Division influenced songs, Dadamah re-started Roy Montgomery's musical career. In a pretty big way, too. He's released albums and singles on all sorts of labels and been the subject of lots of interviews and articles. And I guess you can kind of understand the fuss when you hear his recordings, especially Fantasia on a Theme by Sandy Bull, his contribution to Drunken Fish's Harmony of the Spheres box-set. Montgomery's side-long guitar piece wraps around you like a warm, narcotic fog into which you'll want to immerse yourself again and again. Temple IV on Kranky isn't too slack, either. Shorter songs this time, but still more of his rich, melodic and incredibly atmospheric playing. Scenes from the South Island features evocative images of the New Zealand mainland, a release many regard as Montgomery's best. Personally I find the dark ringing tones of And Now the Rain Sounds Like Life Is Falling Down Through It to be particularly satisfying with "In Our Own Time" one of the best vocal performances I've heard from the man. 324 E.13th St. #7 is a compilation of various singles/random tracks from different sources, necessary if you don't have the original items but a bit patchy as it lacks the coherency and consistency tying his longer releases together. The Allegory of Hearing released in 2000 by Drunken Fish (as with the previous-mentioned three) contains more excursions into reverb-drenched guitar/organ/e-bow harmonics. It's a sound instantly familiar yet Montgomery's expansive melodic sense keeps it fresh.
One other project Montgomery was involved in is Dissolve, a group based around him and fellow New Zealander Chris Heaphy. Dissolve put out two albums on Kranky, That That Is...Is (Not) and Third Album for the Sun. The first of these is duo recordings, not quite your "typical" Montgomery release because it's not Montgomery, it's Dissolve (sorry!) two guitars, kind of dark, imaginary soundtracks, etc etc. I like it and I think you might too. Third Album... is different. Other people contribute here, at times: The Bats' Kaye Woodward plays guitar and sings on a few tracks (the Bats were Robert Scott (Clean, etc), Paul Kean (Toy Love, etc), Kaye Woodward and Malcolm Grant, they released a lot of records on Flying Nun, toured a lot and were generally a very very pleasant experience. I guess they finished up a while ago now), John Chrisstoffels (Terminals and a whole lot of other ChCh scuzz bands) contributes cello while Arnie Van Bussel (the owner/operator of Nightshift Studios in Christchurch, recording site for a lot of hot poop the likes of we'll probably never hear again) plays bass. It's a more song-based release than other Montgomery recordings, owing maybe to the collaborative nature and there's a sort of non-linear reference to certain 80s groups but obviously moving forward from there. Both Dissolve albums are good but again, they are more than just Montgomery. A third Heaphy/Montgomery collaboration is available, True on Kranky. The Dissolve name has been dropped here and it's half solo Montgomery, half Heaphy/Montgomery but the music (originally scored for a live theatre project) is as image-laden and emotionally-charged as anything from Dissolve.
Various periods throughout the 90s saw Montgomery slumming it with a few other interesting bands both in the US and UK. He recorded an album with American drug-rockers Bardo Pond, the name was changed to Hash Jar Tempo for the proceedings and the end result, Well Oiled with its murky guitar extrapolations definitely suggests a very smokey session. The players met up again in 1998 and recorded a second album Under Glass. Listening here you're funneled through some very loose guitar drone/howl, it's quite transfixing. The second collaboration was with Flying Saucer Attack in the UK. Montgomerey played live with them one night and one song made it onto the Goodbye EP (on VHF.) A meeting of great rural pyschedelia, and you'd never realise it had happened. Guess we should have been there...
Jumping back in time here; at about the same time as the Pin Group (beginning of the 80s) Peter Stapleton was playing in another band, the Vacuum, along with Stephen Cogle, Bill Direen and Alan Meek. According to some reports seeing the Vacuum play was like seeing the Velvets live in Christchurch and from what little recorded evidence exists (a couple of songs on Split Seconds, the third in Flying Nun's excellent Bill Direen re-issue series. Direen has long been a part of the NZ music "scene" but is generally ignored/underappreciated(?) by just about everyone. Right this wrong and listen to the first three of the CD re-issue series!) I wish I'd been old enough/known enough to be there.
Vacuum fell apart, as seemed to be the way back then, transmuting into the Victor Dimisich Band. Cogle, Stapleton, Meek and newcomer Tony O'Grady made the music this time, continuing with that Christchurch sound and that style. The Victor Dimisich Band...here's a criminally under-heralded group. They released one long-gone EP on F. Nun which I'm sure no one has ever heard, let alone seen (you should try and hear it.) Bruce Russell documented some of their archival recordings (live and studio) on his Xpressway label with the Mekong Delta Blues cassette; again, it's gone now. But there's another addition to the continuing re-discovery of Christchurch with the release of My Name is K on Stapleton's Medication label. This is a reissue of the F. Nun EP and a number of tracks from the Xpressway cassette. Plus there's some different stuff here too, and it's all as important to hear as the Pin Group.
For the F. Nun EP the Victor Dimisich Band had one extra member, Mary Heney. A while later she and Stapleton and Brian Crook (later in the Terminals and the Renderers, see below) turned up as part of Scorched Earth Policy. Also involved here were Mick Elborado (again in the Terminals) Andre Dawson and Andrea Cocks. They were scary, musically and otherwise, perhaps the best "punk" group to ever come out of ChCh. Raw and intense and wonderful. Two EPs came out on Flying Nun-Dust to Dust and Going Through a Hole in the Back of Your Head-later reissued on the Xpressway cassette Foaming Out along with a bunch of live recordings. Not suprisingly they approximate a rougher version of the Terminals even down to a few of the songs (the Xpressway release has yet another version of the epochal "Mekong Delta Blues," though perhaps not one of the best.) The F. Nun and Xpressway releases are no more but they have been compiled on the Medication release Keep Away From the Wires.
It was more than good news when, in the late 80s, Cogle and Stapleton and some others appeared out of seemingly oblivion to form the Terminals. Since the early days of their Flying Nun releases this band have developed from playing "gothic garage" into a howling, intense beast. Quite possibly NZ's best rock band, and to see them live on a good night is a revelation. Held together by Stapleton and bassist John Christoffel's thick, dense rhythms, Brian Crook (also in the Renderers) draws beautiful noise from his guitar. Meanwhile Cogle strums away seemingly detached and filling the spaces with his unique voice. On top of all this Mick Elborado lays down the kind of gorgeous keyboard-splurge rarely heard since the days of Eno-era Roxy Music or early Pere Ubu singles.
Fortunately the Terminals recorded their progress. There were two F. Nun releases, an EP and LP reissued as the Cul-de-Sac CD compilation (now deleted?) which caught the band in more of a 60s garage style than the darker sounds of later releases. These were two studio albums Touch and Little Things, the latter a terrifyingly wonderous product. Plus one live CD on Stapleton's Medication inprint. That and a bunch of very good singles, including Psycho Lives/Witchdoctor; to these simple ears one of the best rock singles of the past decade. You should listen to the Terminals. You can read more about them in an interview with Stapleton. And know that in 2007 they released Last Days of the Sun, their first new studio album in about twelve years, and it's simply fantastic. Cogle's in strong vocal form, Stapleton and Crook have delivered another set of darkly-themed lyrics, and the band have come up with some of their most densely melodic music yet. Out on Last Visible Dog, who said "Close in spirit to Touch and Little Things, but with some maturity and perspective added. Shades of Velvet Underground and Wire, but as always, the Terminals remain their own band." A group of middle-aged men from Christchurch produce the best rock album in ages. Excellent.