The last decade saw some impressive free outfits popping up all over New Zealand, for our purposes the most important (given that these are the only ones you're likely to hear and the only ones I can think of just now) being Thela, Surface of the Earth and Sandoz Lab Technicians. The latter released their first album on Siltbreeze in 1996. The album kind of falls flat in some parts, works well in others, but is promising and should be listened to. As usual, there are the obligatory never-to-be heard singles, but maybe you'll get lucky. There's also an album on The Lotus Sound, titled The Tale of Pixielamb. A lot more, um, determined than the first LP, this sounds very good. Their CD on Corpus Hermeticum - Let Me Lose My Mind Gracefully is one long (36 minutes) live recording from Dunedin (supporting Tony Conrad in 97), here they improvise freely across noise/jazz/drone, creating something beyond those three categorizations...as twee as it may read, an electro-acoustic journey into sound. Listening to this now, I'm a bit embarrassed to say I never followed Sandoz Lab Technicians into the 21st Century; my loss given their rather unique place in the NZ noise-psych universe.
I like Thela a lot, so it's a real pity they disbanded after only releasing a few very limited singles and two CDs, Thela and Argentina these both on Ecstatic Peace. A trio of Dean Roberts, Paul Douglas and Dion Workman they came from Auckland. Which is kind of surprising given that city's paucity of interesting bands; most musicians up there seem content to look to the charts for inspiration, it's pretty hard to think of many rigorously good bands from up North. Both the CDs (I have yet to hear the other recordings) are made up of scraped, droned improvised guitar and (occasionally overwhelming) percussion, both non-extreme free/noise recordings sometimes veering into non-bozo rock, both very good. I kind of prefer Argentina over the first, self-titled CD; it just sort of gels more than the first. But whatever, these two releases are a good place to start if you're new to the NZ "free" scene. The rest of you should enjoy them, too.
Post-Thela, but the members coninued recording. Dean Roberts, as White-Winged Moth released an album I Can See Inside Your House on Poon Village in 1996. This followed in the spirit of Thela, solo guitar work of subdued elegance. Again, recommended. There's also an album, Silo Blanket on his own Formacentric label, unfortunately a very limited pressing, one of the Geraldine lathe-cut releases. Very much like the Poon Village release, this is solo guitar workings of a non-linear form, and while the Formacentric album doesn't impress as much as the earlier release this may be a result of familiarity rather than anything else. I do find that Roberts impresses on another limited Formacentric lathe-cut LP, Cassavetes, where he is joined by Guy Treadgold on percussion. Between the two of them they move from creating an almost non-existent ambience, subdued guitar manipulations and layers of randomly-shifting percussion all drifting in and out of focus on one of the side-long pieces to something a lot more busy on the other; scraped droning strings and very free percussion, loaded with "out" jazz connotations. Track it down if possible. Album number three (I think) on Formacentric is a solo Dean Roberts release Moth Park/Soundtracks to Utopia. Again as with the White Winged Moth releases we have solo explorations of guitar potentialities; again eschewing noise, etc in favour of a cleaner, clearer, discreet sound. Formacentric release number four, Ribbon Arcade, sees Roberts working with a variety of sound sources (guitar, cello, bass, percussion, zither, LPs, CDs are all listed as instruments) processed and edited into a new sound-world - ie a new direction? Still with the distinctive feel of earlier recordings but this time achieved through an increasingly complex sound. Moth Park.. and Ribbon Arcade are on CD and probably a little easier to find than the LPs/Geraldine pressings. But you should try for these, too. And obviously check out this interview (once more from Opprobrium) for all the information you need to live with Thela.
With the release of All Cracked Medias on Mille Plateaux it seems we've seen the end of Robert's Formacentric label. This particular release is described as: All sounds were generated via acoustic Piano, Percussion and Guitar. No sound has been manipulated to a point of becoming aware of the events of another. The distanciation of relationships is intended to invent parralel events between each set of materials and their engagement with the performer. Through this, a meta-language is established by which the dialogue between sounds is apparent through the cracks in the media. Not quite as dry as it sounds, here we have a juxtapositioning of sounds from the above-mentioned sources to create a basically engaging sound collage. Roberts as you may know has gone on to create quite a name for himself in the avant/post-rock scene and has a continually-expanding series of releases documenting his sonic investigations. Publications like the Wire and various online sites cover his newer work in more detail than I'm able so search around if you want to know more.
The other Thela members continued recording with releases under the names Rosy Parlane and Parmentier. Two CDs of guitar and electronics explorations on the Sigma Editions label suggest an expansion of the ideas behind Thela...you may be able to find out more at the House of Laudanum. Earlier limited lathe cuts were released - Parmentier had a double 8-inch lathe disk available on the NZ Crawlspace label and there is a Rosy Parlane collaboration with Pit Viper on the Imperial label. Undoubtedly all gone now but you can also hear Parmentier on the Fit For Kings compilation or check the Unearth homepage, along with Dan Vallor's web site devoted to the lathe cut universe perhaps your best hope of tracking down obscure NZ lathe-cut releases.
One of the more recent bands of note to come out of NZ, Wellington in fact, (one of the few bands of note to come out of Wellington...) Surface of the Earth have, as far as I'm aware, just a couple of releases generally available. There's a 7" inch and an LP Interference both on Fusetron and a CD on Corpus Hermeticum. Low frequency drones, dense guitar churn, long sustained feedback flow...gorgeous almost ambient drones wrap around your head like some kind of warm, loving entity that wants to plug you into some "special" reality. Or, to put it simply, Taking the fundamental frequencies of electric mains power as their main themes, (Surface of the Earth) have created a universe of austere beauty where listening to nothing happen can rivet your head to the nearest wall. They use synth drones, guitars and mutilated electronic debris to create a soundspace where layers of distortion, hum and buzz hang like veils in the air, each disrupting the aural view of the layer beneath, without completely obscuring it from audibility. Imagine if you will, a distortion without soundsource to distort, a reverberation without an initial sound to echo, and you are close to grasping the magic of Surface of the Earth. Justified hype. Also applicable to K-Group, a side project utilizing guitar and electronics from S.O.T.E-er Paul Toohey, made available by the friendly Corpus Hermeticum crew. Kind of inseperable from S.O.T.E. but operating at slightly different frequencies; here are some of the richest noise-oriented drone/minimalist/pure tone sounds I've heard in a long time (maybe even since the Earth 2 release on Subpop, possibly the ultimate rock-as-drone album.) Uh, does this make any sense? Whatever...just soak it all up.
Crude is someone called Matt Middleton, a clarinet, a guitar, a synthesiser, drums, some other stuff. Plus sometimes a few other people. And Inner City Guitar Perspectives on Flying Nun (there's still life here!) is as beautifully wrecked as this can all be whilst still retaining an air of easy listening "respectability." Honestly, if you ignore the cheap cynicism of a few of the tracks (or not, you choose) this is a startlingly good release, and one you should be listening to right now. Who is this person, and does he really have "16 albums worth of material" as claimed in the liner notes on the CD? Dunno, but at least one of these may-or-may-not-be LPs turned up as volume 2 of the Center of the Ass Run series, an inexplicable subset of the equalling confounding Actuel Ass Run series, undoubtedly the product of pot-addled minds making for some very happy listening. The Crude release Refute a Myth Society is like a compressed version of Inner City Guitar Perspectives; but with more churn and cheesiness (listen to that synth!) Crawlspace Records have a single available Bionica featuring a very primitive electronic rhythm, anyone remember Cabaret Voltaire? Another single came out on the Trinder label though I've yet to hear it. On top of all this is a CD Sax Sothis (Juggernaut Records) featuring what I can only assume is some sort of revenge against 70s-era music combined with much heavy-duty synth fuckery and some mean clarinet/sax stylings. Plus an unexpected thirty minutes (or so) of fine noise/guitar feedback spew at the end. Crude is really very good, and there is more out there, cassettes and lathe cuts. Perhaps the best way to get in touch is via the Unearth homepage. As to "who this person is," he fits somewhere into the weird "garage"/"scum" rock scene based around a bunch of people from Christchurch and Dunedin, bands like Brother Love and Space Dust with some nicely fucked rock records out on a variety of labels. I don't quite know what is happening with these people nowadays, but pay attention to the names and listen to what they have done/are doing. Other Middleton-related projects include All Electric a duo of Middleton and Shaun Jury with a CD-R of 50 copies plus a lathe-cut single on Crude's own Dirtlove label - well gone now. If you ever see the CD grab it fast and wallow in the low-fi guitar churn overlaid with cracked synthesizer; it culminates in an incredible extendo-blurt piece of monster-sized proportions. Jury and Middleton also come together in the Aesthetics with a track on the Fit For Kings compilation (see below), a bunch of lathe cuts, and more importantly, a great Ecstatic Peace LP My Right To Riches, prime scuzz-punk described by Byron Coley (I think) as like "prime dead c copping moves from the killed by death series or chrome buried in grime".
I was mightly impressed when I first encountered The Garbage and the Flowers, a band out of Wellington. Wellington - one of the last places you expect to hear good music from; a city I've always found to be particularly lacking in spirit and stimulation. So it was surprising to hear the Twisted Village 7" Catnip/Carousel and a little later Nothing going down at all, their contribution to Shock Record's Twisted Village compilation Deep Funnels of Entry. The 7" features an energetic, trashy blast of noisy pop ("Catnip") coupled with the almost elegant, folky, drony "Carousel." This sounded like it should have emerged from Dunedin in the early 1980s, which was even more the case with the Shock track; mirroring so many elements of music from that time and place, especially it's Velvet Underground stylings. Not that it was revisionist or anything, just a very welcome, and epic, continuation of a fine tradition. These songs turned up in the early 90s, a few cassettes had also been recorded and released privately at about the same time. After that nothing more was heard of TGATF (the band having broken up in 1992) until 1996 when a couple of tracks appeared on Alastair Galbraith's Next Best Way label compilation Runner. I must guiltily admit to never having heard this particular CD, perhaps one day soon. Meanwhile a couple of members (Helen Johnstone, who had sang and played viola, and Yuri Frusin, who played guitar) formed a band called Dress (interviewed in Opprobrium) and released a 10" Geraldine pressing...all not particularly useful for those of us who wanted to hear more of these people. So, I was kind of excited when I discovered a double LP of The Garbage and the Flowers was being released on The Now Sound. A limited LP-only pressing of 300 copies, Eyes Rind As If Beggars is good, but not quite as good as hoped. This consists mainly of material from their cassettes, and while approximating the T. Village single and comp. tracks it's obvious the earlier T. Village releases are the band's best work. The album's very primitive in parts (with a particulary "loose" version of "Nothing Going Down;" I don't know why they bothered) but still informed by the kind of psych/folk/Velvets/noise aesthetic found on the other releases (and which has been so important in NZ generally,) just in a way-rougher form. There was talk of Eyes Rind As If Beggars coming out on CD, supposedly being released in 1998. Guess we're still waiting.
Blenhiem is a town you probably don't know much about, but you should know it's home to Clinton Williams who, as Omit chronicles his life in an almost post Jandek-ian way (operating at a similar level of "mystery" and isolation) via processed electronics, home-spun instrumentation and field recordings. Omit has up to now existed as a classic case of small time obscurisim; elusive releases (his sole interview published in Opprobrium #2 listed 13 cassettes) usually packaged with painstakingly rendered outsider art pointing at what most would call some kind of obsessive freak; those who have heard or seen the processed matter first hand know better. Here's what H/Corp had to say about him: "Clinton Williams has been on a highly personal journey into sound since the late 1980s. Starting from scratch, using modified electric motors as his sole sound source, he has built up a home studio and battery of hand-made and salvaged electronic sound sources, with which to pursue his researches into the human psyche. Working in complete isolation for several years, before making contact with a few like-minded souls in other parts of the world, he has released a mass of cassettes and lathe-cut polycarbonate records on his own Deep Skin Conceptual Mind Music imprint. He has also collaborated with Bruce Russell as Dust/Omit, and Paul Toohey as Omit/K Group."
Corpus Hermeticum saw fit to release an Omit three CD box set entitled Quad in a very attractive package; the most ambitious H/Corp product, and actually a reissue of a double C90 cassette issued at some previous moment when virtually no-one had any conception that some pretty radical paradigm-tweaking was taking place in a town that no-one knows. The sounds within: Reference is often made to the colder electronic abstractions of certain 70s Krautrock figureheads, and that's certainly true in places. But on Quad Omit pushes way beyond that, into an austere, at times almost ramshackle zone of personal electronic exploration.
Originally Omit was distributed via Xpressway, about the only place you could find the recordings. A few 7"s augmented the cassettes; one, Retraction, on the inexplicable Stomach Ache label, The Invasion State on Dunedin label Trinder, and a collaboration with A Handful of Dust called Forecasts released on Fisheye. You should assume that these are now all out of print but are probably worth the effort it might take to track 'em down. More recently was another collaboration with Dust, this one longer and resulting in a CD on Corpus Hermeticum, now unfortunately out of print. Unfortunate as it's such a great document of supreme non-alienating noise.
The opening sounds of rooting, grunting pigs on Interior Desolation, Omit CD two from Corpus Hermeticum, suggest disturbing things ahead—perhaps a transmogrification of the listener into a human truffle. But what gradually emerges is starkly riveting sound manipulation with a very attractive low-fi immediacy. Meanwhile, a rare collaboration with K-Group produced the Slow Movement 7", a supreme piece of electronically modulated alienation, followed up in 2002 by Storage, an LP on Fusetron: "Seven tracks of analog synth generated sounds captured on a hard drive, and then edited, rearranged, inverted and tweaked to produce music described as the calm a newly sedated patient feels just prior to a surgical procedure".
Since the release of these various items, Omit has put in live appearances at Lines of Flight, part of the Dunedin Fringe Festival, and had another CD made available - 2005's Tracer, on the Helen Scarsdale Agency label. Here's what David Keenan said in the Wire: "The feel remains deeply homemade, with analogue synths, primitive drum machines, hi-jacked electronics, tape loops and a boatload of effects combined in sad assemblages that cross moments of documentary-style field recordings with beautiful processionals that recall the more austere Ambient works of Asmus Tietchens and Klaus Schulze, Other parts are a little more schlocky, like music for a 1960s BBC sci-fi serial, but even here there's something supremely melancholy about the lonesome play of analogue codes around little signs of synthesized melody. Indeed, this one might even top Corpus Hermeticum's Quad triple CD set as the best Omit release to date." Looks like more is on the way, too—here's hoping!