Today’s little offering of New Zealand music goodness is not a new song in the contemporaneous meaning of the word “new” but it may well have been a new song for Dunedin noise-pop stars Mr Biscuits way back in 2011.
Mr Biscuits recorded – and released – one of the Great Lost Dunedin albums. “New Song” is on it. Had they survived their fights and meltdowns Mr Biscuits could have (should have) signed to Kill Rock Star records and been a hit all over the world. They also released one of the great lost Dunedin live albums too.
Mr Biscuits were vocalist Sarah Ley-Hamilton, guitarists Richard Ley-Hamilton (Males, Asta Rangu) and Adrian Ng (Trick Mammoth, Mavis Gary) and drummer Sam Valentine (Males, Trick Mammoth).
Back at the time Mr Biscuits explained their inevitable brevity:
“The dynamic is unstable, and there is a lot of existing tension from old issues. We used to hang out a lot but lately things have been much more difficult. We’re simultaneously each others best friends and worst enemies. We love each other but there have been heaps of fights and meltdowns. We’ve even broken up more than a few times but that’s part of what we are about. Without the tension you wouldn’t get the passion that we hopefully convey.”
“New Song” is also on a forgotten compilation of 31 mostly Dunedin musical jewels released in 2011 by the Dunedin Comic Collective as the official musical accompaniment to DUD: the Dunedin Comic Revue, issue #02, which is the embed shared here. There are all sorts of weird and wonderful compilations featuring New Zealand music hidden in plain sight on Bandcamp if you know where to look for them. In future, digital music archeologists will study them for signs of new scenes forming in the detritus of the old scenes. Or maybe they will just be forgotten, like digital dust.