Can’t have a daily NZ music post in May without featuring Vanessa Worm. Here’s the atypical bass/ drums/ guitar/ voice song “Everything You Do”:

Vanessa Worm originated in the Dunedin underground electronic/ experimental scene that developed in the now defunct None Gallery performance space. A move to Melbourne and EP releases on Glasgow’s Optimo dance label were followed by a hard to categorise first album “Vanessa 77” in 2020. Back in NZ and based in Auckland, Worm then self-released a follow-up album “Mosaics” last year.  

The music Tessa Forde (Vanessa Worm) writes, produces and mixes could be called “electronic” or “dance” or “minimal techno” or “industrial” or “experimental”, or all of the above. Its willful oddness doesn’t fit easily in any comfortable singular music category or genre.

Although this track abandons electronic music altogether for post-punk guitar/bass/drums/vocals, the more usual VW approach involves tracks starting out as pneumatic techno or smooth Kruder & Dorfmeister style Balearic electronica with disturbed and disturbing vocal ruminations which are then sucked through the Worm-hole. It’s an agreeably subversive approach in this conformist age.