“Lay Out” by Bathysphere

Meanwhile back in Dunedin Bathysphere released a gem of an album in 2021 that you may not have discovered yet. Here they “Lay Out” their Dunedin post-noise-rock sound:

Bathysphere is made up of a who’s-who of the Dunedin music underground, including Trace / Untrace Records founders Julie Dunn (Asta Rangu, Mary Berry) and Richard Ley-Hamilton (Asta Rangu, Space Bats, Attack!, Males), with Josh Nicholls (Koizilla, Space Bats, Attack!, Asta Rangu, Fazed on a Pony, Pearly*) and Peter McCall (Fazed on a Pony).

The music is kind of noise-rock, kind of post-rock, kind of shoegaze. Unconsciously it somehow provides echoes – if you listen carefully – of elements from each of the past four decades of that distinctive low-key understated noisy Dunedin guitar rock. In particular there’s something of the spirit of Bad Sav in the songs on this album and the way the guitars construct the sonic structures that give these songs their shape and atmosphere, but with some added dissonance.

Dunn’s introspective vocals are submerged in the mix, which has the disorienting effect of providing subdued contrast to the guitar-wrestling noise and also drawing the listener in to get enveloped in the whole band sound.

“Lull” by HDU

Only fitting to follow a noisy guitar-dominated tune from Dunedin band Bad Sav with another, calmer, guitar-driven sonic storm from Dunedin’s High Dependency Unit/ HDU – “Lull”:

“Lull” is from HDU’s 1998 album “Higher + +” which is one of the classic NZ experimental post-rock albums. It encapsulates perfectly the dreamy astral psychedelia side of the band, usually remembered for their searing futuristic “space blues” soundscapes of walls of firestorm guitar and thunderous bass over tight patterns of crunching drums.  It’s wonderful to see the whole glorious catalogue of HDU albums available on Bandcamp for new generations  and audiences to discover, including the wonderous “Metamathics” recorded at Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio studio in Chicago.

“Pets” by Bad Sav

Bit of a nostalgia trip with today’s NZ Music Month offering, released back in the optimistic days of 2018, and yes, it has appeared on PopLib 5 years ago but no rules about repeats here so let’s get our ears syringed with the glorious guitar noise of Bad Sav’s “Pets”:

The sonic storm-front from Bad Sav leader, guitarist and vocalist Hope Robertson’s guitar arrives at the two and a half minute mark, exploding with controlled fury and then continuing to build, forming layer upon layer of gloriously distorted noise as it turns itself into something both hostile and embracing. It’s an utterly beautiful, wrenching song that rewards being played on repeat and loud.

Hearing Bad Sav play this live was always a treat and a thrill. The structural noise filled the room, vibrating every atom as they tore a hole in the fabric of space and time, particularly with the amazing improv destruction ending to “Pets”. The way it ended was different every time, but on a great night (and most Bad Sav performances were great) the song ended like a universe of “Index of Metals”-era Robert Fripp guitar loops disintegrating as it is pulled into a black hole.

Robertson said “Pets” “is a breakup song even though it doesn’t sound like it. It was a “I don’t need to worry about this stuff because I’ve got my pets” kinda thing.”

“When I write a song if I’m so upset or angry or an emotion has gone beyond words, and just write some music and say, “Well, that sums it up”, I don’t think there’s any words necessary. At other times, words are totally necessary; if there’s an actual issue that’s happened or something you wanna discuss with yourself in songwriting then I’ll do that…”

“Bones” by The Circling Suns

Friday night is alright for jazz. Here’s the exuberant Latin grooves of the opening track “Bones” from the extraordinary album “Spirits” released by NZ jazz ensemble The Circling Sun on UK label Soundway Records last year.

“Spirits” features lush and sometimes Cosmic/ Kosmiche astral jazz elements as well as spiritual/modal jazz and the Latin rhythms here. The album is recommended if you like Sun Ra, Pharoah Sanders and Alice Coltrane, or the more contemporary and funky Jazz Is Dead series of albums for that matter, but also very approachable if you are a novice to this particular musical world.

Been playing a lot of jazz this past year since the portal back to that earlier part of my music listening timeline was blown wide open by the Rich Ruth album “I Survived, It’s Over”, so if you dig this check out Rich Ruth too. “Spirits” hits the spot.

“Orlando” by Thorn Dells

I know I bang on here on PopLib about the current/ recent Dunedin underground scene and also how there’s so much essential music existing in the not-on-label twilight music underworld shared via Bandcamp and I’m not going to stop. Drives me wild that only a handful of people appear to be aware of music like Thorn Dells “Silicon Pink” album. Here’s “Orlando” from it:

 The Koputai/ Port Chalmers, Ōtepoti/ Dunedin duo Thorn Dells is Nikolai Sim (Élan Vital, Kolya) and Lucinda King (Death And The Maiden, Bad Sav). “Silicon Pink” is a fantasia of dark hybrid electronic pop, each song a shift in time and space, mixing light and darkness, electronic pop and more exploratory sounds.

“Orlando” here is as out of character as everything on the album, its brooding guitar-dominated futurist post-punk somehow channeling some kind of imaginary post-grunge Breeders sonic mutation.  

The whole album all feels majestic and epic, the kind of album you would expect to hear on a major independent label (4AD, Mute, etc.) but in the 2020s self-releasing through Bandcamp is where you will find the sound of today’s essential exploratory music underground.

“The Method” by Half Hexagon

Half Hexagon are a trio from dystopian Auckland. Or maybe a dystopian trio from Auckland. Or maybe just a trio from Auckland who make music that could be a soundtrack to some dystopian thriller in which rebels on analog bicycles lure Ford Ranger-driving zombies into an ambush halfway down Dominion Road. “The Method” is whatever your imagination wants it to be:

Half Hexagon combine the talents of unlikely collaborators Yolanda Fagan (Na Noise, Echo-ohs), Julien Dyne (The Lahaar, The Circling Sun), and James Milne (Lawrence Arabia). The relentless motorik pace of “The Method” sounds almost as if the garage psych-rock of Na Noise has been wired up through synths operated by the descendants of “Space Ritual” era Hawkwind. Love this kind of retro-futuristic electronica untethered to any particular scene or sub-genre. Welcome to The Future.

“The Pip” by Recitals

Wellington/ Pōneke septet Recitals released their first album “Orbit I” towards the end of 2022. It’s one of those debut albums that arrives as a fully-formed work of wonder. I loved it so much I had to buy the LP. Here’s the mostly quiet and dreamlike “The Pip”:

Recitals are Xanthe Brookes (bass, vocals, guitar), Carla Camilleri (synth, vocals), Christian Dimick (guitar, vocals), Josh Finegan (drums), Sam Curtiss (guitar), Tharushi Bowatte (trumpet), and Olivia Wilding (cello).

“The Pip” seems to be about meta interconnectivity – the pip inside the orange and the (possible future) orange inside the pip. Most Recitals songs alternate between a kind of woozy dream-pop blissed-out state and a wild, verging-on-psychedelic rapturous freak out state and “the Pip” takes its time before briefly combusting into euphoric noise-pop cacophany. Those dream-like early stages of the song reminded me of an Auckland collective from 20 years ago called Tokey Tones.

“Orbit I” is a great album, and while Recitals are not Polyphonic Spree, Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev or The Besnard Lakes there are elements in their music that I’m pretty sure would also appeal to fans of those bands. So don’t be shy, check “Orbit I” out.

“Up The Harbour” by Seafog

Forty years ago, after the first burst of The Clean uncoiled, the Kilgour brothers recorded a low-key album “Clean Out Of Our Minds” as The Great Unwashed and referenced their hometown in “What You Should Be Now” with the opening lines: “Saw you back in Dunedin/things seems strange there”.

Things are still strange here, and none stranger than Port Chalmers institution Seafog who carry the lop-sided jangle of early Clean/ Great Unwashed in the opening track of their best album yet, “Slow Death”. Here’s “Up The Harbour”:

Seafog are guitarist and lead vocalist Robin Sharma (Jetty), guitarist Nigel Waters, bass guitarist Andrew Barsby and drummer Martyn Sadler. As they expained a while back: “Seafog are a 4 piece that have been around for a while. We play in the garage out Port, sometimes like our lives depend on it.”

“Slow Death” is the band’s fourth album. It’s got all the charms of its predecessors, but this one seems less idiosyncratic and more instantly approachable. The distinctive stream-of-semi-conscious-delerium-fuelled excursion from frontman Robin Sharma (Jetty) are reigned in somewhat and a more reflective tone pervades the album, although he still sometimes sounds like he’s possessed by forces beyond his control.

There’s something here for everyone from loose jangling songs that stand out in the crowd as being from Dunedin, through to a trumpet-led instrumental “Moa” and a whole lot of fuzzed up, Sonic Youth-styled wall-of-guitar noise good times in between.

It’s not a Seafog album unless there’s a song about a song, or a band, or an album. “Slow Death” obliges with “Warm Flows” about listening to Brian Eno: “here come the warm jets again” . For good measure the album closes with the Iggy-esque “Sick”. Can’t get more Dunedin-with-West-Harbour attitude than Seafog.

“Leanest Cut” by Death And The Maiden

Let’s stay in Dunedin some more… it’s home! A new release from Birdation started this run of posts. As noted two posts back Birdation’s Hope Robertson is better known for being the guitarist in Bad Sav and Dunedin’s post-punk+electronic slow-motion dance band Death And The Maiden. There’s finally a new, third album coming out from DATM, called “Uneven Ground”. The first single ahead of that release is “Leanest Cut”.

Bassist and vocalist Lucinda King is the bedrock here, musical guide and storyteller. Guitarist Hope Robertson weaves swooping, soaring motifs and guitar noise to build analogue atmosphere for this alternate world. Danny Brady’s beats mix old-school drum machines with electronic tones and distortion, amniotic synths and and field recordings.

“Leanest Cut” is an blurred moment in uncertain time, washed through with psychic unease and expressing the existential uncertainty that comes with both the passage of time and symptomatic of everything we have all been through these past 5 years.

Death In The Maiden’s eponymous 2014 debut was followed by the glorious and lushly detailed “Wisteria” in 2018. “Leanest Cut” here suggests the new album “Uneven Ground” will be a step up and outwards sonically, even as the lyrics turn more inward than the epic worlds evoked in some of the songs in “Wisteria”. All the familiar elements each person in the trio brings to their distinctive sound remain intact; at once familiar, but also different, like a new skin.

There’s also a video for the song, filmed by photographer Chris Schmelz in one of the bays around Port Chalmers using 16mm film that expired in the mid 60’s and hand-processed using caffenol in the laundry of his house. The white lawn furniture submerged in the water belonged to Lucinda’s nan and the video is a kind of cathartic reverence to the swirl of grief and memories she was feeling at that time.

While you are down the Death And The Maiden rabbit hole make sure you visit Thorn Dells, Lucinda King’s music with Nikolai Sim (Élan Vital). Their album “Silicon Pink” is one of the great unheralded masterpieces of Dunedin’s darkwave electronic pop scene, and an ideal companion piece to the works of Death And The Maiden.

“Haggard” by Birdation

It has been several years (8 to be exact) since the last Birdation release during which time chief ‘bird-racer’ and guitar/sound alchemist Hope Robertson has recorded a couple of Death And The Maiden albums and the exceptional been-and-gone eponymous Bad Sav album. So this new song “Haggard” is a momentous occasion:

“Haggard” is a gloriously upbeat (in a downbeat way) woozy lo-fi guitar-and-stuff instrumental woven through with dubby echoes of itself and semi-glitchy percussion and sound manipulation. It puts my head in the same space as recent favourites like the album of evocative guitar instrumentals “For The Morning” by Australian guitarist Sarah Hardiman under the alias LOU.

I could listen to a whole album of these exploratory experimental guitar tunes should Birdation ever by inclined to compose/ compile/ collate such a thing, hopefully not with an 8 year wait between each track.

[Update: Wish granted. Not even an 8 day wait for “a real handful” of Birdation tunes. Chur.]