“Untitled” by Vanessa Worm and Danny Creature

Happy New Year…. well, here’s hoping. One thing’s for sure, as with the past two years, it will be music that help us get through the unknown ahead. Two things actually; music and Bandcamp. To prepare us for the unexpected of the unknown here’s Vanessa Worm and Danny Creature with their “Untitled“:

“Untitled” is an abstract dance meditation improvisation. It was “jam made just hours after seeing you on the street” but as with everything on the extraordinary unique Vanessa Worm album “Vanessa 77″ this goes off-piste in the most unexpected ways.

Danny Creature (Thought Creature, Death and the Maiden, Élan Vital‘s Danny Brady) provides the slinky acid-adjacent groove and bassline, weaving in chintzy analogue rhythm machine tones and a little breakbeat snare sample to spin the wheels. Vanessa Worm does Vanessa Worm over top of this compulsively danceable groove, which is to improvise unexpected exploratory sounds and vocalisations.

“Untitled” is one of 24 tracks on a compilation of electronic-themed music from Dunedin artists released on Christmas Eve called “Music for Christmases”: “A fun, fast project, and an odd Christmas gift. Originals, or deconstructed Christmas covers, made on machines. But nothing too Christmassy, eh.” say the compilers.

“Hourglass” by Death And The Maiden

NZ Music Every Godzone Month! sign from Too Tone Records in Dunedin.

Our New Zealand Music Month song for day # 23 is “Hourglass” from Port Chalmers trio Death And The Maiden.

“Cold ocean…” intones Lucinda King as we are led into the eery, hypnotic world-in-a-song of “Hourglass”. Hope Robertson’s guitar swoops in time with Danny Brady’s subtle drum machine beats and synth arpeggios. “Collected hourglasses, filled the room up, but all that time: useless…” 

Death And The Maiden’s second album “Wisteria” is shrouded in a cool, misty ambience. It is an unusual but thrilling and muscular hybrid between electronic music and dark post-punk and an a Gothic kind of psychedelia.

“Talk In Tongues” by Thought Creature

Thought Creature performing in the Radio One studio in Dunedin during their 2018 “Ocean Dream” album tour.

Day 6 of PopLib’s 31 days of May New Zealand Music Month madness marathon on psychedelic Sunday is “Talking in Tongues” from the new album “Ocean Dream” by Wellington via Berlin group Thought Creature.

Thought Creature have a distinctive sound and “Talking in Tongues” here shows the range of influences; combining dance music, some Cure-ish post-punk/ New Wave, the raw spirit of garage rock, and a liberal dusting of psychedelia effortlessly into a cartoonish fusion of danceable grooviness.

There’s a good interview with Thought Creature on Under the Radar NZ here.

Here’s Thought Creature’s recent live-to-air in Radio One’s studio in Dunedin – first track is “Talking in Tongues” and hang around for more psychedelic dance goodness after that (including the glorious “Paradise” to finish).

If you recognise the bassist here, it’s Danny Brady of Dunedin bands Death And The Maiden and Élan Vital. Thought Creature was the first band I saw Danny play in, on an A Low Hum tour show at Arc Cafe about 10 years ago. After Thought Creature moved to Berlin, Danny met a couple of other travelling NZ musicians – Lucinda King and Renee Barrance. On his return to NZ and move down to Dunedin he formed Death And The Maiden with Lucinda King and then Élan Vital with Renee Barrance.

As well as Danny, Thought Creature still has it’s original nucleus of guitarist/ vocalist Will Rattray (also in the excellent and closely-related psychedelic garage rock band Full Moon Fiasco) and supplemented on their recent NZ tour by drummer Andy Frost (Coyote) and Jelena Mirceta (Full Moon Fiasco) on keyboards.

 

 

“Costume Cave” by Thought Creature

Went to see Wellington-via-Berlin band Thought Creature play the first show of their NZ tour last night at the Cook in Dunedin. It was a brilliant night of energetic and therapeutic psychedelic garage dance music. If you are in NZ, make sure you catch them on tour this week. In the words of Will Creature on “Costume Cave” here – “don’t be late!”

“Custom Cave” is from their new album “Ocean Dream”. It fully captures the live energy of their distinctive mix of dance music energy to which a miasma of psychedelic guitar and keyboards and overdriven bass is added.

Thought Creature still has it’s original nucleus of guitarist/ vocalist Will Rattray (also in the excellent and closely-related psychedelic garage rock band Full Moon Fiasco) and bassist Danny Brady (also of Death And The Maiden and Élan Vital) and supplemented on this tour by drummer Andy Frost (Coyote) and Jelena Mirceta (Full Moon Fiasco) on keyboards.

There’s a good interview with Thought Creature on Under the Radar NZ here.

“Paradise” by Thought Creature

Day 27 of our 31 Days of May New Zealand Music Month marathon is a lost classic from 5 years ago by Wellington-via-Berlin band Thought Creature that not enough people have heard. Time to rectify that with a trip to their “Paradise” (play this L O U D)

“Paradise” is a guitar-heavy psychedelic dance groove celebration which would have sounded at home on a late 1980s Julian Cope album when the 1980s psychedelic pop revival was morphing into rave culture’s transcendental dance music.

Thought Creature’s Berlin sojourn in the early 2010s and their transformation into a noisy psychedelic electronica+guitar outfit led to the formation of two of Dunedin’s best genre melting electronica+ bands today – Death And The Maiden and Élan Vital. Both Dunedin bands trace their formation to Berlin around the time this song was released and the common denominator to all three bands is Danny Brady.

There’s another common denominator too: Erica Sklenars, who appears in this live video of “Paradise” from a Berlin house party and is a regular collaborator with Death And The Maiden and Élan Vital for music videos and live performance visuals.

“Dreams” by Élan Vital

Élan Vital – Photo by Phoebe Lysbeth K http://www.phoebelysbethk.com/

Day 13 of our 31 Days of May New Zealand Music Month marathon comes from Dunedin trio Élan Vital. It’s the closing track of their “Shadow Self” album and the song is called “Dreams”

“Dreams” has been a fixture in the Radio One Top 11 in Dunedin for the past 3 months. It’s not hard to work out why: it’s a great song with a compulsive kind of rhythm and lyrics most people can relate to.

“Dreams” stands out on “Shadow Self” for a couple of reasons. It’s the singing debut of Élan Vital (and Death and the Maiden) synth and electronic equipment alchemist Danny Brady.  It’s also the most human of the seven tracks which make up “Shadow Self” – a love song even.

When I first heard “Shadow Self” in its entirety the order of the tracks seemed a very deliberate progression from the harsh mechanical world of the opening title track, through worlds (each of the seven songs is a “world” in my imagination) which progressively incorporated more human elements from the voices and lyrics and emotion.

The album is a fantastic dark and richly textured exploration of scientific and human themes, incorporating lyrics and soundscapes inspired by dreams, nightmares, and horror movies. The music features an unusual combination of contemporary electronic dance music with more diverse influences from 60’s garage psych-rock (the swirling hypnotic keyboard parts by Renee Barrance), post-punk and muscular distorted bass playing a kind of mutant disco rhythm.

The closing track on the album, “Dreams”, conveys the clearest human connection of the seven experiences. It’s a song about release and freedom, love and hopefully even redemption.

From the cha-cha analogue drum machine at the start through to the breakdown and the echoing reprise by main vocalist Renee Barrance coming in at the 3 minute 30 mark the whole song is a seductive dance-floor classic. Danny’s morose yet caring vocals are the perfect understated voice for the song.

If you are in Dunedin there’s an extra chance to catch Élan Vital live at the Pioneer Hall in Port Chalmers tonight, Saturday 13 May 2017 along with another PopLib favourite Bad Sav.

“Even If You Try” (Death & The Maiden Remix) by Introverted Dancefloor

Introverted Dancefloor has released a set of remixes of it’s eponymous album, lead by Death And The Maiden‘s dark industrial revolution re-arrangement of the atomic structure of “Even If You Try” bathing the track in mesmerising geomagnetic storm of sound particles and waveforms.

It’s such a perfect mood built and sustained here, incorporating a hazy narcoleptic kind of post-rave come-down, fusing sci-fi industrial drone ambience with a dancefloor pulse and  then blasting it all through space and time at 4:24 via a euphoric mind-altering sub-sonic interstellar hyper-reality transporter beam.

Introverted Dancefloor’s sound creator Bevan Smith mastered Death And The Maiden’s subversive debut album, and, in his Signer guise, provided a delirious remix of their “Dear ___” as a bonus download track with their album. This “Even If You Try” remix re-pays that gesture with something rather special indeed.