“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.

“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.

“Default Parody” by Drahla

Leeds avant-garde post-punk band Drahla are back, with their second album “angeltape” on the way and a first song from the album “Default Parody” shared ahead of the April release.

 It’s been 5 years since “Useless Coordinates” was released, the year before the world, and in particular music/ band/ label plans were up-ended by pandemic etc. Drahla have added guitarist Ewan Barr joining vocalist and guitarist Luciel Brown, bassist Rob Riggs and drummer Mike Ainsley.

The added guitarist adds even more texture and rhythmic complexity to the band’s dark and intense sound, angular shapes stabbed out by percussive guitar chords over driving hi-gain bass and propulsive drums, while Luciel Brown delivers another intriguing sing-speak narrative. Great to have them back.

“All My Breathing” by Horn

Christchurch independent label Melted Ice Cream is a reliable source of great new underground music. Horn released a self-title album back in June and it’s a dark and tumultuous wonder. Here’s Te Whanganui-a-Tara/ Wellington trio Horn with the dark “All My Breathing”:

The guitars in “All My Breathing” start with some backwards riffing before re-orienting to snarl and slash and twist a sinuous pathway through a dark brooding song of betrayal (?). The video released for the song is an outstanding work of delightfully grotesque artistic visual experimentation.

Horn is Abigail Macilquham, Rebekah Leah and Rohan Hill and their eponymous debut is straight-to-Tascam 424 MK III cassette multi-track post-punk, post-grunge, post-metal, post-apocalyptic, post-everything, occasionally supplemented by an almost Avant-Garde injection of subtle synth squirts and chirps.

“Invisible Scene” by Rocky

I hate that reputable magazines/ websites/ commentators are compiling and publishing their “Best of 2023” lists in November, meaning they’ve selected them at the end of 10 months of releases. I understand record stores doing it to try to drum up Christmas/ end-of-year-sales. But I usually end up only finding out the best records each year well into the next year, so it seems a bit limiting to pick the best from only the first 10 months of the year. That said, the eponymous debut by Melbourne band/duo Rocky is definitely one of my “best of 2023”. It was also one of my “Best of 2021” but under a different name, as explained below. Great music is also timeless and enduring music.

Back in 2021 a Melbourne duo calling themselves XR after members Xanthe Waite and Raven Mahon self-released a captivating 7 song digital only mini-album via Bandcamp. I played it daily for months, wrote enthusiastically about in here on PopLib, and have continued to play it regularly ever since. I loved it so much I burned a CD-R from the downloaded Bandcamp WAV files and made a card sleeve for it so it could take pride of place among my most-played albums. Downloads played from a USB are fine, but not a real substitute for the physical existence of an actual object to hold, and disc to remove for playing. I hoped that a record label would appreciate it’s perfection too, and give it the physical release it deserved one day.

Earlier this year Melbourne label Lulu’s Sonic Disc Club did just that. Except the band was now renamed Rocky and – joy of joys – two new songs had been added. Instant LP order from me, damn the cost. “Invisible Scene” is one of the extra songs on the Rocky LP:

The thing I still love about this album is Rocky’s melodic spacey minimalist post-punk pop shares an off-kilter approach associated in my musical imagination with some of my favourite artists. There’s an echo of Wire in the stripped back sparse but melodic approach. There’s also an intoxicating feel of the kind of wistful oddity of Young Marble Giants and the adventurous spirit of The Raincoats at times (as on this song). The lo-fi synth primitivism also reminds of Robert Rental’s proto-synth-pop post-punk oddness too, before synth-pop – like the hair and clothes – became maximalist. This scatter of imagined reference points means it is a thoroughly satisfying listen for me, like a classic album always is. The LP is a lovely object too and you really should treat yourself this year. Great music like this nourishes the soul.

“Lost Memories” by Vanessa Worm

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”. Now back in NZ and based in Auckland, Worm has self-released a follow-up album “Mosaics”.  Here’s “Lost Memories”:

The music on “Mosaics” – written, produced and mixed by Tessa Forde (Vanessa Worm) – could be called “electronic” or “dance” or “minimal techno” or “industrial” or “experimental”, or all of the above, but its wilful oddness ensures “Mosaics” doesn’t fit easily in any comfortable singular music category or genre.

Some tracks start out as pneumatic techno or almost smooth Kruder & Dorfmeister style Balearic electronica before they are sucked through the Worm-hole to end up disturbed and disturbing ruminations, while one abandons electronic music altogether for post-punk guitar/bass/drums/vocals.

“Mosaics” might be a break up album of sorts, it seems to be processing trauma in a uniquely Worm way, with unconventional and distinctive vocalising ranging from creepy mouth-sound-effects sometimes bordering on demonic possession to confrontational echo-effected malevolent punk sneer. 

Although “Mosaics” is even less easily pigeon-holed than Vanessa Worm’s first album and spins in a wide orbit from its electronic dance music base, it is just as gloriously, subversively great as “Vanessa 77”.

“Seats” by T.G. Shand

Here’s a fabulous brand new slice of 21st century post-shoegaze guitar-pop from Christchurch musician Annemarie Duff flying as T. G. Shand.

Following on from two excellent singles earlier this year – “The Ease” back in February, and “Lemony” in July – “Seats” here is the most arresting and sonically complex of the three.

It’s a little bit off kilter, in a very good way, rocking a mesmerising electro-clash of Curve-style crunchy drum-heavy layered guitar rock, clattering post-punk bass, Cocteau Twins-style liquid guitars and a hyper-melodic chorus of layered heavenly voices.

What’s ahead in 2022 from T. G. Shand? Download these songs and follow the T. G. Shand Bandcamp and you will find out directly as soon as something new is released.

“Cool Magic” by The Melancholies

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Continuing our theme of soundtracks to ‘escape from Dystopia’ with here’s something a bit closer to home, the now Dunedin-based duo The Melancholies and “Cool Magic” from their recent self-titled 4 track EP:

“Cool Magic” is all decelerated minimal bass and drum-machine post-punk, as gloomy as it is exotic. It has a bit of that languid time-stretching cadence of HTRK and the dark energy spells of Young Hellions mixed in too.

As with both of those musical outfits sparse guitar and chunky bass riffs provide the textures over the electronic percussion, while synths, drones and other sonic treatments are the atmospheric wash over and through this hypnotic song and throughout the EP.

The duo is Holly Coogan and Tom Young and the other standout track on this strong 4 song EP – “Cute Aggression” -was apparently released 3 years ago. Good things take time. The 4 songs on this first EP are all Good Things. Perfect soundtracks for your escape from Dystopia.

“Out of Athens” by Bitumen

Bitumen in Melbourne Town Hall – photo by Matthew Ellery

Continuing our soundtracks for escaping Dystopia theme a bit longer… “Out of Athens” is the churning first single from the upcoming second album from Melbourne, Australia band Bitumen:

Bitumen craft their swirl of noisy futuristic industrial pop music from the shadows of dark and heavy post-punk. Their sound lives up to their name; a black viscous mixture somewhat reminiscent perhaps of the likes of Clan of Xymox, and also Skeletal Family in their Gothic majesty perhaps, if you remember (or have revisited) that far back to the 1980s.  

Their new album “Cleareye Shining” is released 26 November on Heavy Machinery Records, who say “Lyrically, Cleareye Shining sees shadowy figures in the throes of loving, lusting, plotting and fantasising. The result is 80s maximalism meets 90s industrial-electro. Robocop meets Basic Instinct. Always intense, always dramatic, and always demanding of your attention.”

“Night Drive” by White Flowers

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Continuing the ‘escape from Dystopia’ theme of the last few posts, here’s White Flowers with the perfect and glorious anthem “Night Drive”:

White Flowers are from Preston in the UK’s industrial north west. The duo’s atmospheric shadow-world post-punk, which also manages to be part ecstatic dream-pop, is situated – sonically-speaking – in a perfect place, triangulated somewhere between the sound and music of Cocteau Twins, Slowdive and Xmal Deutschland.

That mix of ecstasy, atmosphere and gloom – “monochrome psychedelia” as it is succinctly described on White Flowers’ Bandcamp – is an intoxicating combination.